The Jamestown Parkway in North Carolina had the worst luck when it came to weather. In the early stages of erosion control, river flood plain controls, and stream diversion, many facilities were ruined by Hurricanes Florence and Matthew when they touched down on the North Carolina coast in 2018. All the work had to be redone on this project.
As if the hurricanes weren’t enough, High Point, North Carolina received over 12 inches of snow in December 2022, directly followed by over 6 inches of rain. The weather is uncommon for the region, and once again, work had to be redone on the project. The impact of progress lead to the North Carolina Department of Transportation releasing an award for a time extension on all projects in the state affected by the storm. Luckily, the Jamestown Parkway did not need it.
The abnormal weather really put a damper on the project. Utility crews responsible for relocating their facilities not associated with Branch Civil demobilized the project to assist the eastern shoreline to reestablish utilities damaged by the storms. After the crews were demobilized, conflicts arose throughout the project, with multiple underground and overhead utilities directly impacting the project.
Finally, after a year and a half, crews went back onto the jobsite, however, it was light. In June 2021 crews finally returned on the site in full force, and they pressed forward with the project, progressing the Jamestown Parkway through innovative redesigns, tight communications, coordination, and completing all of the work to keep the project on schedule. Field crews redesigned and proposed new storm drain and sewer plans to the city and state in order to keep the job going, while the Branch civil team graded and excavated utility conflict, moving over 1 million cubic yards of material.
Safety was a huge concern on this project. From 2019 to 2021, the Jamestown Parkway project was a top safety performing job in the company, having no incidents during that time, and earning the top spot for several months. Branch Civil prides themselves on their safety requirements, going above the North Carolina Department of Transportation safety compliances.
Andrew Davis, Project Manager at Civil Branch had this to say about safety.
“A lot of time and effort was placed into this project, as with every Branch Civil project. We pride ourselves on our robust corporate safety program administered by The Branch Group, and this job was no exception. With a new footprint in the area, we were experiencing a lot of new hires and continuous safety training to teach the new group ‘BranchSafe.’ Although a struggle at first, the project team quickly jumped to put safety as a top priority and brought a Corporate Safety Representative to the operations division on the project level as a project team member with an emphasis on safety. We also hired two locally retired police officers to help our maintenance of traffic and on road trucking divisions as the project had 12 active intersections, and they had extensive experience in traffic control and the specific area we were working. After these measures were implemented and we built our BranchSafe culture on the job level, the project experience nearly 90,000 manhours of incident free work (not including subcontractor manhours) from November 2019 to May 2022 and was the top safety performing job in the company for 15 months of that stretch.”
Ironically, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the crews did not have to deal with as much traffic, which helped crews stay safe on the corridor, but also allowed crews to be more productive during the day in order to meet the schedule deadline. R&B
Project: Jamestown Parkway
Location: Jamestown, North Carolina
Owners: North Carolina Department of Transportation
Designer: Sungate Design Group
Contractor: Branch Civil
Cost: $81million
Length: 3.88 miles
Completion Date: November 1, 2023
