Brian Witte was just a freshman in high school when he launched his career in infrastructure. “It was a small town in Iowa, and the professor’s neighbor was the city engineer for a dozen communities,” recalls Witte, Parsons Corp.’s vice president of construction engineering. “They needed help. They hired me at $4.65 an hour, doing street reconstruction drafting. We’d develop drawings, survey, do mockups, inspections—sidewalk and gutter and drainage from start to finish. It was super fun, interesting; I just had stupid luck.”
His later years working with civilian contractors confirmed the conviction that “I’ve learned that I have to be in the field, not just sitting behind a desk,” he says. With the Kicking Horse Canyon project, he was not only in the field, but spearheaded key solutions to smooth out a treacherous and winding stretch of two-lane highway within the assigned schedule and budget.
Kicking Horse Canyon Constructors (KHCC), a design-build joint venture of Aecon, Parsons and Emil Anderson, won the $331 million contract in 2020 to realign and improve the remaining section of Trans-Canada Highway 1 in four lanes of two, eliminating 13 hairpin bends. Crews built four bridges, nine viaducts, and seven mechanically stabilized earth walls, performing large cuts and excavations, relocating utilities, and mitigating rockfalls and avalanches. Even harsh winters haven’t stopped the expressway project, which is slated for completion this winter.
The site traverses a series of unstable slopes, and the rough concept given to the design and construction team had a conventional solution of stabilizing pipe piles installed in front of the retaining walls to support the highway. But after extensive geotechnical exploration, engineers realized that these piles would need to be of large diameters and installed with very little spacing, often with rock anchors holding the top of the pile in place. Their installation would be expensive and time-consuming, and would require complex temporary access and stabilization for equipment.
The rough plan had four or five bridges in the preliminary design, but Witte conceived the idea of throwing bridges and viaducts sideways to reduce stacking and the need to access difficult places. The four bridges are of variable length ranging from 30 to 70 m and are usually located over deep ravines up to 65 m deep. Viaducts have consistent, repeated short spans of approximately 23 m, and are generally less than 5 m above the existing ground.
“I remember seeing the drawing of the Big Horn Bridge,” says Witte. “It was only a three-span bridge, but it was a long way from the road. How are we going to get out? There was no room to build launch beds or buttresses.” The “beauty” of throwing beams sideways, he adds, is that “no more steel is needed now than for permanent structures.”
“I have known Brian for almost 20 years and have worked with him on several challenging projects during that time,” says Mike Gash, KHCC’s Director of Construction. “I have relied on Brian’s experience and knowledge countless times to find perfect solutions to complex problems. Their innovative designs and work on the Kicking Horse Canyon Phase 4 project was no exception to this and was a major factor in the project’s success.”
Witte says teamwork was the key to success. “It’s kind of rare that the concepts you develop pre-offer actually get executed on the plans,” he says. “It felt like a perfect storm. This owner, our team, was the right team. Everything came together to make it work.”
