When David Evans and Associates recently set off to tackle a mapping project of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the firm turned to a unique software system it had installed on an 82-foot hydrographic survey vessel called the S/V Blake.

The firm knew the system could be trusted to handle the task. DEA engineers had created it in-house several years earlier to help keep river pilots and their shiploads safe on the Columbia River in Oregon.

Much of the work that DEA Marine does in U.S. territorial waters, along the Northwest coast and around the Gulf of Mexico, is for NOAA, according to Jon Dasler, DEA’s senior vice president and director of the firm’s marine services division.

Its most recent project involved collecting data along the edges of the Gulf that NOAA is using to provide a temporary water route through Chandeleur Sound for the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. The new route will be about a 100-mile detour for Mississippi River pilots and the thousands of commercial vessels that used the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway through Chandeleur and Breton Sound, just inside the Chandeleur Islands, a string of uninhabited barrier islands in the Gulf.

The technology used aboard the S/V Blake provides what Dasler describes as “full-coverage multi-beam and side scan sonar object detection.” The same system has been used for several years as the basis for an enhanced real-time electronic navigation system to help ensure maritime safety in the Columbia River and Portland Harbor.

Floating a solution

In Oregon, bar pilots meet big ships about 15 miles out at sea and bring them into Astoria. That’s where river pilots pick them up for the eight-hour, 100-mile journey into Portland.

Until a couple of years ago, Columbia River pilots used computer-aided design (CAD) charts, paper copies stuffed in a drawer that had to be constantly pulled out and checked. But the team at DEA Marine designed new software that created electronic versions of the CAD charts that provide much better accuracy with the click of a mouse.

For a long time, Capt. Chuck Patching, one of the 43 members of the Columbia River Pilots, had wanted to incorporate the CAD drawings into the laptops that river pilots use but didn’t know how until Jon Dasler and his team at DEA Marine came to the rescue.

Even in fog or the black of night, Patching said, river pilots can just look at their laptops and know exactly where things are.

“It can be done much more safely than before and now we have accuracy within inches,” he said.

The DEA Marine computer system, when coupled with GPS coordinates, operates in real time and can show changing ship locations and speeds, as well as the exact location of docks, pilings, shoals and any underwater obstructions, down to the inch, or even less.

“He (Dasler) took those charts and turned them into (electronic) files that we could read,” Patching said. “Now with the click of a button we have the soundings of all the private docks along the river so we can maximize drafts of ships going in and out of the terminals.”

Maximizing draft, the distance between the surface of the water and the lowest point of the vessel, has important economic consequences, Patching said.

“I can’t stress that enough, that where maybe we were taking a 42-foot draft ship we can now take a 43-foot draft ship,” Patching said. “That doesn’t sound like much, but $250,000 worth of cargo means a lot to the farmer or dock owner or ship owner. That’s a lot of money.”

The DEA Marine’s software can also accurately predict the location of bridge piers – a critical issue, Patching said.

“We bring the (U.S) Navy into the (Portland) seawall every year and now we have absolutely accurate predictions of the bridge piers,” he said.

One weakness with the river pilots’ previous system was accuracy of a ship’s position, Patching said. All ocean-going vessels use GPS systems, Patching said, and though GPS is getting better all the time, it is only accurate within feet. The DEA Marine computer system improves on that data drastically and is completely accurate.

“We get on board and we plug into their system and get their speed and location and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “It marries into our software and Jon and his crew were certainly the pioneers of getting that (software system) going.

Exactly how DEA Marine created the software is proprietary, but Patching said he believes the charting system is the best in the country.

Back in the Gulf, DEA Marine crews spent three days gathering data for the alternate route. Charting of the entire Chandeleur Island chain by DEA will continue through December.

“(The technology system is) not just for river pilots but for any interstate commercial traffic that navigates the waterway,” Dasler said. “With these modern methods we’ll have full coverage mapping of the sea floor, looking for obstructions that can be a hazard to navigation.”

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While political outcry erupted, workers pushed steadily forward to build a new facility for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Newport. The city last week issued a certificate of occupancy for the last portion of the dock, and remaining work is expected to wrap up this week – a few days ahead of schedule.

Soon after NOAA announced in August 2009 that it intended to move its Marine Operations Center-Pacific from Seattle to Newport, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and others objected. They argued that moving operations to Newport would negatively impact the agency as it pursued its scientific mission. The Port of Bellingham, Wash., another bidder for the center – and approximately 175 jobs – filed a complaint that the planned site in Newport was in a floodplain.

“We had our marching orders that we needed to have most of the project built by May 1, so we just kept digging,” said Brad Barcroft, on-site project manager for Andersen Construction. “We were aware that there had been some heartburn in Washington, and Senator Cantwell had concerns, but after a whole review process they determined everything had been done properly.”

Andersen and West Coast Contractors worked on the project as a joint venture, and only a few miscellaneous items remain.

On land, the facility includes a 25,000-square-foot warehouse and a 17,000-square-foot office building. The office building will hold extensive information technology equipment, which required installation of dry chemical fire suppression systems.

Half of the warehouse will be used for storage, and the other half will house machine, wood and electronic shops. The latter includes a full mock-up of the instruments on board NOAA ships so that technicians based in Newport can communicate easily with those at sea.

The buildings received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver certification, in part because of the team’s decision to crush and reuse the concrete from the warehouse fish hatchery that previously occupied the project site.

After a competitive bidding process, West Coast Contractors won the bid for the dock work, which accounted for about $15 million of the $29.4 construction budget.

“I think it was our knowledge of the project and pre-planning that set us apart,” said Tim Smith, construction manager for the company. “We devised a system for the piling that included very progressive thinking.”

The 1,300-foot-long wharf is connected to land by two, 260-foot-long approach piers. The whole structure is supported by bents comprised of three, 106-foot piles. Each bent is capable of resisting 900,000 pounds.

West Coast Contractors came up with a template for driving the piling one bent at a time, which reduced the need to move the work barge. The wharf provides berths for four NOAA ships and two visiting vessels, as well as moorage for small boats.

The team was challenged to finish in-water work ahead of the Feb. 15 deadline. In addition, the port’s permit obligated workers to harvest and replant eelgrass that would have died when the approach piers cut off their light source. More than 50,000 yards of material had to be moved.

The eelgrass is part of the critical habitat for coho salmon, one of the species that NOAA monitors. In fact, NOAA announced this month that Oregon coast coho salmon should remain listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Transplanting the eelgrass is part of a 10-year process to ensure the facility does not harm the coho habitat.

Operations at the facility will support 65 administrative staffers, and more jobs are expected to be created once the center is running at full capacity.

“They’ll be using local vendors when the ships are in and when they’re out,” said Don Mann, general manager of the Port of Newport for almost 16 years. “The spin-off has already started with five full-time security positions. It will take a while to establish, but the whole region will see some continual growth in job opportunities and vendor activity.”

The formal turnover of the facility and the 20-year lease will begin Friday. A ribbon-cutting ceremony and an official dedication will take place Aug. 20 and 21.

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Day CPM is looking for an experienced Facilities Lease Manager, specifically for NOAA Marine Operations. To see the full job posting and application instructions, please email HR@DayCPM.com

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A few miserable winter days didn’t stop crews from Andersen Construction from a timely finish of the in-water work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s new Marine Operations Center in Newport.

The project is on track to be finished in time for NOAA to move its Pacific fleet headquarters to the site on May 1, said Don Mann, general manager of the Port of Newport, which owns the facility.

Andersen started the water-based part of the $40 million project on Nov. 10, which was 10 days later than originally planned. But the contractor made up the time through extra shifts and the benefit of generally uneventful winter weather, Mann said.

“There were a couple days of high winds that were somewhat disruptive, but within a couple of weeks they were able to get over that late start,” Mann said. “The project is coming along great. We’re on schedule and on budget. We couldn’t be happier with Andersen.”

The initial delay was caused by a difficult permitting process with several agencies, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the departments of environmental quality and fish and wildlife, he added.

The main concern was that pier pilings and dredging work had to be finished by Feb. 15 in order to avoid disrupting seasonal migration patterns of juvenile Coho salmon in the bay, said Brad Nile, senior project manager for Andersen.

“A year ago we tested the process with five pilings to validate the design and capacity, and with that insight we were able to build confidence that we could do this on time,” Nile said. “We really didn’t have much that slowed us down – although it was pretty miserable for a few of the days.”

Crews installed 146 36-inch main pier pilings and 165 fender pilings, which protect ships and the dock from impacts, as part of the 1,300-foot-long, 58,700-square-foot pier. They also dredged a 28.5-foot-deep channel to allow NOAA’s six research vessels to dock at the site.

Now that water work is complete, the next steps will be to put topping slabs on the docks and to install utilities for ships that will use the site, he said.

“Each of these ships is like a small village, and you have to deliver sewage capacity, potable water and other things to them,” Nile said.

The six berths will also have fire-water systems – essentially dock speak for fire hydrants – and utility lines for cable television, telephones, fiber optics and other systems.

“All that should be wrapped up by the end of April,” Nile said.

One of the interesting project challenges was finding ways to meet agency concerns about the salmon, Nile said.

On part of the site, a floating dock is made of 50 percent transparent material that lets light pass through in an effort to stop predator fish from hiding and preying on young salmon, he said.

On another part of the dock at the approach piers, crews used an epoxy coating mixed with glass beads underneath the pier as a way to reflect light. That strategy was used because of concerns that shading by the dock would interfere with the fish habitat and plants, he said.

“It reflects light off the water and back down onto it under the dock,” Nile said. “That allows some of the underwater vegetation to prosper.”

Because the pilings themselves represented lost fish habitat, the project also required the company to build 1.3 acres of new bay to make up for it, he added.

Nile said that he found those sorts of solutions fascinating.

“In this day and age I guess it’s more common that federal agencies are influencing construction,” Nile said. “There’s no code or mandate anywhere that would ever tell us to do that.”

The overall project is designed to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver certification.

The $40 million in funding came from a state lottery bond and from lease revenue bonds, Mann said.

NOAA signed a 20-year lease on the facility in August 2009.

With the funding secure and the lease already signed, the Obama administration’s proposed $366 million cut to NOAA funding, which was announced Monday, shouldn’t affect the project or moving plans, Mann added.

Port of Newport officials expect the facility to add about $19.5 million annually to the local economy after the 65 administrative employees and 110 workers on board the six NOAA ships move to the site, Mann added.

“We’re very excited about the economics of this,” Mann said. “There will be a lot of spin-off and a lot of service jobs that can integrate with this facility.”

The project created between 300 and 400 construction jobs in the area.

Construction of the rest of the NOAA complex includes a warehouse and an office building near the docks. Those buildings are mostly done except for some finishing work with cabinets and flooring, Nile said, adding that he expects to turn power on by the end of the week.

“We’ll start a systems start-up and test in March with the building’s mechanical systems,” Nile said. “The buildings look done, but there are still a few things we have to do before we turn everything on.”

In April, the company will start a two-week flush of air systems before NOAA officially moves its offices to the site on May 1.

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Workers from Andersen Construction are busy driving the first pier pilings and preparing equipment for the start of dredging at the new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Operations Center in Newport.

Work that began in June on parking facilities and two main buildings at the $40 million center should be finished in March, about a month ahead of schedule, and the pier should be finished on time by Feb. 15 – despite a 10-day delay in the water work permit, said Brad Nile, senior project manager for Andersen, the site’s main contractor.

“The real thrust of the project, now that the building scope is well in hand, is that on Nov. 10 at 5 p.m. we received our water work permit from the Army Corps of Engineers,” Nile said. “They tell me it was issued in record time, considering the work.”

The permit brought together the Corps of Engineers with several agencies, including the departments of Environmental Quality and Fish and Wildlife, which were concerned about protecting juvenile Coho salmon in the bay.

All underwater work must be done between Nov. 1 and Feb. 15 because that time frame will be the least disruptive to the fish, Nile said.

The permit was one of two major challenges facing the project as it heads into the winter months, said Don Mann, general manager of the Port of Newport, which owns the facility and will lease it to NOAA.

“The other challenge will be the weather,” Mann said. “We’ll probably have to ask for an extension after Feb. 15 if the weather is bad, but we’ll see how things go.”

Nile said he doesn’t think the deadline will be a problem. He said his company is dedicated to finishing the dock on time despite the shortened window and possible weather problems.

“It will be finished on time, we really don’t have a choice,” Nile said. “If that means working some Saturdays or Sundays out of the gate, then that’s what we’re going to do.”

As soon as the company got the permit, workers started underwater demolition of an old fish ladder, mooring and a dock from a salmon farm that used to occupy the site. They also began installing a mile-long submerged pipe that will transport sediment from the hydraulic dredger to a disposal location.

Dredging should begin this week, once the pipe is fully installed, and should take two to three weeks to complete, Nile said.

It will create a 28.5-foot-deep channel so NOAA’s six research vessels can dock at the site, Mann said.

“We’re actually approved up to 30 feet,” Mann said. “But the ships are really not all that big.”

After dredging is finished, crews will install 141 main pier pilings and 162 fender pilings, which protect ships and the dock from impacts, as part of the 1,300-foot-long pier.

Land operations at the center are also moving along smoothly, Nile and Mann said.

Exterior work on the two main buildings at the site – a 20,000-square-foot office and 26,000-square-foot warehouse – is finished and both buildings are weather tight with roofs and windows installed, Nile said.

What remains now is some drywall, electrical work, wiring, heating and air condition and other internal work, Mann said.

“They can do that inside while the weather is bad,” Mann said.

Work should be complete on those buildings by the end of March, a little over a month ahead of schedule, Nile said.

“The buildings are LEED Silver and so we want to give everybody enough time to get all the little details involved in that on track,” Nile said.

About half of the center’s parking areas are paved, as well, he said.

NOAA signed a 20-year lease on the facility in August 2009. The facility must be complete by May 1, 2011 and the agency plans to occupy the building soon after.

Funds for the $40 million in construction came from a lottery bond from the state and from lease revenue bonds, Mann said.

The project has created between 300 and 400 construction jobs in the area. When the center is finished, it will house 65 administrative employees and be home base for about 110 workers on NOAA ships, Mann said.

“We anticipate economic benefits from the center as well,” Mann said. “For the overall coastal region for our area we’re looking at $19.5 million a year return on the facility – and some people are saying that’s a low estimate.”

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It’s been one year, one week and one day since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration signed a 20-year lease with the Port of Newport to move its Pacific fleet and operations to the central Oregon coast town.

Yet as the walls begin to be erected on the two-story office and warehouse that will house the federal organization, the move is still being opposed by politicians in Washington state, the current lame duck home to NOAA.

Yesterday Washington’s two U.S. senators and seven of the nine U.S. house members to Jeffrey Zients, acting chair of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, asking Zients and the entire Obama Administration to intervene. The letter cites the process of selecting Newport as flawed, and calling the move a waste of taxpayer money.

Now this isn’t the first time, or the second time, or the third time, that Sen. Maria Cantwell and the government in Washington state have opposed the move. And I’m sure it’s not the last.

While I understand the hard feelings over losing a federal lease at the current home of the organization on Lake Washington in Seattle, and the 175 employees that are employed at the facility, it might be time to give it up.

Maybe, well, obviously, I’m biased toward Oregon and the Oregon Coast. But it just seems like Cantwell is trying to spark a fight that can’t be won. Even after Todd Zinser, inspector general for the U.S. Department of Commerce, released a report in late June, which was compiled at the request of Cantwell, he confirmed that even though there were errors in the process, Newport would’ve still been selected.

I know Cantwell represents and is paid to fight for Washington. But this fight is over, and keeping it going is costing taxpayers and creating bad relations between two states that for years have been somewhat inseparable.

The post For NOAA center, Washington state fighting a fight it can’t win appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

It’s been one year, one week and one day since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration signed a 20-year lease with the Port of Newport to move its Pacific fleet and operations to the central Oregon coast town.

Yet as the walls begin to be erected on the two-story office and warehouse that will house the federal organization, the move is still being opposed by politicians in Washington state, the current lame duck home to NOAA.

Yesterday Washington’s two U.S. senators and seven of the nine U.S. house members to Jeffrey Zients, acting chair of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, asking Zients and the entire Obama Administration to intervene. The letter cites the process of selecting Newport as flawed, and calling the move a waste of taxpayer money.

Now this isn’t the first time, or the second time, or the third time, that Sen. Maria Cantwell and the government in Washington state have opposed the move. And I’m sure it’s not the last.

While I understand the hard feelings over losing a federal lease at the current home of the organization on Lake Washington in Seattle, and the 175 employees that are employed at the facility, it might be time to give it up.

Maybe, well, obviously, I’m biased toward Oregon and the Oregon Coast. But it just seems like Cantwell is trying to spark a fight that can’t be won. Even after Todd Zinser, inspector general for the U.S. Department of Commerce, released a report in late June, which was compiled at the request of Cantwell, he confirmed that even though there were errors in the process, Newport would’ve still been selected.

I know Cantwell represents and is paid to fight for Washington. But this fight is over, and keeping it going is costing taxpayers and creating bad relations between two states that for years have been somewhat inseparable.

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A federal report released on Tuesday upholds the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s decision to move its Pacific fleet and operations from Seattle to Newport.

But the report, released by Todd Zinser, inspector general for the U.S. Department of Commerce, also made clear that the process in which Newport was selected had errors and weaknesses in it.

According to the report, NOAA limited its consideration to only areas that allowed the organization to consolidate all of its facilities into one location, even though it could have been cheaper to have them in various locations. Also, the report mentioned that NOAA didn’t take into consideration the use of federally owned space, which could have also saved the agency money.

The report came after Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, requested the inspector general review how the contract was awarded to Newport. Cantwell, chair of the subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard, has continuously contested NOAA’s decision to select Newport over three cities in Washington.

In the end, Zinser noted that even with the errors and weaknesses in the search, Newport would have still been awarded the contract because two of the three other possible locations had leasing costs that exceeded NOAA’s lease authority. And while the third was within NOAA’s lease authority, it was more expensive than Newport, received a lower technical rating and is in a floodplain.

The news bodes well for Newport considering construction of the new facilities has been under way since last fall when NOAA originally signed a 20-year renewable lease for the property.

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced this morning that Newport will officially be the next home for the organization’s West Coast fleet. The decision came just hours before NOAA held a groundbreaking ceremony at the site of the agency’s future operations center in Newport’s South Beach.

NOAA decided to move the fleet from its current home on Lake Union in Seattle after not being able to find funding for repairs stemming from a 2006 dock fire. After putting out a request for proposals NOAA chose Newport last summer for its new Pacific Marine Operations Center because of its proximity to the ocean and a lottery-backed state contribution to the construction of the facility.

After the decision lawmakers in the states of Oregon and Washington started a debate over where the fleet should be located, ultimately leading to a reassessment by NOAA. The City of Bellingham and Washington state Sen. Maria Cantwell argued that the Newport site was in a floodplain. But in March NOAA once again deemed Newport the best fit because the Bellingham site was also in a floodplain.

Cantwell again fought the issue and asked for a full environmental assessment of each potential site. After doing so NOAA made the final affirmation for Newport this morning. NOAA officials said the organization chose the Newport site because it offered the best value to the government with the highest technical rating and lowest price when compared to other sites.

Preparation work on the site of the $44 million facility began last fall when NOAA signed a 20-year renewable lease for the property.

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The project to build a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration center in Newport has survived its latest challenge. NOAA determined there was no practicable alternative to Newport for siting the new Marine Operations Center-Pacific, which will host the Pacific Fleet.

Joint venture Andersen-West Coast Contractors is already building the $38.3 million facility.

The Port of Newport’s proposal was selected over three others in Washington state: Seattle, Bellingham and Port Angeles. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., had pushed hard back against NOAA’s decision.

The Government Accountability Office asked NOAA to reassess the decision to see if any of the other proposals were suitable. None were, said Tom Towslee, spokesman for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Only the Port of Newport proposal stayed within cost parameters, Towslee said. “NOAA had no choice but to reject those and accept Newport’s,” he said.

The results from NOAA’s analysis were made public early today. Towslee said he’s pleased with the results.

“Obviously, it’s a big day for Newport and Oregon, but also it’s a big day for process,” he said. “NOAA went through a highly professional, transparent, above-board process that was based on facts and made the right decision.”

There will now be a 30-day comment period on the analysis.

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