Precast Puzzle

Port of New Orleans prepares new home for Carnival Conquest

By Angelle Bergeron

The Port of New Orleans is preparing for the Carnival Conquest, a 3,700-passenger, 1,200-crew cruise ship that will make the Crescent City its home port.

Broadmoor LLC is working diligently to ensure the ship will be greeted in December with a new four-story parking garage atop a two-story cruise terminal that is the first of its kind in the area.

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Constructing the $35.5 million, six-story, precast Erato Street Cruise Terminal has been no small feat on a site that is slightly larger than the building's footprint, perched on the crest of an embankment overlooking the Mississippi River and in the shadow of the second span of the Crescent City Connection bridge.

Before the first pile was driven by subcontractor Boh Bros. Construction Co. of New Orleans, the Port of New Orleans laid down the law about not interfering with existing cruise passenger traffic.

The toughest part of the job continues to be coordinating subcontractors, laydown and materials delivery, said Grayson Bultman, project manager for Broadmoor.

"We are everywhere we can be right now," Bultman said as crews from Boh Bros. poured a deck beneath the cavity slab, Broadmoor worked on placing elevated grade beams and Gates Precast of Houston placed hollow-core planks to form the substructure to the slab on grade.

Crews are currently hustling to finish work at the south end of the site, while Tindall Corp. of Biloxi, Miss., is tying together the huge precast elements of the structure on the north end.

"It's sort of an assembly-line deal with the downstream end leading the construction," said Kyle Jones, deputy director of port development.

The project broke ground in October when Boh began site utility work and pile driving. Boh was also responsible for construction of a cavity slab and installation of a sheet-pile wall, both of which serve as the main-bank stabilization features of the new structure.

"This facility is right on top of the riverbank at elevation 20 ft. above sea level, which is a precarious place to be," Jones said. "The river in some places is more than a 100 ft. deep and the city is 5 to 10 ft. below sea level. It's an engineering feat to design this."

When building close to the river it's necessary to "relieve the driving force of the tendency of the bank to slough off into the river," said Don Makofsky, president of Morphy Makofsky Inc., the New Orleans engineering firm charged with designing the foundation. His firm has designed other structures along the riverfront, including the Aquarium of the Americas and One River Place Condominiums, but none quite so unusual.

Jones couldn't recall the port having built any cavity slabs on any of its properties in the last 15 years.

"In fact, I don't know if any of our existing facilities have a cavity except for Thalia Street right next door, which is an 80-year-old wharf," he added.

The Port of New Orleans, in conjunction with CH2M Hill of Englewood, Colo., the project's architectural firm, opted for precast construction because of the space restrictions on the site and the fast-paced construction schedule.

"There's nowhere to lay anything down," Bultman said. "You can see we're using every inch of the site for foundation work, so we couldn't support vertical construction in this space with all of the concrete work we have."

Boh Bros. had to make adjustments to its pile-driving equipment to work beneath the CCC bridge, and Tindall will face similar challenges when lifting the upper pieces of precast into place, Jones said.

Tindall is manufacturing the structural panels, double Ts, columns and beams. The company has subcontracted Jackson Precast (formerly Jackson Stone) of Jackson, Miss., to manufacture the architectural panels that will comprise the decorative, exterior skin and Gates handled the hollow core planks.

"Tindall will bring in a 400-ton crane and will be putting up an average of 15-20 pieces per day, so it has to have full access to the site," Bultman said. Tindall began erection in May and is on a five-month schedule.

"That means we need to have all of our foundations complete by the end of July."

Although the precast design costs an estimated 20 percent more than would a post-tensioned concrete building, it was chosen because of site restrictions and the fast-approaching December deadline, Jones said.

"We were willing to let at a premium for a building we could build quicker," he added.

Additional ships have indicated they would like to port at the terminal and revenue from the parking garage will be about $12,000 per day, he added.

"It is vital that we get it up and running by the December completion date," Jones said.

The precast design offers little tolerance for error with dowels, anchor bolts and the foundation, Bultman said. And there is little margin for error on the logistics.

"Everything is off the truck and into place," he added. "All deliveries have to be scheduled according to the following day's activities or the day's activities." With
Tindall's erection schedule, that could mean as few as seven or as many as 15 trucks making deliveries each day.

It's not like an erector set where all of the pieces are the same, said Sam Briuglio, Tindall's sales manager.

"Each job and each piece is a custom-manufactured job and custom-manufactured piece," Briuglio added. "It's not something we mass-produce in advance, but each piece must be carefully engineered and marked to be placed in a particular location and in order."

Useful Source:

For a live shot of the construction site, go to:
http://www.portno.com/cruise_term.htm