Counting the Days and Dollars on Widening I-630

Mark Windle, vice president of Arkansas operations for Manhattan Road & Bridge, is project supervisor for an $87.4 million widening effort on I-630 in Little Rock.

You don’t have to tell Mark Windle that time is money.

As vice president of Arkansas operations for Manhattan Road & Bridge, he stands to lose his company nearly $200,000 a day if he doesn’t get a 2.5-mile stretch of Interstate 630 in Little Rock widened within 590 calendar days. On the flip side, the firm stands to reap cash incentives for finishing early.

So with work starting July 16, he’s juggling dozens of overlapping calendars, work crew schedules, traffic plans and subcontractors to hasten the $87.4 million job, which will basically turn the six-lane stretch between Baptist Medical Center and University Avenue into an eight-lane roadway, widening or replacing several bridges along the way.

“A big component of this project with the Highway Department is days,” Windle said in late June, using a retro reference to the Arkansas Department of Transportation. “We often work under these kinds of deadlines, but not quite with this dollar value. This one was a big jump, but they want the project done as quickly as possible.”

Drivers may not know Windle, but if they’ve traversed the Big Rock Interchange at I-630 and Interstate 430, they’re familiar with his work. Manhattan Road & Bridge had part of the $78 million Phase III contract for that work, completed nearly three years ago.

“We were joint-venture partner on that, building all the bridges and retaining walls. So if you got through that, you can blame us,” Windle said with a laugh.

The Big Rock work quite literally led to the project now set to sprout orange barrels along I-630, where the work area carries about 100,000 vehicles a day and could handle up to 140,000 in 20 years.

“We worked on the Big Rock Interchange and knew the plan was to continue on toward town,” Windle told Arkansas Business, noting that the I-630 work is part of the Connecting Arkansas Program.

The $1.8 billion effort is the most ambitious highway construction endeavor ever in Arkansas, the state says, with 36 projects covering more than 200 miles of roadways.

The push to improve capacity and ease traffic congestion around the state is funded with 70 percent of the proceeds from a 10-year, 0.5 percent sales tax approved in a statewide vote in 2012. The other 30 percent is turned back to local governments for road and street projects. The statewide tax will sunset in July 2023.

“The Highway Department contracted for the CAP program with Garver,” the North Little Rock engineering firm, Windle said. “So Garver will kind of be managing the job, but the Highway Department will have an engineer and inspectors on it.”

Jobs Are One Goal
The program’s goals stretch to economic development and job growth, Windle said, projecting that his company will have up to 125 workers on the I-630 job alone. Manhattan Road & Bridge, with offices in Little Rock and Springdale, is involved in a number of other projects across the state, including the $25.5 million North Cabot Interchange now under construction on U.S. Highway 67/167.

“We employ more than 100 Arkansas residents, and that number is expected to double with the commencement of the I-630 project,” Windle said. “We encourage drivers to be attentive because our workers are their neighbors.”

The I-630 project will include bridges over Rock Creek and South Rodney Parham Road, but the biggest hurdle will be taking down and fully replacing the South Hughes Street overpass spanning the interstate. “The reason is that when they widen the right of way [beneath the overpass] they’ll also have to lengthen the bridge,” Windle said, “and it’s an old bridge that needs replacing, too.”

Windle said the Hughes Street work will begin about a week after the start of the project, and that his workers will have 96 days to finish before facing a $3,800-a-day penalty on just that phase. “For the entire project, the state has valued days past the deadline at $198,800 a day, so obviously it’s in our best interest to get through quickly.”

Manhattan Road & Bridge, a subsidiary of privately held Manhattan Construction Group of Tulsa, is comfortable with strict deadlines, though Windle said he becomes like a farmer, constantly watching the weather. “The farmer likes for it to rain, though, and we’d just as soon it never rain.”

Windle said strict deadlines offer an upside to contractors, too, because “the longer we’re out there the more costly it is for us, and traffic is disrupted and people are unhappy.”

Extensive scheduling is his ace in the hole. “When you’re dealing with traffic and digging in the ground, there’s no telling what you might hit, so we’ve taken a lot of things into account and built in contingencies. These schedules are complicated.”

The widening is meant to relieve traffic that builds up as motorists enter I-630 from the Big Rock Interchange and from other arteries west of University Avenue.

“There are multiple insertion points for traffic, including I-430, Shackleford Road, Kanis Road, Financial Centre Parkway, Baptist and Rodney Parham all before you get to University,” ArDOT spokesman Danny Straessle said. “That’s a flood of vehicles. So to realize the full benefit of the Big Rock Interchange, we need this project. Past University Avenue it thins out and you don’t see the same congestion.”

To keep traffic moving during construction, plans call for keeping two lanes going in each direction except for nights and weekends when special circumstances — like setting steel over the roadway — require choking down to a single lane. “There will be some changing of lanes and moving lanes as part of the process. There will be short-term inconvenience, but the result is going to be a safer, more efficient way forward.”

Straessle said Manhattan won the I-630 contract from a field of prequalified firms. “We see who can sharpen their pencil enough to give us the best bid.”

Windle, a 15-year Arkansas resident and Alabama native who interjects “Roll Tide” in summarizing his resume, put it this way: “We had 12 weeks to prepare a bid, and we won. We had the low bid.”

In addition to the widening and bridge work, noise barriers will be installed to protect homes north of the project, and a pedestrian bridge will be installed at the north side of Rock Creek.

Windle also said his company will do right by the basketball players who gather at the Kanis Park courts under the bridge near Rodney Parham.

“That bridge is going to come down and be rebuilt, but it’ll be done in stages. It’s a nice, shady area and kids and adults like to play ball there. So while our contract calls for us to simply replace the bridge and for all the area beneath it to just go away, we’re looking at a community development plan” to help maintain the park area.

“We want to be transparent, to let people know what we’re doing so they’ll be more involved.

“There are always people for and against a new road or project, but we want to give the public plenty of information on what we’re doing, and when we’re doing it.”

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