Henningsen Meets Tough Four-Day Challenge

The challenge put to Henningsen Construction, Inc. on August 9, 2001 – Can you pave the inside of a building and have it completed by August 14th?

Their assessment of the project was that with a lot of hard work and a large amount of “good luck”, it could be done. The building was 700’ long and 120’ wide. At each end were four 12’ doors and a 10’ door on each side in the middle of the building.

This might be a good time to mention that this was to be a new car house for the “elite cars” the U.P. Railroad uses for use by their President and Company Executives (not the every day Amtrak car for you and me).

Now that the scene has been set, picture the 4 doors on the end of the building having railroad tracks going through them. Across these doors, and in the middle of the building, there are concrete panels, same as are used for crossing on the streets. Add to this water valves and an electrical panel placed a few feet off the track at both ends and in the middle – and you begin to see the obstacle course they would be fighting.

Day 1 consisted of hand placing and raking the mix, 240 tons, into all the areas around the panels, to allow access to the area to be paved – the 14’ between the sets of tracks.

Day 2 would be the day to base in the strips between the sets of tracks – as soon as they could figure out how to get the equipment and trucks in the doors. Since the concrete panels only extended 19’ out from the edge of the building, they had to place railroad ties lengthwise between and in the tracks to maneuver the trucks in the door. Then they had to do the same inside to allow them to move over between the tracks where they were to pave. All the drivers had to do was enter at an angle through a narrow door, from bright sunlight into a dark building, avoid the water valves, electrical panels and straighten out before backing on to the adjoining track and dump their load in the paver. They had a few grumpy drivers! The management assumed this was because all of this was done on clean ballast and it was very easy to get stuck, if the driver stopped or turned to sharply. To everyone’s delight, they were able to base 6 of the 8 strips of paving.

Day 3 started with some help. The strips left to base were the ones next to the outside wall, and were only 10’ wide. They used two crews and two small pavers being fed by skid loaders for these areas. There was just no way to get bigger equipment or trucks into that tight area. One paver turned out to have tracks that were too short, and it couldn’t maneuver in the ballast. Ballast may be great for drainage, but it is lousy to drive on! The crew finished the day by going back to the handwork from Day 1 and surfacing those areas around the doors and the concrete panels.

Day 4 began with the two crews and two small pavers putting surface on the narrow areas. They were able to use both pavers since the pavers were able to run on the HMA base. One crew left early in the afternoon and the other crew finished the surface on all the area inside the building. Once the area was cleaned up, the deadline had been met.

The area inside turned out so well that Henningsen was allowed to go outside and pave more areas between more tracks as a reward (punishment?). This part was considered to be a breeze compared to what they had just accomplished.