T-REX is the acronym for the largest and most ambitious design-build transportation expansion project in the history of Colorado.
This T-Rex is friendly
T-REX is commonly thought of as the predatory, carnivorous dinosaur made popular in movies such as Jurassic Park. However, in the Denver (Colorado) metropolitan area, T-REX has taken on a different meaning. It is the acronym for the largest and most ambitious design-build transportation infrastructure project in the history of Colorado. T-REX stands for the US$1.67 billion Transportation Expansion Project.
The expansion occurs in the corridor from downtown Denver to the rapidly growing Douglas County area. It is the seventh most congested stretch of freeway in the nation. Designed to carry about 180,000 vehicles per day, it now carries over 230,000.
Hydro Conduit Denver is supplying all of the concrete pipe and precast box culverts for the project. The Denver Prestress plant is supplying girders for 45 bridges and deck panels for 80 bridges. Since the project design is constantly evolving, and the schedule is extremely aggressive, Hydro Conduit has taken steps to ensure that the project proceeds smoothly. New production equipment has been purchased in addition to acquiring equipment from other Hydro Conduit plants across the county.
The project consists of nearly 20 miles of new double-track light rail, 13 new light rail stations, improving and widening by one to two lanes over 17 miles of freeway, adding or replacing 88 bridges, numerous safety improvements, and significant drainage improvements. It passes through four different cities and three different counties.
Using traditional design-bid-build methods and bidding in smaller packages, it is estimated the project would have taken over 20 years to build. However, by using the design-build approach, completion is expected in just over five years, 22 months ahead of schedule.
Keeping track of trucks
The Florida Materials Division has implemented a GPS/AVL tracking system (Global Positioning System/Automatic Vehicle Location) in 240 of its block and building materials trucks.
Units installed in the trucks record the latitude and longitude of the trucks at different points in the delivery process. The data allows dispatchers to view the trucks on a website map where they can zoom in and out on a truck, or a particular area of the map. Reports can then be generated to benchmark loading and round trip delivery times. From these measurements, goals can be set to improve transport efficiency.
Information Systems Coordinator Richard Eifler stresses, The mapping is a ‘nice-tohave’ feature for our dispatchers, but the biggest advantage is the reporting tool to help us improve our transport efficiency.
Central Region Operations Manager Jim Richards said, This system is a tremendous help and can save the company significant money every year since more deliveries can be made to customers in less time.
The GPS system being implemented with the block trucks requires no input by the drivers as the geo-coordinates of the block plants are pre-programmed into each truck’s GPS receiver. Another advantage to the system is that drivers can be provided with maps to the jobsites a definite timesaver since, on many occasions, directions are cryptic at best.
