2025 West Best Projects
Award of Merit, Airport/Transit: Pier B On-Dock Rail Support Facility -Turning Basin & Pier C HDD
Pier B On-Dock Rail Support Facility – Turning Basin & Pier C HDD
Beach, Calif.
Award of Merit
Submitted by Primoris Services Corp.
Owner California Resources Corp.
Lead Design Firm Spec Services Inc.
General Contractor ARB Inc.; Primoris Services Corp.
As part of a transformative program that will dramatically expand the port’s rail capabilities, this project added a new locomotive service depot capable of fueling and maintaining up to 30 locomotives simultaneously and a 10,000-sq-ft staging area to assemble and break down full-length trains. This is part of a broader project that is reconfiguring and doubling the size of the Pier B railyard to 171 acres from 82, more than tripling the volume of on-dock rail cargo it can handle annually to 4.7 million 20-ft equivalent units from 1.5 million.
Scope also included rerouting Tidelands’ active pipelines beneath navigable waterways, including the Turning Basin and Channel No. 2, without disrupting ongoing operations. But performing complex horizontal directional drilling (HDD) beneath these locations posed numerous logistical and technical challenges.
The ARB team needed to complete precise, multipipe HDD installations under tight alignment tolerances, with strict environmental protections and contingency planning in place.
After coming across subsurface obstructions mid-alignment, rather than delay drilling or initiate costly re-drills, crews mobilized excavation teams to expose and safely remove the conflicts.
This fast-tracked solution maintained schedule continuity and demonstrated the team’s ability to pivot quickly while preserving quality and environmental integrity.
The team delivered the project nearly three weeks ahead of schedule and under budget in May 2025.
