Share this post

KCI Construction Co. is drawing on its years of experience as a design/build general contractor for a number of major public sector jobs in its home market. The St. Louis-based firm works in a number of project types including heavy industrial, transportation, and general building jobs. KCI’s current portfolio of pending projects will bring its knowledge in all three of those areas to the forefront.

Bridge Retrofit

The company started work in January on a $26 million seismic retrofit project for the Missouri Department of Transportation (MODOT). Crews are working to upgrade a bridge along an elevated section of Interstate 64 running through downtown St. Louis, Vice President Tom Huster explains. KCI is retrofitting the double deck bridge with steel and concrete collars and reinforced steel, and performing foundation upgrades to give it additional protection in a seismic event. This is part of MODOT’s Safe and Sound Bridge Improvement program, which has awarded contracts for the replacement or rehabilitation of 802 bridges since 2008, the department says. Completion is set for summer 2011.

MODOT has awarded a number of contracts for bridgework to KCI over the past several years. “Basically, anything involving new bridge construction or the retrofit of existing bridges we’ll bid on,” Huster says.  

The project has presented KCI with a few challenges including finishing a piece of the project that had been previously worked on. “For that specific portion of the project we have had to verify what work was done or not done, and needed to verify what they had done so we can finish the job,” project manager Brent Krueger adds. 

The company also discovered an extremely high groundwater table, which has made the foundation upgrades challenging. The key to overcoming both of these situations is planning and taking extensive measurements in the area, Krueger says.

“The more field measurements we take of the existing structure and the more pre-planning we do in the office, the easier it is for our field guys to install upgrades once they get out there,” he adds. “It’s the same as for any job; the more planning you do up front, the easier it is in the field.”

The bridge project is part of an ongoing construction project on I-64 between Spoede Road in St. Louis County and Kingshighway Boulevard in the city of St. Louis, according to MODOT.

The road project includes rebuilding and upgrading all pavement, bridges and interchanges in the area, as well as the addition of a new connection between I-64 and I-170. Both safety and traffic flow will be improved through the project, which is designed to eliminate tight entrance and exit ramps and include dedicated exit lanes and wide shoulders, the department adds.

Plant Expansion

KCI started work in February on a major expansion to the Columbia Regional Wastewater Treatment facility in Columbia, Mo. The company is the general contractor and will self-perform much of the concrete and steel work on the $54 million project, which will see more than 100 workers on the site at peak times.

The plant will double in size, allowing it to house an additional four clarifiers, two aeration basins, two pump stations, and additional dewatering and blower buildings. Existing facilities will also be renovated. The project is expected to increase the plant’s capacity from 13 million to 26 million gallons of water treated every day, Huster says. 

Improvements include measures to increase energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption. These include the installation of high-efficiency single stage blowers expected to reduce annual energy consumption by 26 percent, according to the EPA. A new combined heat and power system will also be installed.

The project will involve significant temporary bypass pumping operations in order to make new piping tie-ins and perform renovations and improvements to the existing plant. Significant soil improvements including the installation of a new retaining wall protecting the site from a nearby creek are also in the works. Crews need to work around the creek, which rises and falls with each rain event, a challenge in July when the site experienced more than 12 inches of rain, Huster says. Completion is expected in late 2012, giving the company an aggressive schedule to work with, he adds.

Other Projects

KCI also is working on a $21 million expansion of the barracks at Fort Leonard Wood. Work on the design/build project started in March and is expected to end in September 2011. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – the project’s owner – is looking to add onto and renovate three three-story dormitories and renovate an existing dining hall and battalion headquarters, Huster says.

Fort Leonard Wood houses the U.S. Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence; the U.S. Army Engineering School; Military Police School; Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear School; Basic Combat Training Brigade, and joint training detachments from the Marines, Navy and Air Force.

In August, KCI broke ground on the Page-Olive Connector project on Missouri Highway 141 for owner St. Louis County. The $52 million connector will link the southern extension of the Maryland Heights Expressway from Page Avenue to a new alignment of Highway 41. The two-mile, six-lane limited access road will relieve traffic on local roads, the county says.

The project is funded through the American Recovery and Reimbursement Act, St. Louis County, and the nearby cities of Maryland Heights and Chesterfield, Mo., the county adds. 

Huster said the project is the largest design/build job ever for St. Louis County. “From a design-build highway standpoint, this is a unique job for  them,” he adds. Completion is scheduled for July 2012.

KCI’s $52 million proposal for its work on the project was the lowest qualified of three bids received on the project, according to the county. 

The bid was $6 million less than the county had initially estimated, County  Executive Charlie A. Dooley said in a statement. “We’re talking about a significant savings of public money,”  he added. “But just as importantly, we’re talking about a new, six-lane road that will benefit our community for the next fifty years. This project is vitally needed.”

Fairness and Safety

KCI believes strongly in maintaining > strong relationships with subcontractors and keeping the workplace safe on all of its projects.

“Overall, we try to be as straightforward and honest and fair to our subcontractors as we’d expect them to be to us,” Huster says. “We believe in working more as a team than in adversarial relationships; by us self-performing a lot of our work, we’re working in conjunction with our subcontractors as opposed to just managing them.”

The company employs a safety director responsible for ensuring safety procedures are being followed and visits each job site once a week. The director also ensures that all tradesmen on the project have a minimum 10 hours, and superintendents a minimum 30 hours, of OSHA training, he adds.

KCI’s safety procedures have led to a reduction in its Experience Modification Rate from 1.0 in 2004 to .63 in 2009. 

Playing To Strengths

While the U.S. recession has given KCI increased competition over the last few years, the shift of focus in the St. Louis market toward public works projects as opposed to private ventures plays to the company’s strengths.

“The economy changing only magnified our strengths, which are public works projects,” Huster says. “A lot of what’s going on right now we were already prepared for.”

“There’s more competition for people trying to get into this market, but public projects are something we’re already familiar with, so there’s really no learning curve,” he adds. 

The company has resisted the temptation to enter markets contrary to its history and experience during the recession, and believes strongly in remaining a general contractor as opposed to increasing its reach to construction management.

“We’re part of a dying breed around here as being true general contractors and self-performing as much work as we can,” Huster says. “A lot of the companies who used to do what we do have morphed into the construction management side of things, but we’ve remained true to what we do.” 

Ready for the Future

KCI Construction also is involved with community programs including serving as a donor to the Construction Careers Center, the first charter high school for construction in the United States. 

The center, founded by the Associated General Contractors of St. Louis and several area contractors, prepares students in grades nine through 12 for careers in the construction industry, according to the school. 

“The school's curriculum is specifically designed by the construction industry to prepare students for entry into direct employment, a construction apprenticeship-training program, a community college or a four-year degree institution,” Construction Career Center says. “The school implements strategies to encourage each student to develop the necessary skills, attitudes and work ethic to be successful in the construction industry.”