PM Network - September 2014

a lesson learned, as this should have been scheduled in-house initially to avoid this,” Mr. Williams says.

;e engineering design entailed building six 50-foot-wide (15-meter-wide) rows of reef out of concrete along the bay ;oor, each row stretching 250 feet (76 meters) in length. In May 2013, the design was approved. In September, Mr. Williams awarded the building work to RLB Contracting, in nearby Port Lavaca, whose bid came within 25 percent of the government estimate, allowing construction of all six rows by March 2014. ;is would put the completion of the USACE project— and thus the entire program—just three months behind the completion of the GLO project.

TAKING SHAPE

From mid-December 2013 to January 2014, RLB Contracting stockpiled 3,000 tons ( 2,722 metric tons) of concrete, broke it into pieces—none bigger than 36 inches (91 centimeters) in diameter—and cleaned them to remove all metals and potential contaminants. On 15 February 2014, the team members began shipping the concrete on barges to the work site. Once there, they used an excavator bucket to lift the rock and drop it onto the bay bottom, just eight feet ( 2. 4 meters) below the water’s surface. ;ey piled the massive rows, Based on the engineering plan, the project team had determined that about two feet (0.6 meters) of the wall would settle into the bay ;oor. ;at would then leave about ;ve feet ( 1. 5 meters) of clearance between the tops of the walls and the water’s surface, enough room for the boats above.

;en the team hit another delay—but this time, not a man-made one. In March, a sudden and intense fog slowed work to a virtual standstill.

“;e fog came out of nowhere for this particular stretch of time,” Mr. Wil-
liams recalls. “We lost about three weeks as a result.”
Once again, careful planning came to the rescue: Mr. Williams had accounted
for potential weather delays, granting the contractor 26 non-working days
due to poor weather. RLB needed to use only 20. ;e non-working days thus
incurred no additional costs.

;e six rows were completed on 12 April 2014, compared to the original goal of late 2011 or early 2012.

“;ere’s a lot involved even in the smallest of projects. You think, ‘Six rows
of rock in the water, big deal,’” Mr. Williams says with a laugh. “But what you
see is not even close to a representation of what you had to go through to get
to the ribbon cutting.”
;e Nature Conservancy intends to launch two similar reef-reconstruction
projects along the Texas coast within the next two years. By then, Half Moon
Reef should be showing signs of sustainability.

“Hopefully this will be a center of highly productive reefs and we’ll see reefs establishing themselves where we didn’t build them,” Mr. Herron says. “Maybe we’ll even bring it back to 400 acres someday.” PM

“There’s a lot involved
even in the smallest
of projects. You think,
‘Six rows of rock in
the water, big deal.’
But what you see is
not even close to a
representation of
what you had to go
through to get to the
ribbon cutting.”
—Byron D. Williams, PMP
Byron D. Williams, PMP, third from left, says
the experience taught him important project
management lessons.