An Oregon company is fabricating the structural steel frame for a $4.2 billion transit terminal being built in San Francisco.

Oregon Iron Works, a division of Vigor Industrial, signed a “substantial contract” in the millions of dollars to help assemble an earthquake-resistant steel exoskeleton for the Transbay Transit Center, said Tom Hickman, vice president of sales and marketing. He declined to give an exact dollar figure.

Workers at the metal fabricating company’s facilities in Clackamas and Vancouver, Wash., have spent the past few months welding portions of the steel frame. The first pieces are expected to be ready in about a month for shipment to the downtown San Francisco job site where construction is under way.

The process of fabricating a pipe truss steel structure for the exterior of the terminal is complex, Hickman said. The steel pipes that Oregon Iron Works crews are welding together can be up to 45 feet long with 2½-inch-thick walls; they can measure almost 3 feet in diameter.

“The challenges come even with manufacturing of the component parts,” he said. “It’s a very technical project from a welding standpoint.”

The final product will be both elegant and strong, Hickman said.

“The component parts will be assembled on-site and turned into what will be a very, very beautiful structure,” he said. “This exterior structure is designed to take the very largest earthquake that San Francisco could be hit with.”

The project, dubbed the “Grand Central of the West,” will replace an outdated bus terminal with a new multimodal transit center anticipated to serve more than 100,000 passengers a day. The center, scheduled for completion in 2017, will serve as a hub for regional bus and subway lines, Greyhound, Amtrak and other transit services.

Hickman said he anticipates the large-scale project to occupy hundreds of workers at Oregon Iron Works for the next couple of years. The company is the only Oregon-based steel fabricator involved in the project. Clackamas-based Marks Metal Technology, Canby-based American Steel, Portland-based Lampros Steel and Tualatin-based Oregon Sandblasting & Coating are supplying materials.

Oregon Iron Works is a subcontractor for the project hired by trade subcontractor Skanska USA. The general contractor for the project is Webcor/Obayashi.

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Manufacturing is on an upturn in Oregon. Vigor Industrial and Oregon Iron Works, an Oregon business icon, have merged. A huge, world-class drydock is now in Portland. Companies like Erickson Air Crane are building heavy lift helicopters in Oregon. In Redmond a company has set up an operation to build aerial tankers to help deal with the forest fire problem. Precision Castparts is on a roll and Greenbrier has a great backlog. There are many other great stories as well.

These companies are building real, tangible items – things you can touch and see. But they are experiencing a labor problem: insufficient skilled Oregonians who can do the work. So, in some cases they end up training employees in the basic skills required of metal workers and other trades. That is a drag not only on their bottom line, but also their production.

It seems that our public schools are not taking this game-changing shift in the Oregon economy to heart. Vocational programs are still getting short shrift.

Recently, a Portland Public Schools high school set up a vocational program for the culinary arts. Three hundred students signed up, but they needed to raise their own money to make it work.

The local public education industry seems to be bent on preparing kids only for further institutional education at costs that must be borne by the individual. But as we are now finding out, these costs are not sustainable. Students are voting with their feet, and young Oregonians are not obtaining completion certificates.

When the construction industry determined that more skill building was needed, professionals first went to public education, but were turned down. As a result they set up their own academy. Even a dismal graduation rate does not seem to be enough to redirect the inertia on North Dixon Street.

All Oregonians lose. Those who do graduate from high school cannot get jobs without additional training because they have no real job skills. Many don’t see that through and end up at minimum wage jobs or worse and become part of the social welfare bureaucracy.

But aside from refocusing public schools on educating our young people with job skills, Oregon needs to rediscover manufacturing jobs. It is clear that the economy is there to support this attitude. Oregon needs to convince its young people that these jobs are good jobs and a great way to launch a career. Life is not all about peering into a computer screen.

Oregon also must hustle and invest in its infrastructure to meet this manufacturing uptick. In this year’s legislative session HB 4111 set up a commission to look at new strategies for developing infrastructure. The first meeting has yet to take place.

Business is beginning to feel the constraints of this second-class infrastructure, be it delays receiving raw materials, delays delivering to customers or delayed employee arrivals to workplaces.

We no longer build the world’s greatest projects; they are in China or elsewhere. This, however, might just be the moment that a critical mass comes to Oregon’s infrastructure table.

Christian Steinbrecher is president of Columbia River Port Engineers Inc. and the immediate past president of the Oregon Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He is the editor of ASCE Oregon’s Report Card on Oregon’s Infrastructure. Contact him at cfs@carpengrs@.com.

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A new Fire Station 21 is being built in Portland to withstand a major earthquake, and serve as a fire and life safety facility along the Willamette River. Construction of such a building on a sloped surface extending over the river comes with challenges, said David Dwyer, project manager for Skanska USA Building – the contractor for the $7.8 million project.

The two-story structure will replace a one-story one on virtually the same footprint, Dwyer said.

“It’s not actually native soil because that area is all fill,” he said. “We’ve had to stabilize all the soil.”

Soil stabilization took about six months, starting in October after the former fire station was demolished, Dwyer said. Deep steel pilings were drilled 80 to 100 feet into bedrock, and soil was filled with grout.

“That’s why all the foundation work has taken so long,” he said. “It’s a challenging way to build. We had to get down there deep enough so that the soil was compacted so it doesn’t liquefy in an earthquake.”

The grout had to be pumped at a well-regulated pressure to accommodate different soils beneath the surface, Dwyer said.

On top of all the subsurface work, Skanska is finishing the concrete footing that will support the steel structure. At least half of the 8,000-square-foot building will be supported by 3-foot-wide, 30-foot-long beams that cantilever over the bank, Dwyer said.

The first floor will be built a couple of feet above the 100-year flood zone level; anything lower will be certified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as water-resistant, he said.

“The next challenge is building the building at a slope,” Dwyer said. “Obviously, we can’t drop materials or build a scaffolding system west of the work area.”

Crews are designing a work platform that will be cantilevered from underneath the building, allowing them to build while preventing spills, he said.

Building the station required local, state and federal approvals, which were granted faster because the dock had been approved for fire station use in 2001, said Connie Johnson, project manager for the city’s Bureau of Internal Business Services.

“One thing that’s compelling is that this location is so good,” she said. “If we had tried to find another location on the river, it would have taken a year to acquire the property and at least another six months to get all the permitting. It was really a good choice.”

A boathouse already constructed by Oregon Iron Works will house two boats. A third will be added later, Johnson said.

The building is designed to accommodate fire and life safety activities in a confined space, said Aaron Whelton, principal of Whelton Architecture; he collaborated with local architect David P. Suttle on the project.

Site factors included seismic issues, river fluctuations, proximity to Interstate 5 and the Hawthorne Bridge, and the city’s desire to keep the greenway pristine and free of additional buildings, Whelton said.

“It’s a huge responsibility,” he said. “There isn’t going to be a building like this in such a prominent location on the river anywhere.”

Efforts were made to reduce the amount of the building’s footprint on the ground; at least 50 percent of the building will be cantilevered over the bank, Whelton said. The apparatus bay, which will hold an all-terrain vehicle and a small fire engine, will be the only portion of the building that completely touches the ground, he said.

The design also creates a living space in a building that will be visible from six different vantage points, including the Hawthorne Bridge and the river, Whelton said.

“Typically, a fire station has a clear front and back,” he said. “We don’t have that kind of luxury. Every portion is visible from some vantage point.”

Bunk rooms will be as far away from I-5 as possible to reduce noise. An exterior deck will be tucked away so firefighters are not always on display. Four firefighters will live at the station, which will have five rooms, according to the city.

A utility courtyard was developed for the building’s air conditioning equipment, which typically would be placed on the roof, Whelton said. The courtyard, which will house the HVAC equipment, the building’s transformer and trash, will be completed tucked away, he said.

“We did a very good job solving those unique challenges,” he said.

The most prominent feature will be artwork called “The Ripple Wall,” by Seattle artist David Franklin. It will be fabricated in Seattle and assembled in Portland, and include a series of vertical aluminum fins on the west side covering a second-floor catwalk around the building. Each fin will have a different profile, creating a unique rippling effect visible from the bridge and the river, Whelton said.

“I think that’s an amazing opportunity to engage the public with art,” he said.

The public also will be able to engage with the space in a community room, which will have views of the river and be open for the public to reserve, he said.

Project construction is scheduled to wrap up in November.

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Buying streetcars from an Oregon-based manufacturer has been a learning experience, said Rick Gustafson, executive director of Portland Streetcar Inc.

“It’s a classic case of going forward two steps and going back one step,” he said. “But it’s not a big surprise. The production cars are very complicated pieces of equipment.”

United Streetcar, a subsidiary of , was hired to construct five new streetcars for Portland Streetcar by July. Those vehicles will finally be delivered within the next two weeks, Gustafson said. The first one is scheduled to begin operating on Dec. 16, with the others to follow in three-week intervals.

The delays were costly, but Gustafson pointed out that this is Oregon Iron Works’ first foray into streetcar construction.

“When you get near the end, you discover that some of the parts you had drawings for don’t fit and you have to reconfigure the car to put everything on it,” he said. “That’s not unusual for first-time builders.”

United Streetcar was chosen because the project is being paid for with $20 million from the Oregon Lottery. The request for proposals included an “Oregon preference” stipulation, so in-state manufacturers’ bids were considered first. United Streetcar was the only in-state firm that responded to the RFP.

The company is learning as it goes, said Chandra Brown, vice president of Oregon Iron Works. For example, while constructing the second vehicle, a more efficient method for electrical wiring was discovered, so workers had to backtrack for the first one.

“It’s a huge learning curve,” Brown said. “It’s like the first time you build anything. It’s been a really lengthy, difficult process, but we (will be) very good once these bugs are worked out.”

Portland Streetcar’s numerous safety regulations presented other challenges. One, for instance, requires that cars be operable even if springs fail. Finding that solution took awhile, Gustafson said.

Delivery delays resulted in an extra $1.7 million going to , which was hired to oversee the project. That amount was added to the nearly $2.6 million the firm was already owed.

Streetcar service also has suffered, Gustafson said, since the opening of the eastside line. Without additional cars, Portland Streetcar has had to scramble whenever a car broke down or needed repairs.

However, United Streetcar has not required any additional money during the delays, so the project has not exceeded its $20 million limit, Gustafson said.

Also, the project has led to creation of nearly 200 new jobs, he said, because it helped establish Oregon Iron Works’ transit division; United Streetcar is set to begin constructing streetcars for other parties, including a new line in Tucson, Ariz., after this project finishes.

“It’s not unusual behavior for us to be supportive of local manufacturers,” Gustafson said. “We try to be supportive of other companies to do the same.”

Brown said the new cars will be better than existing ones, which were made in the Czech Republic. Their safety and HVAC systems will be much more intricate and efficient, she said. Also, the cars will be much quieter.

“We feel very bad it’s being delayed,” Brown said. “However, we’re proud that we want to build the safest, best cars … there’s incredibly higher standards on our cars.”

The cars will not enable more frequent service, Gustafson said, but rather decrease pressure on Portland Streetcar by serving as backup vehicles.

Portland Streetcar recognizes that cars, especially on the eastside line, are not arriving as frequently as they should be. That is because of insufficient money for operations and not a limited number of cars, Gustafson said.

“We appreciate that both the city and TriMet have had budget challenges, and so we’re operating a service at a level we regard as a minimum,” he said. “We prefer to operate at a higher level of surface, but we have to have the money to do that.”

Gustafson hopes that when the streetcar loop is completed, after completion of the Portland-Milwaukie light-rail bridge, more money will be available for operations.

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today announced that Lockheed Martin will be a new partner on OPT’s proposed wave energy park near Reedsport. Headquartered in Maryland, Lockheed Martin will manage the design, manufacturing and systems integration for OPT’s .

The partnership with Lockheed Martin, a global technology company, follows OPT’s announcement in April touting the company’s local $6 million investment in four Oregon companies, including Oregon Iron Works, American Bridge Manufacturing, Cascade General and Sause Bros. Inc.

The first contract was in 2009 awarded to Oregon Iron Works, which completed fabrication of a PowerBuoy’s steel structure last year. Oregon Iron Works has been waiting for OPT to conduct further testing on the buoy before fulfilling its second contract with the company, which involves putting in all of the power generation equipment and controls.

“OPT wants to test that equipment to make sure that everything is working properly and run it through enough cycles so they can insure its integrity,” said David Gibson, renewable energy program manager for Oregon Iron Works.

Assembly, systems integration and land testing of the PowerBuoy is planned to occur over the next several months. It is intended to be the first of a proposed 10-buoy wave power station with a peak generating capacity of 1.5 mega watts.

“I hope that we’ll work on all 10,” Gibson said. “But as much as I would like that, we don’t have any contract to that effect.”

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New navigation lock gates

John Day
Height: 120 feet
Width: 98 feet
Weight: 1.8 million pounds of steel

The Dalles
Height: 107 feet
Width: 98 feet
Weight: 1.4 million pounds of steel

Lower Monumental
Height: 120 feet
Width: 98 feet
Weight: 1.8 million pounds of steel

So what is 30 feet tall, 98 feet wide, 225 tons and slowly floating up the Columbia River?

It’s the final section of the new John Day Dam navigation lock gate, set to be installed during an unprecedented 14-week shutdown of shipping lanes on the Columbia and Snake rivers.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to replace navigation lock gates on three dams – the John Day, The Dalles and Lower Monumental.

Shipping lanes will be closed from Dec. 10 through March 18, said Scott Clemans, a spokesman for the corps.

Products generally shipped on the river during that time period will have to be transported by truck or train, but the work is necessary, he said.

The existing gates, which range from 39 to 53 years old, are worn out and have shown multiple signs of fatigue-related stress, especially over the past 20 years.

“If we don’t replace these gates, the facilities are just going to be unsafe,” Clemans said. “The 14-week outage is a very long outage. But if we don’t do this we could be looking at emergency shutdowns later on of a year or more.”

Typically the waterways shut down for only two weeks a year in the spring so that the corps can perform maintenance on the gates. But maintenance alone can’t keep the gates going, Clemans said.

“These gates are just wearing out, as you’d expect for some of these huge pieces of equipment that have been operating sometimes for 50 years straight,” he said.

In 2009, the corps had to shut down The Dalles Dam for emergency repairs because of wear and tear on the gates. And workers have found and repaired several cracks and stresses in girders and on other portions of all three dams since the early 1980s, Clemans said.

More than $50 million of federal stimulus money will pay for the replacement work. Thompson Metal Fab Inc. of Vancouver, Wash., built the Lower Monumental gate and is still working on The Dalles gate, and Oregon Iron Works built the John Day gate.

Because they are so massive, the John Day and Lower Monumental gates were shipped in pieces. Those pieces will be welded together and installed during the shutdown, Clemans said.

“Through the end of December we need to do a lot of prep work to remove the original gates,” he said. “The installation of the John Day will start in late February, with the last section going in and being welded in early March.”

Three parts of the John Day gate have already been shipped to the site; the fourth, loaded on Tuesday, will leave for the site later this week, said Mark Dasso, project manager for the John Day part of the project.

The four John Day gate pieces weigh about 2 million pounds altogether, he said.

“There aren’t cranes big enough to lift all that in one piece,” Dasso said. “And even with four pieces we’re maxing out all the cranes we’re using.”

In his 25 years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the longest lock shutdown Dasso can remember was four weeks. That was for a maintenance issue with the John Day dam in 2004, he said.

“Fourteen weeks is the longest I’ve ever heard of,” Dasso said.

Approximately 50 workers will be needed to complete the John Day portion of the three-dam project, he added.

“It will take two to three weeks just to build the scaffolding,” Dasso said. “Then they have to cut the old gate into four parts just to get it out.”

The old steel gate parts will be salvaged, though Dasso said he didn’t know where.

Workers will start installing gates at the Lower Monumental and The Dalles dams in February after old gates are removed, and removal and replacement processes should be fairly similar.

The gate for The Dalles dam is a different type than those for John Day and Lower Monumental, however, and will require less welding to install. It won’t ship until mid-February, when the prep work is done, Clemans added.

Advanced American Construction of Portland is the primary contractor for the John Day installation, which has a budget of $15.6 million. Dix Corp. of Spokane is the primary contractor for the Lower Monumental project, which has a budget of $14 million and The Dalles project, which has a budget of $13.6 million.

“The total for those will be higher when we’re finished, though,” Clemans said. “It’s going to cost a bit more than the $50 million we had originally budgeted.”

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When the first American-made streetcar had its coming-out party in Portland last July, the guest list included the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Oregon’s governor and congressional representatives. The celebration wasn’t tempered by the fact that the guts of that prototype streetcar, the system that makes it go, were built in Europe.

That won’t be the case for long. The Federal Transit Administration announced it will provide $2.4 million to develop a propulsion system made in the U.S.

United Streetcar, a subsidiary of Clackamas-based Oregon Iron Works, will have the American-powered streetcar prototype on the streets next year, said Chandra Brown, Oregon Iron Works vice president.

That’s not soon enough for Portland’s eastside streetcar loop project, currently under way. That project will bring streetcar service to Northeast and Southeast Portland, starting in 2012.

The six additional streetcars the new line will require are already under contract, said Alan Lehto, director of project planning for transit agency TriMet. Propulsion systems built in the Czech Republic will power those cars.

Because no one has built streetcars domestically for nearly 60 years, Brown said, United Streetcar had no U.S. supplier to turn to for propulsion systems. “There hasn’t been much attention paid to it because there’s not a market,” she said.

“It’s a very complicated system, composed of a bunch of pieces.”

So, United Streetcar will create a market, Brown said. The company will subcontract some of the work developing the prototype streetcar’s propulsion system to Milwaukee-based Rockwell Automation. United Streetcar workers will then replace the Czech-built system.

That step alone will increase the American-made components of the streetcar by nearly a fifth, Brown said. “That will help take our car from 70 percent U.S. content to almost 90 percent.”

TriMet applied for the $2.4 million Federal Transit Administration research grant in partnership with the city of Portland and United Streetcar. In addition to the propulsion system, the grant includes $600,000 for research into powering streetcars for short distances without power from overhead wires.

Eventually, that step could help expand streetcars to historic districts and other areas where building a system of overhead posts and wires would be unfeasible, Lehto said. “Imagine if there were some section of town that had tremendous old trees encroaching over the roadway,” he said, “and say the neighborhood didn’t want to cut the trees back.

“You’re always going to need the rails, but if you don’t need overhead wires, it’s a way to give you more flexibility.”

The new propulsion system won’t go into the six new Portland streetcars, but it can be incorporated into future orders. And, spurred in part by federal money, more cities want streetcars.

Recently, an announcement was made of a federal stimulus grant to provide money for the construction or expansion of four streetcar systems, with many more expressing interest bringing streetcars to town.

American suppliers will need to work quickly to catch up to the new demand, Lehto said.

“Which is, of course the point,” he said. “They’re trying to bring in one of the biggest components of the streetcar not being made in the U.S.”

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Though planning for Portland’s eastside streetcar loop began in 2003, contractor Stacy & Witbeck just this month began advanced utility work to prepare to install tracks for the project, which will extend streetcar service across the Willamette River to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

Across the country, streetcar projects like the one in Portland have been in a holding pattern since funding restrictions went into effect in 2005, according to Shoshanah Oppenheim of the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s streetcar project management team.

But at the Transportation Research Board Chairman’s lunch on Wednesday, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced plans to change how public transportation projects are selected to receive federal money via the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts and Small Starts programs.

As part of the initiative, the FTA will immediately eliminate a rule that focused on how much a project shortened commute times in comparison to its cost.

That’s a relief to Oppenheim, who worked in the Mayor’s office on transportation policy when the eastside loop became the first streetcar project in the country to receive funding under the Small Starts program last year. But the $30 million award didn’t come easily.

“It was only the perseverance of our delegation that allowed that grant to be issued,” Oppenheim said. “We’ve had problems in the past getting funding. But now, any application we make in the future will be looked at through a lens of value to community and environmental benefit.”

Oppenheim says upcoming projects, such as a streetcar extension to Lake Oswego and a streetcar system plan, will now have a better shot at receiving federal money.

Previously, money was more likely to go projects that would bring suburban commuters into cities to work. Under the new rules, projects that circulate people around and within a city will get equal consideration.

The new plan also will allow LaHood’s department to make the case for investing in streetcar projects and other transit systems, which is good news for companies such as Oregon Iron Works and contractor Stacy & Witbeck, which have benefited from streetcar contracts in the past.

Increased investment could bring increased competition as companies try to find ways to gain or increase footholds in the market. But Chandra Brown, vice president of Oregon Iron Works, says she isn’t concerned about losing market share yet.

“Even with all of this news, it’s not like 100 streetcar orders will roll in overnight, which is what bigger companies need to compete,” Brown said. “Most starter streetcar lines are only six or seven cars. You would need a 150-car order to start to see bigger companies interested. If I was going to build a streetcar company from scratch, it would be near impossible without have a huge amount of capital.”

According to Erin Allweiss, communications director for Rep. Earl Blumenauer, only two other cities – Tucson, Ariz. and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – have applied for streetcar funding under the New Starts and Small Starts programs. But with about 80 different streetcar projects in the planning stages around the country, the number of applications will begin to increase, Allweiss said. Brown hopes her company’s construction of streetcars for Portland, and more recently, the city of Tucson, Ariz., will mean her phone will ring more in the coming years.

“As more and more cities put modern streetcar systems in place, there will ultimately be more orders around the U.S.,” Brown said. “And hopefully we will compete to supply some of those.”

Upcoming Portland streetcar projects

Portland Streetcar Loop

Description: A $148.27 million, 3.3.-mile extension of the streetcar line across the Broadway Bridge to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and across the future Willamette River Bridge to the South Waterfront District.
Status: General contractor Stacy & Witbeck is performing advanced utility work in preparation for track installation. The Federal Transit Administration has awarded the project $75 million, including American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Small Starts money.

Lake Oswego-to-Portland streetcar line

Description: Construction of a streetcar line between Portland and Lake Oswego ending near an Albertsons grocery store on State Street in Lake Oswego.
Status: A Draft Environmental Impact Study of benefits and impacts of three alternative streetcar paths will be published this summer.

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