Expediting Los Angeles Freeway Repairs after the Earthquake

Some years ago, at 4:31 A.M., a 6.8 magnitude earthquake hit Los Angeles and collapsed large sections of four major freeways, snarling one million commuters in daily gridlock for the indefi nite future. Clearly, solutions to this crisis were of the highest priority. “Caltrans,” the California Department of Transportation, sprung into action with a three-pronged attack. First, they rushed into emergency response, fanning out to conduct visual inspections and close dangerous segments of the roads and freeways. Second, they initiated interim traffi c management strategies for all closed segments, utilizing parallel streets and old bypass roads to expand their capacity, change their signage and striping, and redirect adjacent traf- fi c including traffi c signal timing. Last, they planned for speedy demolition and rebuilding of the damaged portions of the freeways. Time was all-important and Caltrans used every tradeoff available to expedite the repairs which would normally take years to complete.

1. California’s governor signed an Emergency Declaration allowing Caltrans to streamline its contracting procedures so that RFPs, bids, and evaluations that usually took four months could be completed in fi ve days.

2. Signifi cant incentives/disincentives were built into the contracts, the incentive depending on the value of the construction under consideration. One fi rm spent heavily on overtime, extra equipment rentals, and bonuses to keep working 24 hours a day, rain or shine, and came in 74 days ahead of a contractual date of 140 days, thereby earning a $14.8 million bonus that became the talk of the town!

3. All resources of the Federal Highway Administration were made available to work with Caltrans.

4. “Force Account” contracting was employed for immediate selection of sole-source contractors. The contractor then began work immediately under the direction of a Caltrans Resident Engineer

5. Major project management processes were initiated including disaster response and an earthquake recovery task force consisting of top executives in local and national governmental agencies.

6. Millions in additional funds were made available through Caltrans’ Director, a declaration of a state of emergency by President Clinton, and eventually Congress.

Questions

1. Of the six constraints, which were cost trade-offs and which were scope trade-offs? Why?

2. In what way were the performance trade-offs made? That is, how did they affect performance?

3. What kinds of resource allocation approaches discussed in the chapter were used in this situation?

Resource Allocation Approaches in this chapter:

1. Critical Path Method

2. Resource Allocation Problem

3. Reource Loading

4. Resource Levelling

5. constrained Resource Scheduling

6. Multiproject Scheduling and Resource Allocation

7. Goldratt's Critical Chain