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If the detour around the Interstate-405 closure seemed busy, consider what was happening on the project itself: hundreds of workers and dozens of trucks maneuvering to finish a huge repaving job in four two-day chunks at the end of summer.

The construction activity was so intense that, even though the freeway was closed, general contractor Kerr Contractors and Oregon Department of Transportation officials still had to deal with traffic jams. 鈥淲e had to treat it like it was an active road, Project Manager Kacy Carter said. 鈥淲e had to tell people where to go in the traffic.

鈥淲hile we were paving, we had upwards of 40 trucks going, and an electrician working on structural stuff,鈥� Carter said. 鈥淗e would set up a lane closure around himself.鈥�

The $11.7 million job involved repaving the freeway between the Fremont and Marquam bridges. Although the four weekends of closures ended Sept. 13, work on lighting and signs will continue through December.

It’s the first repaving of the four-mile stretch of I-405 since it opened in 1973, ODOT spokeswoman Christine Miles said.

For such a huge project, ODOT spokesman Patrick Cooney said, inconvenienced drivers didn’t complain. 鈥淧ortlanders have shown several times that, if they have advance notice and have time to pick other options, they’ll do that.

鈥淭he only thing I heard was how smooth the ride is,鈥� he said.

鈥淭here’s no good time to close down a freeway that can get 125,000 cars a day,鈥� Miles said. 鈥淏ut we had people in emergency command center monitoring detours, working with the city, the county, the Portland Police Bureau. If they said an area was backing up, we worked with the city to synch the traffic lights.鈥�

Shutting down the freeway on weekends caused short-term hassles for drivers but enabled Kerr to finish the job in much less time overall, Cooney said. 鈥淭hat’s the way to do it fast is to close it, whether it’s a freeway or a tunnel.鈥�

Workers had until 5 a.m. each Monday to wrap up their work, although they typically finished around midnight Sunday each weekend, Carter said. 鈥淵ou’ve got a 55-hour freeway closure and you’re doing as much work as you would normally do in a week or two of lane closures.鈥�

The pressure is that much greater during those work periods, Carter said. Any disruption threatened to wreck the schedule. And they had a few disruptions.

First, workers milled clear through the asphalt on ramps they thought were thicker. 鈥淲e had to mill to some additional depths, and had to regrade that. That added almost another shift鈥� to the schedule, Carter said.

On another portion of roadway, workers hit concrete footings where they weren’t expecting them. They had to break out the road around the footings, which keep the freeway from sliding, without disrupting them.

Despite those challenges, Carter said, Kerr Contractors was able to gain time elsewhere and finish the job on time. 鈥淲hen we started, we knew we didn’t get a lot of wiggle time,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut we knew, by the fourth weekend, that we’d get everything done we planned to.鈥�