Competitive Power Venture (CPV) is a clean power generation company. To assist with the budgeting process for a future natural gas-fired power plant in Waldorf, Reliable agreed to take the construction project on. For almost 7 years, we continued communications with CPV while attending preconstruction meetings to plan and revise budgets. We received the notice to proceed in August 2014.
As Reliable’s largest single contract ever signed, it included 14 miles of 18-inch ductile iron pipe, starting on the West side of Charles County at the Mattawoman Sewer Treatment Plant and ending on the East side of the county. This waterline carries reclaimed water that is normally discharged into the environment. Instead, this water will be used for the cooling towers of the power plant.
With the daunting task of constructing a county-wide project over the next 19 months, the project was broken up into eight sections to manage as smaller tasks. In total, Reliable had 6 crews from both our Northern and Southern divisions, working on 8 miles of pipeline at once.
Mike Bett’s crew mobilized on site by August 14th to begin clearing sediment controls. On September 18th, David Smoot’s crew installed the first piece of pipe in Section 1. With the help of Bobby Smoot’s crew, Section 1 (about 2 miles of pipe) was completed by end of October. By mid-April 2015, Sections 1 through 5 (over 10 miles) were completed. A portion of Section 1 and all of Sections 2 through 5 were constructed along the Indian Head Rail Trail, equaling 8 miles in total length. Our contract required these portions of the trail to be resurfaced with asphalt. By late July, another approximate 3 miles of the trail project had been completed. The grading operations were overseen by Billy Hobbs, while the paving operations were supervised by John White and Dewayne Poling. Warren Johnson and his asphalt crew were responsible for prep work and patch-paving portions of the trail that still existed.
Charles County set deadlines for the trail to reopen in mid-to-late August. With this time crunch, assistance was needed from grading subcontractors, along with our Northern division Grading Foremen Chip Wood and Ed Imbrogulio. The paving crews had to work closely with the project team for long hours into evenings to meet the deadlines. Archie Oliver and his crew were last on the trail portion of the project on August 27th to complete the final stabilization. With many last-minute adjustments and planning, Oliver and his crew finished the project by midnight. This type of action is truly commendable for going above and beyond to help achieve goals of the project and the company. The deadlines were met, and the CPV owner and the county were both beyond pleased to have this phase completed.
With the final section of pipe now the main focus, this phase required 24-hour operations as the majority of this installation would be performed in the middle of Rt. 301 between Billingsly Rd. and Theodore Green Blvd. Truck traffic was restricted from accessing the median during the day, so our crews staged equipment, pipe, and other materials at night, while installation of the water main was completed during the day.
Managing a job of this magnitude presents many challenges. Since this project spanned across 10 different locations, ensuring deliveries getting to the correct location proved to be the largest single obstacle to overcome. To also move a crew doing Jack-n-Bore pits took a total of 10-to-15 moves, which could easily be an all-day event. Our dedicated and professional team enabled us to effectively overcome these challenges. This project was an enormous accomplishment for Reliable, which every team and crew member is proud to be a part of.
Project Team: Project Manager Mike Sturdevant, Assistant Project Manager T.J. Beamer, and Project Superintendent Mike Betts.
“Reliable Contracting handled an extremely complex and sensitive reclaimed water line system for our 725-MW CPV St. Charles Energy Center project in Charles County, Maryland. This line allows CPV St. Charles to generate clean, reliable, natural-gas powered electricity using reclaimed “grey” water for cooling, which will reduce the amount runoff nutrients from entering the Potomac watershed by tens of thousands of pounds. Reliable completed this project smoothly and “reliably” never missing a beat; even working diligently in the dead of winter to get this project completed on spec. CPV is very appreciative to the Reliable team for the role they are playing in making the CPV St. Charles Energy Center one of the best and most environmentally sensitive conventional electric generating facilities in the world today.”
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