Donald T. Resio, senior technologist in the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss., had an “ah-ha!” moment when he was trying to figure out how to plug a roaring levee breach: Use a big fabric tube floating in the flood, partially filled with water.
Elie H. Homsi will never forget the first day that his brainchild, a pile-driving, girder-launching gantry system, went to work on a $192-million contract to build the Washington Bypass, a six-mile alternative route to Highway 17 in North Carolina.
Contractors do not usually ask regulators to impose more restrictions, but a trend in fatal crane accidents last year prompted one industry insider to act swiftly to clean up safety lapses.