Metrorail Projects Racing To Find Uncertain Future

By Victoria L. Tanner
The author has provided communications services to the industry for more than 20 years, working with general contractors, subcontractors and trade groups.

(Photo Courtesy of Slattery Skanska)

Not much happens in Washington, D.C. on a timely basis, but there is one institution snaking throughout the Capitol region that locals count on for speed. Rumbling deep beneath city streets and stretching far out into the surrounding suburbs, Washington’s Metrorail system is the best way of moving quickly throughout the city and region. But speed was just about the last thing that the construction community could count on with Metrorail during its major construction programs, until it brought design-build project delivery on board. Now, the agency may be working through its backlog a little too fast.

Night work proceeds along live rails at New York Avenue station, one of WMATA’s most-challenging jobs. (Photo Courtesy of Slattery Skanska)

Metrorail is the nation’s second-largest rail transit system and is the rapid transit arm of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). While Metro’s trains are considered smooth and efficient, construction of the system’s original 103-mile route was often not. Metro projects became not just a running joke in the construction community, but a bustling claims business, keeping contractors and lawyers busy arguing over change orders and contract disputes.

Metrorail construction began in 1969, with the first six of its planned 83 stations opening in 1976. Typical contracts during Metro’s first phase, covering 89.5 miles, ran 50 months for stations and up to 60 months for line sections, according to P. Takis Salpeas, WMATA’s assistant general manager and head of its Dept. of Capital Projects Management. Construction of the system’s second phase, the final 13.5 miles, was only marginally faster, with station and line projects typically lasting 45 and 50 months, respectively.

Salpeas joined WMATA in September 1998, fresh from leading San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit’s $1.7-billion West Bay/Airport Extensions construction program. When he came to Washington, construction of the initial 103-mile system was nearly complete—and it had taken about 350 design-bid-build prime contracts to do the job.

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But WMATA’s construction division would be taking on major new projects, with long-term plans for further additions and expansions to the system. Salpeas was determined that he would not have such an overwhelming number of contracts in any new construction work. “I knew some kind of change had to occur,” he says. Having used design-build delivery methods successfully on BART projects, Salpeas saw fertile ground at WMATA. “The political message we were getting was to go faster, go cheaper, increase quality and don’t compromise safety,” he says.  

Salpeas

Salpeas set about transforming WMATA and putting its construction program on track to speed future project deliveries. The first test came in 1999 when WMATA tried a design-build, best-value procurement on a six-story parking structure at its Vienna, Va., Metro station. As the work progressed on a schedule far faster than most WMATA veterans had ever dreamed possible, Salpeas began engineering plans to use design-build on two new projects—a 3.2-mile, two-station extension to Metro’s Blue Line and construction of a new Red Line station on New York Avenue. The projects total close to $500 million and currently are under construction. They will be completed in less than three years—shaving 18-24 months off WMATA’s previous best schedules.

Red Light

While numbers like those should be cause for celebration, there’s not much joy in WMATA’s construction division these days. By speeding up the delivery of these projects, WMATA’s team may well be hastening their own demise. Funding for virtually all of Metro’s future Capital Improvement Program has been derailed.

A victim of the tough economy and shifting political currents, WMATA finds itself with no champions supporting further growth. Federal funding has dried up and local and state governments in Virginia and Maryland have their own budget woes, which leave little money for Metro. Although Metrorail continues to smash ridership records on a regular basis and opinion polls consistently reflect the public’s desire to see Metro expand deeper into the suburbs, there is little political will or money available to sustain new construction.

Faced with the prospects of a $48-million budget deficit in 2004 and deeper ones over the next five years, WMATA has slashed its capital projects plans to the bone. By 2009, Salpeas’ stable of 237 architects, engineers and construction managers may be reduced to a skeleton staff of about 23. What little money that trickles through the capital projects division over the next five years will go toward maintenance.

Where there once was talk of a major extension out to Dulles International Airport in Virginia and construction of new lines through the city and out to both Maryland and Virginia suburbs, there now is little else on WMATA’s drawing boards than a few more parking garages and a light-rail demonstration project in downtown Washington. This leaves Salpeas feeling like a frustrated quarterback. “It’s like you’ve taken your players and turned them into a championship team and now they’re eliminating the Super Bowl,” he says. “I’ll be the largest parking garage builder in America,” he jokes, “But that’s okay.”

Salpeas remains convinced that the current downsizing is just temporary. “I think Washington needs Metro. It’s a fast- growing area and Metrorail is a viable transportation option,” he says. Confident that public demand for further Metro expansion will fuel a resurgence in the program, Salpeas is determined to keep his team focused on innovation and improvement.
By any yardstick, the two design-build jobs currently under way seem to measure up as winners for WMATA. Both projects will be completed in record-breaking schedules.

Largo Town Center extension remains on aggressively fast schedule.

The new “in-fill” station being built at New York Avenue is one of the most technologically challenging jobs WMATA has attempted. The $84-million project, being built by a joint venture partnership between Slattery Skanska Inc., Whitestone, N.Y., and Lane Construction Corp., Meridien, Conn., is the first transit station in the nation to be built between two existing and operating stations. The local office of Jacobs Civil is providing design services as part of the team. The contract covers design and construction of the station structure and facilities, completion of new trackwork to link the station to the existing line and all related power and controls systems. The project, awarded in July 2002, will be completed on an aggressive 30-month schedule, allowing for a late-2004 opening.

Further complicating the job is the fact that the Metro line runs adjacent to railroad lines serving the Northeast corridor and Washington’s Union Station train depot. “We don’t have any ‘oops’ built into the contract,” says John Thomas, WMATA’s project manager.

“The job is a little more unique since you’re working alongside live track,” says Slattery’s area manager, Ed Hollander. “And Metro is certainly focused on all the details of this job because they can’t have the Red Line shut down—that’s their money route.”

Haggins

The complexity of the job, coupled with weather complications from heavy winter snows and extremely wet conditions throughout 2003, are not the only challenges. Adapting to design-build has not been without its fits and starts. “We knew we were neophytes,” Thomas says. Not completely comfortable with letting go of the reins too quickly on one of their first major design-build efforts, he admits that WMATA “did a fair amount of advance design before putting it out on the street.” Thomas says that the specifications, criteria and drawings “stacked up to be three feet high, so it was a bit overwhelming. But it’s a process of live and learn. Hopefully, on our next job we’ll get it down to 18 in.,” he says.

While both sides acknowledge the learning curve, Hollander says, “There are certain things Metro wants and things that they are used to and that’s good. It will take a couple of jobs and a couple of years before everyone is used to these types of design-build projects.” Still, Hollander says he thinks, “design-build is here to stay with WMATA.”

Missed Opportunities

While New York Avenue represents one of its biggest technical challenges, WMATA’s other major design-build project, the construction of a Blue Line extension and new station at Largo Town Center, represents the agency’s largest contract award in its history. WMATA awarded a $217-million contract to a joint venture team comprised of Lane, Slattery Skanska and Granite Construction Co., Watsonville, Calif. The Largo extension will connect the Blue Line Metrorail from the existing Addison Road Station to Largo Town Center in Prince George’s County, Md.

The contract covers construction of 3.1 miles of track, power and control facilities, equipment and maintenance rooms, telecommunications lines and mechanical systems, an underground rail car storage facility and an inspection and maintenance yard east of the station. Jacobs Civil also is providing design services on this project. Sitework on the job was completed under an earlier contract.

In a separate award, WMATA signed a $92-million design-build contract with the joint venture team of Clark Construction Group Inc., Bethesda, Md., and Kiewit Construction, Omaha, Neb. Clark/Kiewit Largo will handle construction of two stations—Morgan Boulevard and Largo Town Center—a 9,000-sq-ft childcare facility at Morgan Boulevard (a first for any Metro station) and a 2,100-space parking structure at Largo Town Center. HSMM, Roanoke,Va., and STV Architects, Douglassville, Pa, are providing design work on the project.

To veteran WMATA contractors like Lane and Clark, the difference created by the design-build relationship on the Largo projects is a revelation. Dave Edfors, Lane project director, has more than 30 years of experience with WMATA. “When we built the Branch Avenue section of Metro, it took us five years,” he says. “We were awarded this contract in March 2002 and we expect to have trains running on this by late 2004, so, we’re basically cutting the time in half.”

Jim Haggins, WMATA’s senior project manager, says he sees a major difference in his own agency as well. “Sometimes it almost makes me speechless to think about things we could have done in the past, to think about the opportunities we had to collaborate with the builder that we missed, where we could have maybe built things differently and realized savings,” he says. “There’s been a lot of creativity that’s come out of design-build.”

“What’s making this project a success is the WMATA team that’s out here,” says Lisa Enloe, Clark’s vice president overseeing the Largo project. “They know what design-build is and they’re doing everything they can to move the project along. That is a new WMATA and a very different WMATA than we’ve seen before. In the old days, there was a price tag to pay for a WMATA project and after this experience, that will no longer be the case.”

Salpeas says WMATA has also made a conditional award to the Virginia office of Hensel Phelps Construction Co. to design-build two garages and related yard work at Metro’s New Carrolton facility, valued at approximately $85 million. WMATA also recently awarded The Haskell Company a $12.2- million design-build contract for a 1,200-space parking garage at its West Falls Church, Va., Metro station.

Despite shrinking budgets and staff, Salpeas is determined to continue pushing the envelope. He currently is planning to test a CM-at-risk delivery on WMATA’s upcoming Fort Totten Metro Police Facility and is looking at various options for the light-rail demonstration project WMATA will undertake in Washington’s Anacostia section. “Like always, we’ll start with a small job to test it and then we can move on to bigger and bigger jobs,” Salpeas says. If and when WMATA’s funding bounces back, Salpeas says his team will be ready. He’s just waiting for the Super Bowl to be rescheduled.

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