Tied for 1st place with Wildcat Construction (another member of the Sherwood Companies), the 45 million dollar project had two areas that were a challenge and led to us getting the award.

The first was inherent to the project. The plans required the Contractor, in successive seasons, to work at the main crossroads to downtown Newton, Broadway and 1st Streets, remove the existing bridge over I-135, elevate I-135 over the side streets and rebuild them under I-135. In other words, before we started the side street traffic ran over I-135 but when it was finished, the I-135 traffic ran over the side street.

The second item concerns a problem that was discovered at the end of the 2001 season. The shoulders on the ramps to the Broadway bridge had been placed before it was realized they were inadequately reinforced to meet standards. During the winter of 2002, Sherwood worked closely with KDOT to remove the shoulders already poured and replace them with the correctly designed sections. This work was done over the winter because it had to be done before the 2002 work could start. If it wasn't started on time, the 2002 work could have run into the 2003 season.

One of the reasons we won this award was a location on the project that called for a new box culvert to be built, but had to be built in two phases because of the proximity to the old road that would be eradicated after traffic was placed on the new road. When we excavated for the Phase II box work it was noticed that the box that had already been built was showing signs of distress. Upon checking it was discovered that it had been designed for 10 feet of backfill height instead of the 30 feet that it was already carrying. Several options were pursued to correct this problem but none were very workable or cost effective. The box size at this location was 8 feet wide and 7 feet high and it was finally suggested to KDOT to consider a precast box that could be placed inside the existing box in the deficient section. KDOT redid the analysis of the drainage area and was able to use a precast box that was 6 feet wide and 5 feet high.

The next challenge was finding a way to move the precast boxes inside the exiting box since there were 29 sections that were 6 feet long and each one weighed approximately 12,000 pounds. A framework was designed and built in the Sherwood weld shop using heavy-duty casters that had previously been in service at Boeing. The framework was placed inside the box section and hydraulic jacks were placed on top of the framework. By jacking against the top of the box the weight of the box was transferred to the framework.

The next step was rolling the box section into place, which was done with the help of a skid loader. After the box section was winched into place the framework was disassembled and taken back for the next section. Personnel from Klaver Construction (a member of the Sherwood Companies) had the task of placing the box sections and this work was accomplished in only two days. The next task was grouting the space between the two boxes and Wildcat Concrete Services (another member of the Sherwood Companies) was called in for this work. Unfortunately, the weather had turned quite cold when they arrived and although both ends of the box could be closed for the grout to stay warm while it cured, the grout machine had to stay outside. Employees of Wildcat Concrete Services ingeniously solved this by building a temporary enclosure around the entire grout truck and placing heaters inside the enclosure. This is a good example of using the strengths of several of the Sherwood Companies to work with KDOT in a partnering situation.