In addition, three separate contracts are ongoing to construct 23 miles of concrete T-walls and two sector gates in St. Bernard Parish. “We’ve got to construct two miles a month to get that done by June 1, 2011,” Sinkler says.

Complex Complex

On the southern flank of the area, perhaps the most complicated project is coming together: the $1-billion Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West (GIWW) Closure Complex, a combination pump station and surge barrier. It will boast the largest pump station for interior drainage in the world, with a capacity of 19,140 cu per second. It also will have the largest sector gate in the country, with a width of 225 ft. Gulf Intracoastal Constructors (GIC), a joint venture of Kiewit Corp., Omaha, Neb., and Traylor Bros. Inc., Evansville, Ind. was awarded an early-contractor-involvement, or ECI, contract to deliver the project, which also includes floodwalls, sluice gates, foreshore protection and an earthen levee.

The project will reduce flooding risks by removing more than 25 miles of levees, floodwalls, a floodgate and pumping stations along two canals on the west bank of the Mississippi River from the direct impacts of storm surge. The GIC joint venture began construction last August. Already, it is about 45% complete.

“The ECI process has worked very well,” says Kent Grisham, GIC spokesman. “We applaud the Corps for thinking out of the box on this project and choosing the ECI method. In traditional design-bid-build, the project may have just started construction.”

GIC will begin installing pumps in early September. It plans to have all the concrete work for the pump station and sector gate complete by Dec. 1 and the gates installed next spring, Grisham says. The ECI process also has helped manage the overall cost and schedule, he adds. “Working with the Corps and all the stakeholders as a team has made this project a success,” he says.

The GIWW complex surpasses the massive IHNC storm-surge barrier in complexity and epitomizes all the innovations and team effort required to deliver the whole HSDRRS, says Dennis Kamber, Arcadis-U.S. senior vice president and director of water-resources practice. Arcadis worked on the initial study for the project and on the design of the foundation and pump station. Other participants include HNTB Corp., Kansas City, Mo.; the Bioengineering Group Inc., Salem, Mass.; the Corps’ district commands in New Orleans, St. Louis, Vicksburg, Miss., and Rock Island, Ill.; and the Corps’s Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg.

“It’s a very complex project with a lot of components, and the Corps thought the best way to approach the job was to make specific assignments for components,” Kamber says. “Coordination was critical.” When all the designers and the contractor convened for meetings, “we needed a big room and a big table,” Kamber says. “ECI meant the contractor was sitting at the table during the design phase suggesting the best construction methods and ways to improve or save time and money. The end product will be the result of a lot of very qualified cooks in the kitchen.”

Benefits and New Dilemmas

The short-term results of the construction program are improved flood protection for New Orleans, but going forward, the lessons learned will have widespread applications, Kamber says. “We still have the issue of flood risk reduction elsewhere,” he points out.

Adds Daniel Hitchings, Arcadis-U.S. vice president and program manager for the Bioengineering-Arcadis joint venture, “We’ve all learned how to work under these very expedited design schedules. We completed $250 million to $300 million of design work on the WCC [West Closure Complex] pump station in less than a year, and that is unheard of.”

But Garrett Graves, director of the office of coastal activities for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), sees the flip side to the celebration. That all this activity is considered so extraordinary is a sad indication of how underfunded water resources are, he says. “We do have the best protection in the area that we’ve ever had,” Graves says. “We learned very important lessons from Katrina about how we need to approach flood protection in a systems-based manner, and that protection needs to be coupled with ecosystem restoration,” he says. “We can’t allow the country, the Corps and the world to forget those messages.”

The same momentum and innovation the Corps used to deliver this program should be...