Front End

Of Reuse and Refuse

Efficiency has always been close to the heart of railroad operators. So it’s no surprise that the culture at Tube Lines, the Bechtel consortium overseeing the upgrade of London Underground’s Jubilee, Northern, and Piccadilly lines, is increasingly imbued with a zero waste philosophy. Avoiding wasted energy and raw materials is the most efficient way to save money in any business.

Nowhere was that clearer than at this summer’s embankment restoration project near Kingsbury Station. There, concrete and rubble were crushed for aggregate, vegetation was chipped for composting, and logs were repositioned to create a wildlife habitat. The team even delivered two truckloads of trackside branches and vegetation to a university student to use in her final art project. In the end, Bechtel’s project team reused or recycled nearly 99 percent of project waste, totaling more than 4,575 tons (4,150 tonnes).

A Desire to Hire

Three dozen loads of concrete arrived at Bechtel’s Waste Treatment Plant project in late September, as did hundreds of new employees. The arrivals followed word from the U.S. Department of Energy that work could resume on the Hanford nuclear site’s two biggest buildings after a 20-month delay. The news lifted spirits throughout eastern Washington and opened doors for the local workforce.

Getting back on track means hiring workers. Within a month of the announcement, Bechtel added more than 200 at the job site. Hiring halls sprang to life while project recruiters visited local job fairs, universities, and trade schools, yielding more than 100 eager new college graduates and 87 interns. In all, the project population is up more than 800 employees this year.

Bechtel still has scores of open jobs and, by the time the project hits its stride in 2009 about 700 more workers will be needed to build what will be the world’s largest treatment plant for radioactive waste.

Raising Hopes

Kay Hicks was still recovering from a devastating blow to her Port Arthur, Texas, home from Hurricane Rita as the Gulf Coast Workforce Development Initiative wrapped up its 2006 drive to recruit and train construction workers. The former schoolteacher saw the program’s final TV commercial and rushed to the Texas Workforce Commission’s office just in time to sign up.

She joined thousands of Gulf Coast residents who have benefited from the Business Roundtable-funded program. The goal is to train and hire up to 20,000 workers for the region’s burgeoning petrochemicals construction market as well as hurricane reconstruction.

After a month of full-time training—paid for by the city of Port Arthur—Hicks became a certified crane operator last spring. Now she’s joined Bechtel at the Motiva Refinery Expansion project in Port Arthur as a rigger’s helper, with an eye on the control cab. “This program was my dream come true,” she says.

No Traffic Delay

Once the bearer of an onerous nickname for its confusing and dangerous traffic patterns, the interchange formerly known as the “Mixing ?Bowl” now carries rush hour traffic with ease.

But with half a million vehicles per day passing through ?on three major freeways, rebuilding the vast Springfield Interchange near Washington, D.C., was like bouncing in and out of a moving jump rope. Flagmen allowed crews as little as 10 minutes to position equipment, execute demolition or construction, and clear out before they released bottled up traffic.

Working for eight years amid the traffic they were building a solution for, Bechtel’s team completed 50 bridges and 41 miles (66 kilometers) of roadway on time and on budget in mid-2007.

Closing in on Chernobyl

A Bechtel-led consortium overseeing work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine recently awarded a contract for design and construction of the site’s innovative confinement structure. The steel arch enclosure—almost three football fields across and 32 stories high—will be the largest moveable structure ever built.

Segments of the weatherproof arch will be fabricated over the next four years and brought to the area near Chernobyl’s damaged reactor. The sections will be assembled and slid into place over the “sarcophagus” that was hastily erected after history’s worst nuclear accident in 1986 left it vulnerable to wind, rain, and earthquakes. The confinement structure is designed to keep the plant’s damaged reactor secure for 100 years and provide a safer decontamination environment as a Ukrainian cleanup team robotically dismantles the sarcophagus and reactor for long-term storage.

New Wave Airport

Much has been made of the fact that New Doha International Airport in Qatar will have the first landing strip designed specifically for the Airbus 380-800, the world’s largest passenger aircraft. Less is known about the vast terminal that will handle passengers arriving and departing on thousands of flights per year.

When the A380s start service by 2010, the completed terminal will be the largest building in Doha, able to handle 24 million passengers annually—30 times the city’s current population. With the completion of the project’s final phase in 2015, that capacity will more than double. 

Bechtel’s construction team is now erecting concrete arches for the wavelike roof over a check-in floor that will include nearly 1,100 ticket desks and will be large enough to accommodate 10 wide-body aircraft . It’s all part of an effort to expedite boarding while maintaining security for Qatar Airways, the world’s fastest-growing airline.
   

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