Port project gets new dose of scrutiny

A city engineering advisory commission has been calling for an independent review of the project since at least 2005.

About $288 million has been spent on the expansion so far. As costs have escalated and construction problems developed, local and state politicians have become more concerned. The estimated price tag for the full expansion, which would replace the existing structure and create new berths for bigger ships, now tops $1 billion, triple the estimate in 2005.

Mayor Dan Sullivan last year proposed scaling back the project, but now he says the municipality should wait for the results of the reviews.

The port expansion is the biggest economic development project going on in Alaska, and the 50-year-old port is a critical piece of infrastructure. Most of what Alaskans eat, drink, wear and drive comes in on cargo ships that dock there.

The project stalled after the 2009 construction season when inspections revealed that hundreds of steel sheets used to form a new dock face had bent and separated during installation.

The structure's design is known as "open cell sheet pile," a trademark registered to the project designer, PND Engineers Inc.

Instead of a traditional dock on pilings, the design calls for interlocking lengths of steel hammered into Cook Inlet to form U-shaped cells that are filled with gravel. The project extends the dock face 400 feet farther into the inlet and creates new land between the steel wall and shore. The full project is envisioned as a 1.5-mile wall of steel and 135 acres of new land.

Since the problems began coming to light in the fall of 2009, work crews have mainly been inspecting and ripping out the earlier work. Last August, a bulldozer operator backfilling after excavation was killed when his machine slid, he became trapped in gravel fill and drowned. A state investigation found he was working on an unstable slope.

The contractor overseeing the construction is Integrated Concepts and Research Corp, or ICRC, which began as a subsidiary of Koniag Inc. ICRC had never managed a port redevelopment when in 2003, as an Alaska Native firm, it won a no-bid contract to run the project. Koniag later sold ICRC to an engineering and technical support firm, VSE Corp., based in Alexandria, Va.

ICRC held onto the port contract, hiring and monitoring the subcontractors that do the physical work. The company has earned close to $28 million over nine years, counting what it expects to receive this year, according to its figures. The latest one-year extension of its contract expires May 31.

CAN IT BE BUILT?

Now the structure itself, and how it got to this point, is under intense examination, including:

• A design suitability study by the engineering firm CH2M Hill, which has a $1.29 million contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. CH2M Hill will analyze the "hydrologic, geotechnical, structural and seismic conditions," according to the Corps. It also is analyzing earlier studies to look for gaps in information. Ultimately, the review will assess whether the open cell sheet pile design is workable, according to those involved.

CH2M Hill is currently managing a Panama Canal expansion, according to its website. Findings and recommendations on the Port of Anchorage project are expected by April.

• A companion engineering and construction analysis by the Corps, drawing on various experts including those stationed at its engineering and research center in Vicksburg, Miss. That review will look at "project planning, permitting, design, construction and environmental support," the Corps said. It also should be done by April.

• A study by another big engineering firm, AECOM, described as a "root cause" analysis of what went wrong and who is responsible. The firm was hired by the U.S. Maritime Administration, a federal agency known as Marad, that has overseen the port project. Marad officials said the cost is capped at $500,000.

"We have to understand what the cause was and how do we get it repaired, how we get it fixed at the end of the day," said Roger Bohnert, Marad's deputy associate administrator of intermodal system development, which includes the Anchorage port.

• An audit by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, which will examine Marad's oversight of port projects. Marad also was a novice overseeing port development when it took on the Anchorage project and hired ICRC in 2003. The audit is using the Anchorage port as a prime example of Marad's performance. The audit should wrap up later this year.

DO OVER UNLIKELY

The study of the design's suitability is welcome and should produce some of what the municipal Geotechnical Advisory Commission has sought for years, said Robert "Buzz" Scher, an engineer who just completed two years as commission chairman.

"It's great the reviews have started," he said. Still, the CH2M Hill review in particular may be on too fast a track for something so complicated, he said. The studies can't accomplish what the commission wanted when it proposed creation of an independent panel providing oversight and guidance as the project developed: to avoid the problems that occurred.

Ultimately, the reviews should lead to more efficient methods and a finished project, Marad officials said. They don't expect the city to have to start over from scratch.

PORT ACROSS THE WATER

The port expansion is extra challenging because of extreme tides, hard-packed soils and piles as long as 90 feet, a height that complicates installation. Plus, the new port is being built while the old dock is still being used. The new construction have to avoid getting in the way of ships delivering cargo.

Dennis Nottingham, the retired president of PND Engineers, said in a brief telephone interview that the cell design has worked well in more than 200 similar projects in Alaska and elsewhere. While the Anchorage project is one of PND's biggest, Nottingham said, some have been taller.

"The same structure was built across the way at Port MacKenzie with no problem," Nottingham said.

That's true -- to a degree. The Mat-Su Borough is pleased with its port, but the projects aren't identical.

Port MacKenzie is a much smaller and less expensive structure. It's not designed for the regular docking of cargo ships as happens at the Port of Anchorage. The whole Mat-Su port, counting a new barge area, cost less than $25 million, said Mat-Su port director Marc Van Dongen.

During the construction of Port MacKenzie, engineers figured out how to loosen up the seafloor before driving piles, how to work at low tide and how to install some piles only partway or cut holes in them so water could flow underneath, equalizing pressure on both sides of yet-to-be-filled cells, said Van Dongen, a retired Corps of Engineers lieutenant colonel who managed the Mat-Su project.

"You'd have thought someone (on the Anchorage project) would have talked to me, because there's always lessons learned," Van Dongen said.

Diana Carlson, vice president of operations for ICRC, said PND was involved in both projects, so the information carried over. The same subcontractor drove the steel in both places, too. While the original specifications didn't call for trenching or digging up the undersea soil before driving piles, the need became apparent early on, she said. But deeper water, ongoing dredging to keep shipping lanes open and funding issues complicated the Anchorage project.

In addition, Cook Inlet beluga whales were declared an endangered species in the fall of 2008. Since then, construction crews haven't been able to drive piles in the two hours before or after low tide, a restriction that Mat-Su escaped because its pile driving was already done, according to ICRC.

Contractors only recently got permission to work from the water side as well as from shore. That makes a big difference, Carlson said. The project's permits also had to be modified to allow more construction dredging, she said.

West Construction has been paid almost $50 million over the last two years to dig up work from prior years, check for damage and test whether the piles could be installed without damage using different methods. That's worked, according to ICRC.

THE FALLOUT

Meanwhile, lawsuits over port construction have been put on hold while the companies try to settle.

The oversight of the project is changing too. Port director Bill Sheffield, a former Alaska governor, retired this month amid calls for his resignation by state legislators and Paul Honeman, an assemblyman running against Sullivan for mayor.

A new agreement between the municipality and the Maritime Administration spells out that the mayor and the maritime administrator should decide any big changes in project cost or scope. The agreement also creates a high level oversight team made up of the port director, the city manager and a Marad official, with technical advisers reporting to them.

The agreement also says Marad's contracting duties for the project will end in May, though officials expect the agency to continue to administer project funds.

"We have achieved our top 2011 priority on the Anchorage port modernization project -- to work with the City and the port to 'reset' its fundamental planning, management, and oversight through a new project management agreement," Maritime Administrator David Matsuda said in a written statement. "We are much more confident that as funding comes available for the project's completion, it will be delivered in a fashion that is well-planned, well-designed, and well-managed."

So far there has been no announcement about who will take over the massive project.

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Reach Lisa Demer at ldemer@adn.com or 257-4390.