Page 43: of Marine News Magazine (November 2022)

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Feature

Inland Waterways Infrastructure

Waterways User Board, which makes two remains uncertain. the location of the new 1,200-foot recommendations to the Army and to “Our goal is to design and con- chamber,” Lopez said. “We are build-

Congress on investment priorities. He struct this as ef? ciently as possible. ing the new chamber directly adja- said the project at 25 was a top pri- We are hyper-focused on the fact that cent to an existing 600-foot chamber ority. “Safety and ef? ciency go hand- we received this appropriation from that’s over 80 years old and is going in-hand, especially when we’re build- Congress to go out and design and to continue to move traf? c during ing these new lock projects,” he said. build the project,” Lopez said. “We’ve construction. That has a lot of chal- “The more ef? cient we become with got our foot down on the gas doing all lenges associated with it. We’re very these new 1,200-foot lock chambers, of the work that we need to do to get sensitive to that.” the safer it’s going to be for our profes- that constructed.” It will be a team effort to ensure sional mariners.” Another project team objective, Lo- the project is completed in a way that

The complex project includes de- pez said, is to complete the upgrades makes sense for all parties involved, sign and construction of a new 1,200- cost-effectively. “Everybody’s aware Lopez said. “The Corps, navigation foot pile-founded lock chamber to be of the current market conditions and industry stakeholders and the con- constructed on the downstream side how things are going. The labor mar- struction contractor are all going to of the existing auxiliary miter gate ket is super tight. In? ation is up. It’s have to be at the same table to talk bay, as well as a new upstream, ported kind of a topsy-turvy world. We’re about how that sequencing is going to approach wall and a downstream ap- very cognizant of cost.” work to ensure we build this project proach wall designed to block ? ow The other objects are to maintain effectively and ef? ciently, but at the through the wall. The existing 600- quality and minimize impact and same time that we don’t impact the foot lock will remain in operation maximize predictability during con- barge industry too bad. There’s going during the design and construction struction. “One of the biggest chal- to be some shared risk in there that we of the new lock and will become an lenges that this speci? c project has is have to work through.” auxiliary lock chamber after comple- tion. This adds redundancy by allow- ing navigation to continue when one of the locks goes down or while main- tenance or repairs are underway. The project also includes associated chan- nel work, relocations and site-speci? c environmental mitigation.

Jose Lopez, project manager for the

NESP lock and dam 25 project, said the Corps’ will take a two-phase ap- proach to help minimize risk. He said the Corps hopes to use learnings and contractor feedback from phase one to help inform engineering and execu- tion decisions for phase two.

Lopez said the Corps aims to award the phase one contract in 2022, clear- ing way for construction to com- mence as early as late winter or early spring 2023. The timeline for phase www.marinelink.com MN 43|