The Conco Companies is providing shotcrete services for a new I-5NB HOV lane that runs from Portland Avenue to the Port of Tacoma Road in Tacoma, WA. The full project includes widening the I-5 to make room for the HOV lane as well as the construction of a couple of bridges, reconstructing and improving several interchanges along the route, and repaving all lanes of the highway.
The project is a part of the Washington Department of Transportation’s Tacoma/Pierce County HOV Program. The General Contractor is Hamilton Construction Company who began work on the project in early 2015 and expects to finish by mid-2018. Hamilton specializes in transportation projects and has extensive experience with a variety of large, heavy civil construction projects.
Conco’s responsibilities include providing a specialty shotcrete technique to carve a random board design on the shot-face of the retaining walls. By implementing this technique over a traditional cast-in-place approach, it will save the project an enormous amount of both time and labor costs. Furthermore, to increase efficiency, our crews are doing all of the carving from lifts. This is the first time anyone has done this type of shotcrete work in the Northwest area.
Once the full scope of the project is complete, it will provide numerous benefits to area motorists including improving the highway’s overall safety and traffic flow as well as environmental enhancements. In addition the I-5 will receive an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) upgrade that will make it possible for WSDOT to respond more quickly to accidents and other types of incidents to help reduce traffic delays.
