American Public Works Association
Public Works Project of the Year Award
Main Street Reconstruction
Evansville, Wisconsin
The Wisconsin Chapter of the American Public Works Association recently selected the city of Evansville, Wisconsin's Main Street Reconstruction as its 2008 Project of the Year in the category of transportation projects under $5 million in cost. The award recognizes the partnership between the managing agency, the consultant/architect/engineer and contractor working together to complete public works projects. Foth served as the consulting engineer on the project.
The people of Evansville, in south central Wisconsin, have always been motivated by civic pride to improve the commercial and industrial development of their community. From the initial platting of the streets in the 1850s to building the two largest mercantile stores west of Milwaukee, Evansville has work hard to create its niche in the future.
Evansville further set itself apart in 1914 by paving downtown streets with bricks after installing new watermains, sanitary and storm sewers. Nearly five decades later, the bricks were paved over with asphalt but the underlying utilities were not replaced.
During summer 2007 and spring 2008, the city took on a bold construction project to restore its brick-paved Main Street, while upgrading utilities, curbs and gutters, sidewalks and driveways. In addition, the city's vision of its new Main Street corridor included new lighting, benches, trees, trash receptacles, and bike racks. Evansville officials asked long-term engineering partner Foth Infrastructure & Environment to develop a plan to address these and other project needs.
Removing over a quarter million bricks from the street, then cleaning, sorting and stockpiling them for later use required new and innovative project management strategies from Foth and the project contractors. The team implemented a brick recovery assembly line established by the utility contractor, staffed by a crew of local laborers and university students, and overseen by a Foth employee. The assembly line approach gave the city strict control of brick quality, personnel, schedule and costs. This recovery operation was completed in just six weeks and left the road reconstruction contractor with over 300 pallets of stacked, clean, usable brick pavers. In addition, the cost of the operation was a third of a contractor's original bid cost, saving approximately $165,000.
Construction contracts were structured to minimize construction time and impacts to local businesses. Separating the contracts between utility reconstruction and street reconstruction reduced the number of subcontractors while streamlining the contractors' responsibilities and decision-making processes. The utility contractor, G. Fox & Son, completed its contract on time and handed the site over to Trierweiler Construction who also met its completion deadline.
