Joint Venture Wins Contract to Improve New Orleans Levee
July 14, 2009
ST. LOUIS -- A joint venture of Archer Western Contractors Ltd. and Alberici Constructors Inc. has won a contract that could be worth nearly $300 million as part of the effort to bolster the New Orleans levee system damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded the joint venture a contract for $3.1 million to perform cost estimating and construction planning for the levee reinforcement work. In addition, the contract provides for the joint venture to perform the work at a ceiling price of no more than $294.9 million. If testing shows the project can be done more cheaply, the total cost of the project could fall.
The joint venture will reinforce and raise a 5.3-mile stretch of the New Orleans East Back Levee to a height capable of handling the kind of severe flooding expected to occur once every 100 years.
Amid concern about New Orleans’ vulnerability to hurricanes, the project is scheduled to be completed on or before June 1, 2011.
Archer Western, a general contractor, is a division of Walsh Group Company, based in Chicago. Alberici, also a general contractor, is based in St. Louis.
The joint venture, Archer Western/Alberici (AWA), will use a construction method called deep soil mixing to stabilize the levee known as LPV-111. This stabilization will be accomplished by injecting cement slurry into the existing levee utilizing the soil as the aggregate. Approximately 1.9 million cubic yards of clay will be used to raise the height of the levee.
At peak production the team will be working two shifts to place approximately 1,200 tons of cement and 7,500 cubic yards of clay a day, requiring a constant flow of trucks to the levee.
AWA has engaged Treviicos, a specialty foundation subcontractor, to perform the deep soil mixing. Treviicos is the U.S. subsidiary of an Italian company specializing in foundation systems worldwide.
To contact Alberici, call Peter Shinkle at (314) 733-2395