Dan Brown and Associates, PC » Site updates

Girders go in at Hastings

David Graham — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:06:21 +0000

photo by Jim Adams of the Minneapolis Star Tribune

Massive prestressed concrete girders, some of them setting a record for the longest concrete girders used on a Minnesota bridge, have been set at the New Hastings Bridge, currently under construction in Hastings, Minnesota. The largest girders are 174 feet long, 8 feet tall, and weigh 108 tons! There is a video of one of these huge beams being delivered on a 16 axle truck, below. An article from the December 2011 issue of Concrete Products magazine about the girders can be found here. To date, all of the girders between the north abutment and main span have been placed. Crews are preparing piers 5 and 6 for the main span steel arches, which are scheduled to be floated in by barge and lifted into place late this year. MnDOT has two web cams where the bridge construction and the arch construction can be viewed. The Minneapolis Star Tribune has also been following the construction. Their latest article, which hails the bridge as “a monumental marvel,” can be found here.

Click here for more information on our website about the New Hastings Bridge

Click here for MnDOT’s project page

I-70 St. Louis Bridge–New Papers by Paul and Dan

Robert Thompson — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:32:19 +0000

The drilled shaft foundations for the new I-70 Mississippi River Bridge in St. Louis, MO are the subject of two recent papers written by Paul and Dan and published by DFI. Dan presented the paper focusing on the Alternate Technical Concept (ATC) process at the DFI 36th Annual Conference in October. (previous post here). A case history paper by Paul and Dan was published last month in Volume 5, Number 2 of the DFI Journal. Links to the papers are below, as well as on our Publications page. Other posts on this bridge are here.

Brown, D.A., Axtell, P.J., and Kelley, J. (2011). “The Alternate Technical Concept Process for the Foundations at the New Mississippi River Bridge, St. Louis”, Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations, 2011, Boston, MA, USA, pp171-177.

This paper was originally published in the Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations, the 2011 annual meeting of DFI. Go to www.dfi.org to purchase the procedings or for further information.

Axtell, P.J. and Brown, D.A. (2011). “Case History – Foundations for the New Mississippi River Bridge – St.Louis”, DFI Journal Volume 5, Number 2, December 2011, Deep Foundations Institute, pp3-15.

This paper was originally published in DFI’s bi-annual journal, Volume 5, No. 2 in December 2011. DFI is an international technical association of firms and individuals involved in the deep foundations and related industry. The DFI Journal is a member publication. To join DFI and receive the journal, go to www.dfi.org for further information.

Dr. Mike Holloway, P.E. comes aboard!

Robert Thompson — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:00:00 +0000

DBA is pleased to announce that Dr. D. Michael Holloway, P.E. has joined the DBA team. Mike is a recognized expert in driven pile foundation design and dynamic testing, in-situ testing, instrumentation, and earthquake engineering. His over 40 years of foundation and geotechnical engineering experience includes stints at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station (WES) in Vicksburg, MS, and Woodward-Clyde Consultants in Oakland, CA. He founded InsituTech, which specialized in engineering deep foundations and applying insitu soil testing services.

When starting InsituTech, Mike broadened the professional practice beyond “conventional” PDA-related testing and analyses services. Rather than just test and report to satisfy QC requirements during construction, he applied dynamic testing and analyses to enhance foundation design and constructability, as well as to improve on-site troubleshooting of construction problems. The efforts paid off as the firm made significant changes in the way PDA services became integrated into the design/build process on several major marine facilities and bridge projects in the west and in the Pacific.

Mike is a Blue Devil, having earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. at Duke University in North Carolina. Raised in New York, he made his way to California seeking engineering gold soon after his time at WES. He has been based there ever since.

Mike’s presence in California makes DBA a practically coast-to-coast firm (well, at least East Tennessee to California). We at DBA are excited at the expertise Mike adds to our portfolio and look forward to his contributions to the team. Welcome, Mike!

Holloway DBA Announcement (Press Release)

Hastings Update and Photo Album

David Graham — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 21:28:45 +0000

Well, I, David, have survived my first (and hopefully last) winter in Minnesota. I spent most of January and February observing the installation of the Pier 5 drilled shafts at the new Hastings bridge project in Hastings, Minnesota. In addition to the drilled shafts, there has been a lot activity at Hastings since Aaron last blogged about this project in January. A link to his post is here. All of the ground improvement piles for the column-supported embankment have been installed and approximately 75% of the caps have been poured. The 42-inch piles and pile caps for Piers 8, 9, and 10 are also complete. Piles for the north embankment retaining wall have been installed and construction of the wall has begun. Excavation for the rock bearing spread footings that will support the south land piers is in progress. Work at Piers 6 and 7 and on the north shore are currently on hold as the Mississippi River is experiencing its annual spring flood. The water level is about 14 feet above normal elevation.

I have taken the pictures Paul and I have collected over the last few months and uploaded some of the more interesting ones to a Picasa web album. The pictures are generally in chronological order and cover most of the construction process from November of 2010 right up to the end of March 2011. A link to our our video of a Statnamic load test at Hastings that Aaron blogged about is here.

New Bloggers at DBA

Robert Thompson — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:55:49 +0000

I (Robert) will now have some help with posting to the blog. Our two young staff engineers, Aaron Hudson and David Graham, will be helping me with blog maintenance and posting content. Until now, I have pretty much written all of the posts and have done all other content updates. Now you will see . . . → Read More: New Bloggers at DBA

kcICON Bridge Nears Completion

Robert Thompson — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 21:24:29 +0000

Paul received a few photos of the kcICON bridge that are just too cool not to share. These were sent to him by Massman Construction. These were taken in September of this year. MoDOT’s Flicker album of the dedication ceremony is here. The new bridge was dedicated and partially opened to traffic (southbound) on September 27th. The northbound traffic was shifted to the new structure on October 22nd. All of the bridges and ramps for the project will be opened by the end of the year – 6 months ahead of schedule. Can’t wait to see it after the exisitng bridge is demoloshed, though it is a pretty cool image with the old and new bridges together. Updates for the project are on the project Facebook Page.

Click here for previous posts on kcICON.

A Foundation Engineering Trip Down the Mississippi River

Robert Thompson — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 22:16:22 +0000

Dan recently played the part of storyteller at the Southeastern Transportation Geotechnical Engineering Conference (STGEC) 2010 conference in Charleston, West Virginia when he gave the lunch presentation on the conference’s first day. He took the audience on a trip down the Mississippi River from a foundation engineer’s perspective, talking about several bridges that DBA has had the pleasure to work on, or is still working on, along the river the last few years. Dan began with the I-35W Bridge replacement in Minneapolis, Minnesota and ended at the Huey P. Long Bridge in New Orleans, Louisiana. Stops along the way included the Hastings Bridge (Hastings Minnesota), the new I-70 Bridge (St. Louis, Missouri), and the Audubon Bridge (New Roads/St. Francisville, Louisiana). Dan covered some of the technical issues/problems associated with each project and the solutions applied to complete the foundations (or complete the design). It was a very informative talk presented in a unique way that everyone at the luncheon seemed to enjoy. Dan’s presentation is now available on our Presentations Page.

Posts on Hastings Bridge here.

Posts on I-70 Bridge here.

Posts on Audubon Bridge here.

Posts on the Huey P. Long Bridge here.

Immediately after lunch, Robert made a presentation that described some of the pile load tests performed on two of the storm protection projects in New Orleans that DBA was privileged to be involved with through Kiewit. By following Dan, it provided a little continuity to the story as Robert took the group below the Huey P. Long Bridge to the levees and canals downstream of New Orleans. Robert’s presentation can also be found on our Presentations Page.

Post on the pile load tests here.

DBA Technology Update: We’re on LinkedIn!

Robert Thompson — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:37:27 +0000

Yes, technology fans, DBA is at it again. We are doing all we can to keep up with the ever changing world of social networks, business networks, and communicating via electronic media. To that end, DBA has a company page on LinkedIn.

We still have a bit to do to complete our profiles, both corporately and individually, but we’ll get there. To help all of you media-savy folks, we have placed a LinkedIn button with all of the other social media icons at the top of our right sidebars. We are looking forward to getting connected!

Three Updates: World Record O-Cell Load Test in St. Louis, MO

Robert Thompson — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 02:33:01 +0000

Check out the bottom of my post on June 30th World Record O-Cell Load Test for some updates and new links to recent news articles.

Pile Load Tests in New Orleans – Presentation

Robert Thompson — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:13:49 +0000

Robert made a presentation at the recent Alabama Section ASCE 2010 Summer Meeting on our participation in some pile load tests on a couple of the storm protection projects in New Orleans (see previous post here). DBA worked for Kiewit Engineering Company (KECo) and the two joint ventures on the projects, providing geotechnical consulting. We are collaborating with KECo on a couple of papers (maybe more) that include the test data. This presentation covered the basics of the test pile programs, highlighted some of the results, discussed the measured setup values for the piles (driven in the soft Louisiana clays), and looked at some comparisons of the dynamic and static load test results to the pile resistance predictions made by DBA during the course of our work. Please note that the Corps of Engineers (and their consultants) were the design engineers. Our work was in support of the contractor joint ventures, especially evaluating pile drivability and installation issues.

Some of the photos included in the presentation were obtained from the public Flickr albums posted by Team New Orleans, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. There are a lot of good photos there of many of the ongoing projects around New Orleans, as well as an album of historical photos.

You can check out several webcams at the West Closure project here.

You can see Robert’s presentation here.

UPDATE (11/1/10): I have replaced this presentation with a similar one presented at the STGEC 2010 conference in October. The link now directs to the more recent presentation.