Complex gas main project showcases creative thinking and agility
When Rich Pasko, senior project construction manager at BGE, first began working on the Severn River Bridge gas main project in Annapolis, Maryland, he knew it would be a challenge—but the unique history and difficulty of the endeavor soon made it the most memorable job of his career.
“As I became more familiar with the family history, that definitely did add value to it in my mind,” Pasko told American Gas. “As far as complexity, it’s definitely the most challenging project I have ever worked on.”
The pipe installation under the bridge along Route 50, which stretches over a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, was originally done in the 1950s under the direction of utility contractor Ligon & Ligon, one of the first gas contractors to do work for BGE. Over the past year, nearly 70 years after his grandfather, Dan Ligon, installed the original pipe, Tim Falls managed its replacement—2,900 feet from shore to shore and 1,850 feet of main approaching from the west—as prime contractor Ligon & Ligon’s vice president and senior superintendent.
Pasko said the backstory piqued his interest, but the preconstruction planning eclipsed even that as he considered the required steps necessary to gain access to the bridge—traveling across rocky terrain, navigating steep slopes and removing trees—before work could begin.
“I remember thinking, ‘How are we going to get equipment down there? How are we going to get under the bridge?’” said Pasko, whose extensive project repertoire to that point did not include overseeing gas infrastructure work on a bridge.
He was amazed by the project team’s solutions and progress, as access roads were created down the embankments and a scaffold was built from end to end and affixed to the underside of the bridge, 75 feet above the water.
The proactive upgrades will improve reliability and capacity for 6,000 natural gas customers around Annapolis by bringing together two feeds that provide gas service to the area. The larger diameter of the new pipe will alleviate a bottleneck created in the old 6-inch pipe when customer demand spiked.
The project is also a safety upgrade, since the earlier pipe was challenging for crews to reach to repair, Pasko said.