Missouri DOT Launches New Division to Help Involve Disadvantaged Businesses in State Construction Projects

New division to help minority, woman-owned and other disadvantaged construction businesses. Federal government looks anew at Future-Gen in Mattoon, Ill.

New MoDOT Division to Help Minorities Gain Construction Jobs

The Missouri Dept. of Transportation (MoDOT) has created a new division to enhance affirmative-action efforts to involve minority-owned, women-owned and disadvantaged businesses in state construction projects. The new division—External Civil Rights—oversees the department’s affirmative action, equal opportunity and non-discrimination programs, which were previously housed in another MoDOT division. The move will expand these important outreach and partnership programs.

“Creating this new division allows us to place an even greater emphasis on increasing the number of minority, female, and economically disadvantaged individuals working on state transportation projects,” said Lester Woods Jr., the division’s director. “This will help us deliver better results when it comes to ensuring a diverse work force on our projects.”

One of the division’s goals is to build on the progress made in developing pre-apprentice and on-the-job training programs for socially and economically disadvantaged individuals on two of MoDOT’s largest projects: the Interstate 64 reconstruction in St. Louis and the reconstruction of almost five miles of I-29/35 and construction of a new Missouri River bridge near downtown Kansas City, Mo. These programs are helping individuals acquire trades that will provide long-term career opportunities.

Over the last two years, more than 70 on-the-job trainees have worked on I-64 and five of them have achieved journeyman status, with many more eligible by next year. At 19%, the total workforce diversity on the I-64 project exceeds the federal minority goal of 14.7%.

In its thirteenth month of construction, Kansas City’s kcICON project is on the path to achieving its overall project diversity goal of 12.7%. There are 42 on-the-job trainees working now - three in professional services and 39 in construction. More trainees will be added as construction continues to ramp up for the summer.

“We have committed up to $1.25 million to developing a work force that better reflects the diverse makeup of our community,” said kcICON Project Director Brian Kidwell. “We want all of our on-the-job trainees to be successful on this project and acquire the training and skills necessary to sustain long-term careers in heavy highway construction.”

A sister division, MoDOT’s Equal Opportunity and Diversity Division, works to recruit and retain women and minorities as part of the agency’s workforce. David Williams was recently named the acting director of that division.

For more information on the External Civil Rights Division, visit www.modot.org/ecr.

St. Paul, Minn., Sewer Management Goes Digital

St. Paul, Minn., now has one of the country’s most technologically advanced sewer-management systems.

Until recently, the city’s public works department used 2,500 paper maps to keep track of more than 1,250 miles of sewer pipe that lie beneath the city. Technicians had to carefully maintain the maps by hand.

Under the paper system, a technician designing a construction project would copy data from a paper map into Autodesk AutoCAD or Autodesk AutoCAD Map 3D in order to add the project’s design elements. After construction was complete, a technician had to update the paper map by hand-drawing the as-built information onto it. That took lots of time and also lacked the precise engineering detail found in CAD drawings. In addition, the paper-map system could not be integrated with the department’s existing GIS system nor could it support multiple projects and users simultaneously. It was clear that digitizing the department’s information could significantly boost efficiency.

To go digital, the department first scanned all 2,500 paper sewer-network maps and imported them into AutoCAD Map 3D. Using the scanned images as guides, technicians electronically drew the CAD line work for the main-line sanitary and storm sewers to create asset maps, which were then loaded into an Oracle spatial database and fed into Autodesk Topobase, the department’s software for editing sewer network data.

Now, St. Paul’s all-digital system lets staff quickly and easily provide reporting and planning support. Technicians can access all information electronically, so no maps need to be re-drawn and no data is lost.

Since all data is stored in Oracle, it can be integrated into the department’s web-based GIS viewer. So if a citizen has a sewer question, a staff member can quickly get the information to answer it by entering the address or cross street into a browser map.

In addition, the department will be able to easily report on maintenance activities by cost, neighborhood, type of pipe, pipe age, or any combination of those factors.

Finding the correct pipes in the system now takes minutes, instead of weeks. This speed and efficiency mean faster service for St. Paul’s utility customers.

Ameren Awards Environmental Operations Inc., Multi-Year Consulting & Remediation Contract

Ameren Corporation has selected Environmental Operations, Inc., of St. Louis, for a multi-year master services agreement to provide environmental consulting and remediation work in Illinois and Missouri.

The first projects to be undertaken by Environmental Operations under the new agreement will be former manufactured gas plants in Mattoon, Champaign and Granite City.

Ameren Corporation is the parent of electric and natural gas utilities in Illinois and Missouri that serve 3.4 million customers across 64,500 sq mi.

Environmental Operations is the St. Louis region’s largest environmental firm. The company identifies and resolves environmental issues with integrated environmental expertise, Brownfield incentives and risk assumption tools.

MoDOT Route 50 Widening Under Way

Missouri Dept. of Transportation has started construction to widen Route 50 from two lanes to five lanes from Route 47 South in Union to east of Denmark Road/Progress Parkway.

The project will help relieve current congestion and accommodate future traffic growth in the city of Union.

This stretch of Route 50 was built in 1960. Several improvements since then have addressed congestion and safety concerns. But even so, Route 50’s daily traffic flow now exceeds its two-lane capacity.

MoDOT proposes to add two additional lanes to the south and one additional lane to the north of the existing two-lane roadway. Two-way traffic will be maintained over the existing two-lane or widened pavement for the duration of the project.

Construction began in July and is expected to be complete in October 2010.

FutureGen Project in Mattoon, Ill., Gets New Shot At Life

The U.S. Energy Dept. says it will build a flagship clean-coal powerplant in Illinois, reversing a previous Bush administration move to scrap the ambitious FutureGen project in favor of smaller carbon-capture and -storage projects (CCS) around the U.S.

The FutureGen 275-MW power plant planned for Mattoon, Ill., will cost $1.3 to $1.8 billion to build. It will be the first commercial-scale, coal-fired powerplant to capture its carbon-dioxide emissions and store them permanently underground. (Rendering courtesy of FutureGen Industrial Alliance Inc.)

Energy Secretary Steven Chu and his industry partner, the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, a group of 20 leading power utilities and coal companies, reached agreement on the project: a 275-MW integrated gasification combined-cycle powerplant that could cost between $1.3 billion and $1.8 billion.

Sited 180 mi south of Chicago in Mattoon, Ill., the plant will be the first commercial-scale, coal-fired powerplant to capture its carbon-dioxide emissions and permanently store them in underground geological formations. Chu alluded to opportunities to sell the technology to China and other major coal-using countries.

The Bush administration early last year abandoned plans to build the project, citing huge budget overruns and an unfavorable cost-sharing structure. The alliance heavily lobbied the Obama administration and Congress to restart the project. FutureGen will be one of the government’s highest-profile projects, using $1 billion of stimulus funds. The FutureGen alliance will contribute $400 million to $600 million over the next four to six years as the plant is built, DOE says.

FutureGen initially will capture 60% of its emissions and ramp up to 90% in its last phase, a change that dismays some past supporters. “In scaling back the amount of carbon the plant will capture...to cut costs, the Obama administration has turned FutureGen to YesterGen,” says John Thompson, an official of the Clean Air Task Force, a Carbondale, Ill., environmental group.