WEATHER
On Monday, the City of Gig Harbor began the first phase of the onshore portion of the Sewer Outfall Expansion Project: Installing a wider sewer pipe under North Harborview Drive that will carry higher volumes of treated water from the city’s Waste Water Treatment plant through Gig Harbor Bay and into Puget Sound.
But the beginning of the project was no simple matter. The initial start date for construction was delayed two weeks — from March 24 to April 7 — due to problems with the city’s original plans.
Installing the new pipe on North Harborview Drive involves tearing up the road and laying the new, wider pipe while the old pipe remains functional. Since several utilities also run under that section of the road, the city and its contractors have to be careful not to disturb those lines while installing the pipe.
During the project’s planning process, the city estimated the locations of telephone, water, storm water, power, cable TV and gas lines under North Harborview Drive. But those estimates were incorrect, and it delayed the project while the contractor attempted to find the actual locations.
“Sometimes what’s in the ground and what the plans say are two different things,” City Administrator Rob Karlinsey said.
Before the project began in March, the utilities’ presumed locations were marked above ground with colored paint. The contractor then began a process called “pot holing,” where holes were dug in the road to verify where the utilities were.
When Pivetta Brothers Construction — the contractors working on the project — starting pot holing, they found a different situation underground than they expected.
“The location where we’re at, every utility is below ground,” explained Jeff Langhelm, the city engineer overseeing the project. “We’ve got a lot of stuff in the small area of road.”
Langhelm described the utilities as being packed in “from edge of sidewalk to edge of sidewalk” underneath North Harborview Drive. With such a small stretch of road, that sort of density is typical — but it causes problems for construction.
“We knew it would be tight, but did not know it would be this tight,” Langhelm said.
Because all utilities have to remain functional during the construction, the contractor has to take extra care not to disturb any other pipes while installing the new sewer line. Since the proximity of pipes was not accounted for in the original planning, underground exploratory work was needed to minimize the possibility of hitting or damaging any other pipes.
That work meant a two-week delay in construction, which is scheduled to take place overnight for six to eight weeks, beginning last Monday.
It also means an increase in cost. Because of the additional time and labor needed, the contractor has to submit a change order to the original contract. That change order will have to be approved by the city council at its April 14 meeting.
Langhelm said he’s unsure how much more the project will cost, but he does not expect it to be a substantial amount, since the project was under budget before the delay.
Contractor Bob Mickel of Pivetta Brothers said that these sorts of planning problems are not typical in his line of work.
“Generally, municipalities have a pretty good idea of what they have under the streets, I think,” he said, speculating that the city records “maybe weren’t kept as well as they should have been.”
“It’s nobody’s fault, but yes, it’s unusual,” he said.
Nighttime work on North Harborview Drive
Construction began Monday along North Harborview drive. Sections of road will be closed from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. Monday through Thursday nights until May 15. The west boundary of the closure is the intersection of North Harborview Drive and Harborview Drive, near the Waste Water Treatment Plant. The east boundary is the 8800 block of North Harborview Drive.
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