KIEWIT.

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KIEWIT PACIFIC

How Resourceful
Kiewit Pacific is making good use of its
marine construction capabilities on the
island of Kauai, where it is reconstruct-
ing 1,100 feet of breakwater and placing
38,000 tons of new jetty stone for the
Kikiaola Light Draft Harbor. Working
under a $19 million contract with the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the com-
pany started the project in September
2007 and will complete it in May.
“There was an existing jetty or break-
water constructed out there, but what the
Corps wanted to have is a slightly deeper
harbor,” Prock explains. “That would
require dredging, but in order to dredge
deeper, the breakwater structures needed
to be deeper, as well, so they don’t under-
mine the structure.”
Kiewit arrived on location with an
EX1200 excavator, knocked the top off
of the old jetty and constructed a tem-
porary work platform. “When we got to
the end, we excavated that jetty out and
reconstructed a new one, working our
way back to shore,” he says.
The contractor is using stone ranging
from 700 pounds to nine tons that it
acquired from an unrelated construc-
tion project. “We had a large mass grad-
ing project in Poipu and had a lot of
drill-and-shoot to do,” Prock says, “so we
selectively mined out the large stone and
set it aside for this job. The timing worked
out impeccably.”
Kiewit Pacific is on track to complete the $38 million
Drum Road project by its October deadline. The largest challenge on this project was
finding limestone material higher than
everything down as quickly as possible went through the freeway, and we went what Kiewit initially anticipated. “When
so you don’t lose finished product.” and built on and off ramps first,” accord- we bid the project based on the geotechni-
The project was 45 percent complete as ing to Prock. cal information and boring legs provided
of January, and Prock says it is on track to “Then, we detoured traffic out onto to us, we didn’t expect to encounter any
reach its October deadline. those ramps to get on the freeway again hard excavation,” Prock notes. “However,
and that allows us to clear out the old once we started, we found this hard lime-
‘Outstanding Job’ highway and construct the new bridge. stone material within our excavation area.
Kiewit Pacific is working on Phase 1C of “We [recently] completed the bridge, We’ve had to work through a redesign on a
another highway project in Oahu called put traffic back up on the old freeway, daily basis to come up with a different
North South Road. According to Prock, and now we’re starting to finish out the design for the jetty to be able to con-
this is the second phase of a three-phased ramps and the roadway underneath the struct it.”
Hawaii Department of Transportation proj- bridge,” he continues. Kiewit is 85 percent completed with
ect to reconstruct the H1 Freeway. “It really worked well, but we only the project and the dredging operations
Kiewit is building a new interchange had a six-month window to do it. The have just begun. “The real success story
that will connect H1 to North South guys were working a lot of hours, and that underlines all three of these jobs is
Road. Its work scope includes construct- they worked accident-free without any the partnering approach we take with our
ing a new bridge, as well as an on ramp rework. They did an outstanding job.” owners,” Prock says. “We take a ‘no surpris-
and off ramp. The $57 million project began in Sept- es’ approach with our owners and this
“The sequencing of this was pretty ember 2007 and will be completed this open communication has really helped
interesting in that the existing roadway October. with each project.” ■

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