“You gotta give it up to the team,” said I-10 Widening Project Manager Cody Hix. “We experienced several challenges on this job, but the team did fantastic.”
The stretch of highway from La Cantera Parkway to FM 3351 features the first HOV lanes in the San Antonio area.
“The project widened to the outside first, allowing traffic to shift away from the inside,” Hix said. “So, widen the outside, then widen the inside, and then overlay the entire project. Those were the phases.”
Additionally two existing bridges were also widened, and one was completely demolished and rebuilt. The project in suburban Bexar County was also a job for Flatiron to show off two areas where it excels: paving and structure work. Flatiron self-performed roughly three-quarters of the job.
The I-10 team managed to keep spirits high despite delays at the beginning of the project. Another contractor’s project had a ramp reversal that ran up to the limits of Flatiron’s work area. When that adjacent project started running behind, so did Flatiron’s project.
“As we worked through bad weather, owner delays, and project turnover, we continued to find our groove, and kept beating the odds,” said Flatiron Central Texas Operations Manager Rich Snow. “A lot of hard work, long hours, and dedication kept a great project team focused on the tasks at hand, and striving to get the job done.”
Hix said while there was not a significant amount of innovation on the bid-build project, they were able to use their creativity to save TxDOT money. For example, the original design called for a very large box culvert to be cast in place. Flatiron deduced it would be better for cost and schedule to go the precast route instead.
“It was fabricated by a facility that does prefab concrete and it was delivered in pieces,” Hix said. “We installed these pieces very quickly. It took us six days to install all of these precast pieces as opposed to months of concrete working in a hole. So, helped schedule, helped price.”
The eight miles of work area in Bexar County’s Live Oak area includes the widening of the Pat Booker Bridge (two separate northbound and southbound structures), four MSE walls, and four sound walls. The Loop 1604 team also self-performed roughly three-quarters of the job, including all of the concrete pavement and two of the four walls.
Working around traffic was a challenge for both the Loop 1604 and I-10 projects.
“Traffic is a constant challenge here,” Loop 1604 Project Manager Erik Brisson said. “The project had to be broken into several phases to best manage traffic concerns. We did quite of bit of work on the weekends because that is the only time ramps can be shut down. We worked through all this successfully.”
Snow praised the Loop 1604 team for not only being flexible during the course of construction, but also proposing innovative solutions to improve the project: “The project teams’ focus on continuous improvement has led to several innovations and restructuring of crews to meet or exceed self-imposed project goals and milestones.”
Flatiron, along with one of its subcontractors, shook up the previous design for the sound walls, coming up with something that was less expensive.
Brisson also praised his Safety Manager Mark Garcia for running a tight ship. The project went several months without a case of COVID-19, and that can be attributed to a dedication to following safety rules.
The population boom greater San Antonio has seen in the past several years necessitated both projects. According to several reports, it is now the seventh largest in America by population. From 2010 to 2019, the population grew nearly 17 percent, as people gravitated toward the Alamo City’s affordable cost of living, pleasant weather, and vibrant cultural scene.
