Mike Veihdorfer and Crew pulled out another victory during the February ICPA Blue Ribbon Award Banquet for projects completed during the 2003 Construction Season.  Mike and Crew were recognized as the best in the Municipal Streets and Intersections Category (less than 30,000 square yards of paving) for their work in Ames on the 6th Street Reconstruction and Streetscape Project and the 2002-03 Cy Ride Reconstrution.  Engineers for this project were John Joiner, P.E. of Ames, and Michael Kirkham.

Projects were judged based on complexity, quality, management and aesthetics (finished appearance). 

Though the paving was the reason the project was entered into the award contest, the paving seemed to be the simplest portion of the project.  The project was staged out in a non-linear format meaning that stages were not consecutive geographically.

As anyone familiar with the city of Ames knows, the location of Sixth Street in the older part of town played a huge part in making this project very tedious.  It didn’t take long to be evident that dealing with antique utilities, and an abundance of new utilities, was to be a standard element of the daily routine in this project.

Not only did Manatts, Inc. have the paving contract on the job, we had the underground portion as well, nearly tripling the intensity and liability of the project.  Due to the fast paced staging and high profile of the project, an onsite superintendent for removals, utility work, and paving was required for the duration.  Tying Mike to the project left him little time to travel and take care of the many issues he usually handles on the paving crew.  When you have over 150 utility locates on an eight block project,  anyone can understand the necessity of having one person to deal with the utility locaters, utility companies, and the utility subcontractors - all of whom seemed hell bent on digging through someone else’s utilities!

Manatts’ winning team, pictured with Mayor Ed Kray of Ames (left), is Mike Viehdorfer, project superintendent; Billy Naderman, grade foreman; and Cortney Graber, paving forman.

Award winning project, Ames’ 6th Street
Reconstuction and Streetscape Project.

“Al’s Rainbow”

 
The grade crew became much more versatile, not only maintaining grade, but helping with pipe and installing sub-drain.   Billy and crew had to take special precautions during all phases of the job to keep out of phone lines and fiber-optic cable that laced both sides of the new street.  Al knew that the day to day processes of the job were becoming monotonous for many of us, so he took it upon himself to create a rainbow over downtown Ames to help replenish all of our spirits.

There are a few items to be completed on the project, but the majority of the work is finished and looks wonderful.  The pavement rides well even though the job was cut down into short paving segments.  As well, all of the intersections contained brick-paver cross bands in place of stop bar painting, something that always makes maintaining smoothness and yield difficult.  The handicapped ramps contain charcoal colored concrete surrounding the new attenuator panels specified for the visually impaired.  The utility vaults in the intersections had to have the tops lowered to match the new elevations of the street.  The crew had progressed to the point that the paving was actually the easiest portion of the project, meaning the street scaping portion and aesthetic concrete were the most difficult and time consuming portions.

Brian Frame and the Ames Ready-Mix drivers did a flawless job delivering concrete.  Much of the paving was scheduled early in the morning so we would have minimal disruption in delivery to local contractors.  By starting early, the Ready-Mix usually was able to give us such quick delivery that we were finished by noon and able to work on other phases of the project.  Additionally, the load consistency and mixer driver enthusiasm level played a large roll in the smooth paving operation.

 Everyone involved in the project contributed to the smooth operation and a great finished product.