NEW YORK — Things move rather quickly in the city: the people, the cars, the trains and most building projects. Residents of the Bronx know this well. A prime example happened nearly 90 years ago.
In 1921, the Yankees were virtually kicked out of the Polo Grounds, the official home of the New York Giants baseball team. As a result, Yankee Stadium rose up across the Harlem River between East 157th and East 161st streets in the Bronx. The project was a 70,000-plus capacity, triple-decker stadium to be built on about 10 acres the Yankees had purchased that same year. The only catch: It would have to be built on a $2.5 million budget (about $25 million today) and completed in less than 300 days.
While the dollar amounts may change, some things stay the same — even after nearly a century. Just ask members of the CCA Civil/Halmar International LLC joint venture, the design-build team constructing a new station for New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Metro-North Railroad at Yankee Stadium. The commuter rail line runs from Grand Central Station in New York City to other parts of the state as well as Connecticut. As was the case with the stadium itself, the $60 million project was quickly on a tight schedule — just 24 months.
Some delays early on cost the project about two months on the start date, but it continues to show why design-build is the delivery method of choice, particularly when under a tight schedule. It illustrates the flexibility of the process, often needed when a project is constructed within extremely tight confines and under a compressed schedule.
The project consists primarily of the new train station along with a 270-foot pedestrian bridge that will take patrons to and from the stadium.
“Initially they weren’t sure if it was just going to be the station,” says Paul Atkins, principal for Halmar.
The bridge was vital, since it crosses the railroad tracks and some private property around the site. Atkins adds that the City of New York Economic Development Corp. was initially going to replace the bridge, but it was negotiated with Metro-North, the project owner, and funds were provided to make the bridge part of the station design-build package.
The challenging part, however, is the schedule. “The job was supposed to be awarded [at about] the end of March [2007], and then we would give them the April opening day of ‘09,” Atkins says. “There were some issues of private property — in particular that bridge that I speak of crosses Metro-North [Number]Four track for the Hudson Line ... and the other half of the bridge spans over [an elevator] manufacturing building. So the negotiations became a bit complicated, but fortunately in the end, they were successful. It did however create a challenge for us because the targeted start date was pushed out by two months.”
Deadline Crunch
The 2009 completion date is not the only milestone. The team must meet deadlines throughout the process. For example, a certain amount of track work had to be complete by December 2007, based on the track schedules for the Metro-North line. Those were met – as have all other design-build benchmarks so far. The next milestone was March 30. “A lot of deconstruction has to be replaced with new construction, and those dates don’t change,” Atkins says. “Baseball season doesn’t change.”
One key to hitting these deadlines is flexibility, and design-build has helped tremendously. “The first [deadline in] December ... was mostly a lot of track work and some underground utility things that we changed with the owner to make it happen,” Atkins says. “Otherwise, if we built it [per] the RFP, we would never have made the December schedule, because of the two-month delay in the award. We skinned the cat a couple of different ways, and we worked hard to make sure our team delivered.”
Time is not the only hurdle, however. Baseball definitely increases traffic around the site for the 81 Yankees home games each year. In addition, Atkins says, a yard track, which runs directly through the site, is tied to the MTA’s East Side Access Program, which basically increases train traffic throughout the site. (The program was designed to ease pressure on commuters east of New York, but it affects a variety of points around the city.)
During construction, time is always valuable, but with an active commuter rail running through the project, it’s priceless. “Because these things [are] being built over these tracks ... you only get about two and a half hours to shut down all of the tracks [at a time] ... [and] you need to shut all the tracks down to work over them,” Atkins says.
Innovation Challenges
“Really the main thing that separates [this from other design-build projects] is that this’ll be the signature station for Metro-North,” Atkins says.
Stuart Sokoloff, P.E., from CTS Group, the geotechnical engineer for the project, agrees, and notes that challenges are just part of any such project, but are often more manageable through design-build.
“Because it’s a design-build, we would come up with the problem and come up with the solution, and two days later it was implemented as opposed to having to have it follow more traditional design hurdles, so this was an ideal project for design-build because of the extreme time pressure,” Sokoloff says. “Also, because of design-build, some ... changes were offered — changes to the 20 to 30 percent plans that were developed for Metro-North ... prior to the selection.” Atkins adds that it was part of the team’s approach all along.
Flexibility with plans is just the tip of the iceberg, however. The entire project is one that has forced CCA Civil/Halmar International LLC, which includes CTS Group, Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure Inc. — a division of The Shaw Group Inc. — as the engineer and Metro-North as the owner, to constantly come up with innovative approaches to reduce wasted time on the project.
A cornerstone to this has been use of prefabricated elements. With a window from 2:30 a.m. to 5 a.m. to work directly over the active tracks, such innovations are crucial. “Whereas you pay a premium for material you can get a lot more done in the timeframe, and [it] actually can pay for itself,” Atkins says. “And more importantly, you can get scheduled certainty to the owner.”
In fact, a large portion of the entire project is prefabricated, such as the entire mezzanine, which is coming in full-width pre-fab units. The platforms are precast as well.
Physical Obstacles
With the March 30 Yankees’ opening day deadline this year came still another challenge. The Con Edison high-voltage feeders that feed the adjacent Highbridge yard — and subsequently affect movement of trains out of the basement at Grand Central — was going to be in the path of the relocated yard track. This happened to be the first track which needed to be built and had to be cut into service by December 2007. The preliminary design used drilled geopiers to address the issues associated with this conflict.
Another concern is the soil. “It’s like marshmallows down there,” Atkins says. Sokoloff elaborates: “There’s about 35 feet of really poor ... silty clays — extremely weak,” he says. “We had great concern that if a track, especially a track that’s being put in a new location ...would settle, [it] would crack the feeder.”
The team’s innovation was to incorporate a design-build solution to relocate the feeders and “engineer away” the problem in lieu of introducing an uncertain and time-consuming option such as the geopiers. “What we did was to take the feeder out from under the track, redesign it and then move it outside of the influence of the track. This way we didn’t have to use geopiers” says Frank Facciolo, P.E., design manager for Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure Inc.
They also used a “geogrid” — a plastic mesh imbedded in the stone ballast to strengthen the subgrade and slow long-term settlement, Sokoloff adds. If there is resettlement, there’s the opportunity to have the area re-leveled. “We’re on site for about two years, so that under a worst-case scenario, the settlement would use up at least 50 percent of what would be anticipated within the two years to be re-ballasted in lieu of putting in mechanical things that would be sporadic,” he says.
This isn’t the easiest project, by any stretch, but members of the CCA Civil/Halmar International team say they’re up to the task. “It’s a very difficult construction not because of what’s being built, but where it’s being built,” Sokoloff says. “It’s adjacent on both sides of active tracks; they’re pass-through — they don’t stop because there’s no station — but there’s train traffic constantly moving by, [and] the Major Deegan [Expressway] is a series of on and off ramps.”
New York and Design-Build
Despite these challenges it’s nothing new for those familiar with such projects. “[There are] no challenges that are unique to this project, honestly,” Atkins says. “Any 60-plus million-dollar job in one of the five boroughs, those types of challenges, they would apply to any real project like that.” But using design-build is proving key to better project completion. “[Design-build] helps in a sense that this job was awarded in June of [last] year, and the preliminary design was brought to some level of completion. [If not,] we wouldn’t have been able to make the target dates.”
But time remains precious. “There’s a tremendous amount of work going on ... at Yankee stadium — multiple owners, a lot of city projects,” Atkins says. “Metro-North does not want to be the one that’s not done.” A primary reason they’re still in the game is design-build. “I think it’s a smoother process. Every owner grows at their own pace with design-build. Metro-North is, I think, a much better animal now than I even expected it to be, to be honest with you,” he adds. “A job like this is a high-priority project, and with the schedule-driven constraints, they knew that design-build was the way to go.”