When McCarthy Building Cos. won the $57 million job to demolish a failed dock structure and build a new general cargo dock at the Port of Beaumont, Texas, “we were blown away,” says senior project manager Robert Wood. “Our business leader almost had to sell it to upper management; maybe he held back some details of how crazy the job was.”
The team was already “pretty daunted” by the task of figuring out how to locate and remove parts of the partially collapsed concrete pier built in the 1950s on the remains of a wooden structure that dates back to the early 20th century . “When we started diving into it, we were like, wow! Maybe we don’t have it [fully] I understood what they were getting into, but now we’re here.”
The concrete pier sections were in different conditions and angles. There were only hand-drawn drawings of the wooden pier below, found after extensive research in a local museum, and virtually no visibility into the water within which lurked dangerous pieces of steel and wood. “We didn’t know how the structure would react when we started tearing it down,” Wood recalls.
But working closely with Lanier & Associates Consulting Engineers and the port, the team devised custom demolition tools that were dropped in several sections so the pier could be broken into manageable pieces and lifted out of the water. This required constant turning and troubleshooting. “The key in my mind was to foster that creative environment to keep the team confident and guide them through this unknown unknown. I had to help the team understand that it’s okay; no idea is a bad idea. Let’s work it out together.”
Kevin Drouet, Lanier’s engineering manager, credits McCarthy’s creation of a contingency manual for the multitude of unknowns so crews could continue working without reengineering or new approvals within parameters to keep the job. “McCarthy is reasonable and thorough about what was added and what was allowed in his basic scope
project to continue and not get stuck in client-owner change orders.”
Brandon Bergeron, director of engineering for the Port of Beaumont, praises Wood’s management for successfully delivering what he describes as “the most challenging project we’ve tackled since I’ve been at the port.”
Noting that the harbor renovation came in ahead of schedule and under budget, Bergeron credits the experience and overall makeup of McCarthy’s team for providing “a tremendous flow of information” that kept the project moving forward. “Robert was key to making it work,” he says.
Building Together
Wood says he gravitates toward these high-stakes challenges. “I’ve always loved building, designing and inventing things,” he says. “In high school, my summer jobs were in construction.” He helped build houses from the age of 15 and took up surveying. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering with a focus on sustainable infrastructure, he worked in Haiti on a water project, on terminal canopies at the Atlanta airport, and on a solar field in Virginia rural before joining McCarthy’s marine group based in Houston. “It motivates me to overcome challenges together and see people grow. Beaumont was the pinnacle of what you can do together,” he adds.
“Robert seemed to really foster a sense of camaraderie among the project team and was very adamant about involving the port team in this,” says Bergeron. “They were always ready to celebrate certain milestones; they would assemble them and then celebrate them. The culture they fostered was really evident.”
