A Pile of News: January 2024
A briefing on news and information from the pile driving contractors,
associated manufacturers, construction suppliers and affiliated engineers
who comprise PDCA.
By Matt Bisbee, PDCA

Originally sent Jan. 2, 2024
Top of the Pile – Happy new year! We wish you success, prosperity, health, safety, professional development, market growth and security in 2024. Let’s start with a few reminders:
  • Members: Please remit your annual dues today. If you didn’t get an invoice, contact PDCA.
  • ICYMI: The latest PileDriver magazine dropped in December. If you missed it, you missed a lot…
  • Readers of PDCA publications who are not PDCA members, consider enrolling as a member to support the driven pile industry. Your dues fund collective efforts to promote the pile driving industry; when everyone pitches in a little, everyone benefits. JOIN PDCA TODAY.
  • New in 2024 – Qualified government employees and academics are eligible to join PDCA at no cost. Consider lending your important perspectives to PDCA as a new member. 
From the Association & Chapters
Mark your calendars:

News and PHOTOS from the PDCA Blog:
You Win
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News from PDCA Companies
Acquisitions & expansions:

Giving back:

Recognitions:

Anniversaries:
  • Canal Barge Company, Inc. celebrates 90 years as a family-owned, independent marine transportation company based in New Orleans. Since its 1933 founding by Joseph Merrick Jones, it has grown from one barge acquired for $10K during the Great Depression, to an international marine service provider offering over 800 tank, hopper and deck barges and 43 towboats. President Merritt Lane pledges that its people will continue to make the difference at CBC into the future.
People on the Move
Transitions:
  • Ronnie Hobgood joins the Louisiana team at Omega Foundation Services as a new driver.
  • David Fasci, Scott Langford, Colby Smith have all been elevated to assistant project managers at Houston-based Russell Marine LLC.
  • Daren Franks is promoted to regional sales manager – North America at Lodge Lumber Co., where he has served in sales for nearly 23 years.
  • Justin Miller rejoins American Engineering Testing as manager of the geotech group, charged with leading the group’s growth in size, depth and expertise. Also, a realignment makes president David Rettner, P.E. chief growth officer and CFO Kate Marcotte chief operations officer.
  • Shana Carroll, P.E. is the new president at D.W. Kozera, Inc. in Baltimore. With 21 years of industry experience, she expects “continued success as an MDOT DBE/MBE/SBE certified firm.”
  • Sam Filisko joins the ECS Limited Midwest Division, Paul Hernandez, P.E. in Chesapeake, VA, Jeff Yates, P.E. as geotech manager in Moorestown, NJ, and Michael Crouse in Roanoake, VA.

Recognitions:
  • Tyler Fane from C.D. Perry & Sons, Inc. in Troy, NY, shares news of his third child. Named for his grandfathers, baby Warren Patrick was born Dec. 3, weighing 7 lbs., 1 oz. and 20 inches long.
  • Emily Lucas, safety manager at Clark Construction, is a Virginia Young Professional of the Year.
  • Zachary Latka, a civil engineer at New Hampshire-based NSI Contracting, received the Heroism Award, a national honor from the Boy Scouts of America. He is credited with protecting Scouts from a large bear. Click here to read an account of his experience.
  • John Miles is the consummate sales professional at PileCo, Inc. However, until next March, he’ll be moonlighting as a political campaign manager. He was spotted in rural Waller County, TX, placing campaign signs for Sandy Miles, candidate for County Constable, and his wife.
Sandy Miles for Waller County

Sending sympathies:
  • Kevin Lee Kern (66) began as a carpenter in 1981 at Corman, worked all the way up to VP, made the transition to Kokosing, retired in 2021 due to illness and passed away in November. Kevin is credited with leading a Richmond, VA, project that inspired the contractor’s southern branch. He leaves behind decades worth of industry friends and protégés to carry on his rich legacy.
  • Charles Williams, Sr., a second generation operator at Mason Construction, spent 36 years with the Beaumont contractor. A stroke cut his career short, but his influence remains at Mason with third and fourth generation Williamses employed today. He passed in December and staff celebrated his life, remembering him as a top civil superintendent and elite equipment operator.
In the News
Beard Construction Group gets profiled in the Baton Rouge-based 10/12 Business Report.

Trinity Products appeared on the cable TV show Manufacturing Marvels. It highlights the St. Louis steel manufacturer’s new technologies and past projects like Boston’s Big Dig and the World Trade Center.

GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc. is part of a grant-funded team performing flood mitigation work in Conway, MA. Read about their work in the Greenfield Recorder.
On the Job
APC Construction is in Denham Springs, LA, where they built a circular cofferdam for a water treatment plant expansion. Supt. Scott West led the crews, which drove 35-foot sheets adjacent to a neighborhood.
 
Bechtel is the latest PDCA member enabling more space travel. It’s contracted with NASA to build a new mobile launcher to interface with existing infrastructure at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Notable, crews access the job site using the new NASA Causeway Bridge for which GRL Engineers performed testing and pile recommendations and Orion Marine teams continue the phased construction.
 
Blue Iron Foundations & Shoring completed an emergency piling job last March to protect Foothill Road in Sunol, CA, which was compromised when storms washed out the adjacent bank. Crews installed spliced, 60-foot NZ66 steel sheets from Nucor Skyline underneath overhead lines.
 
Boh Bros. Construction mobilizes for a New Orleans development, where it will install all infrastructure. The River District Neighborhood will be home to Shell’s Gulf operations, TopGolf and much more.
 
CIANBRO is building a new concrete-capped, sheet pile wall in the Santee Basin at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. It’s part of an upgrade initiative to protect the campus from rising waters.
 
Clark shares insights on two of its high-profile projects in its latest publication, Superstructure. Read about its delivery of the coveted Amazon H2Q in Arlington, VA, that stands on driven piling. Also, learn about its meticulous work and preservation efforts for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum remodel.
 
Foundation Constructors crews install 20-inch pipe piles to modernize the 106-year-old Sacramento Weir, part of a $350+M USACE initiative, in conjunction with local and state flood authorities.
 
Kokosing will drive vinyl sheets to fortify a failing bulkhead at Sleepy Hole Golf Course in Suffolk, VA.
 
Poseidon Dredge & Marine used vinyl sheet pile secured by steel tie-back rods to a continuous concrete footer to deliver a homeowner in West Palm Beach, FL, a brand-new seawall for Christmas!
 
Russell Marine LLC won a TX-DOT job to reshape the Port Aransas waterfront through updates to six landing slips and other infrastructure. Crews will install 45K SF of sheet pile and 8K SF of combi-wall.
 
Scott Bridge Co. crews in Savannah, GA, are installing a rail bridge over the Dundee Canal, part of a $120M connector project that will ease access from I-516 to the Port. International Construction Equipment diesel and vibro hammers are used to drive 90-foot HP and 12,810 LF of PS concrete.

Liebherr’s 470 EC-B 16 tower crane has arrived in the U.S. Kiewit assembled the first stateside unit for the Omaha, NE, library project. Also, the Switzerland-based crane manufacturer made the LRB23 that GeoStructures got for Christmas. 
 
Hammer & Steel sent Tom Maxa to consult an installation contractor in Superior, WI, on using an ABI Long Reach to drive a 2,525 ft. sheet pile wall in the relocation of a shipping terminal from Duluth, MN.
 
Haley & Aldrich performed engineering, design and monitoring services for a newly opened, 10-mile stretch of I-95 near Fredericksburg, VA, a VDOT initiative. It increased peak traffic capacity by 66%.

Industry resources:
Notes from the Field
An exclusive beer creation honors GZA GeoEnvironmental founding partners Donald Goldberg and William Zoino. Founders Finest is the 5th annual Holiday offering to firm clients and friends who received a limited shipment in December. The unique label has the likeness of the co-founders in Mad Men-style imagery. Brad Roberts, Justin Zarrella and the GZA brew crew released the company tribute in advance of its 60th anniversary.
 
The '23 holiday season is over and the music it brings is done until Thanksgiving. But we enthusiastically recommend adding the new Christmas jingle from GROUP Contractors to your 2024 holiday playlist.
 
Highway to Hell – Might describe your daily commute, depending on where you live. But no classic AC/DC song can capture the commute experience Timothy Vaillancourt of Tadano America made for a recent project. The Nashville-based support tech visited South Africa, en route to Antarctica to help with a crawler crane working at the South Pole, before heading home for Christmas. Amazing pics!
 
The UGA Dawgs don’t get a chance to three-peat … but a famous bridge in their flagship city is being celebrated by the geotech community. S&ME performed a subsurface investigation of the foundation under a famous railroad trestle, now part of an Athens, GA, Rails to Trails attraction. The project won an ACEC award. R.E.M. fans recall this bridge from its picture on the band’s debut album, Murmur.
 
You don’t pay taxes, they take taxes, said Chris Rock. It’s time to start preparing your 2023 taxes to file in April. Junttan reminds you that if you bought that new rig, or any other piece of equipment for your piling business last year, make sure to file for the IRS Tax Code Section 179 deduction.
 
What smartphone filter did they use for this photo? As the story goes, Manson Construction Co. founder Peter Manson used gold nuggets that were
buried in his backyard to buy his first pile driver. Check out the vintage photo of his first
rig, taken in 1905, standing tall at a marine job site in Dockton, WA.
Vintage photo of his first rig, taken in 1905
You’ve come a long way, baby – Geotechnical instrumentation from GEOKON offers cutting-edge technology. Engineer Jeff Barrett from the New Hampshire manufacture visited Krakow, Poland, to observe its products in extreme conditions. Later, he visited a nearby salt mine to see old school monitoring techniques from the 13th century.
 
Y’all come back now, ya hear? A visit to Atlanta put us in front of a composite sheet piling supplier considering PDCA membership. We hope they join! They told us that Atlanta is nicknamed “Y’allywood” due to its growing role in movie and TV production. That checks out because Civil Engineering Magazine covered a UES project that contributes to Atlanta’s place in the entertainment industry.

Thanks for reading the first ‘A Pile of News’ of 2024, we are happy to have you. Spread the word to your coworkers and industry colleagues who might like this content; all are welcome to subscribe at piledrivers.org by entering your email address in the prompt at the bottom of the homepage. Send us your news and we will work it in to future publications. Happy 2024!
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