After a long day at work, many of Intel’s Chandler facility personnel will have an easier drive home, thanks to DCS Contracting. The company recently upgraded a section of Old Price Road, which is the main entrance to Intel, and the frontage to the City of Chandler's Brine Reduction Facility and Water Reclamation Facility.
The $2.7 million project came in under budget and before schedule in February 2021 due to several factors. “Extensive coordination with all three entities was critical to complete the reconstruction of the facility entrances," Trennis Stanley, DCS project manager, says. "These included fencing, security gates/equipment, concrete drives, and landscape as well as power equipment relocation for the two adjacent treatment plants,” Stanley says.
The Old Price Road Improvements project included construction of roadway and drainage improvements to approximately 0.75 miles of Old Price Road to provide two northbound lanes and one southbound lane. This project helps alleviate the traffic associated with more than 1,000 vehicles an hour leaving Intel at peak hours. “The added lane and width to the road provided additional safety for not only the City of Chandler facilities’ operational traffic but also the Intel employee traffic,” Stanley says.
Despite the quick work, the project was not without its challenges. Stanley says that the toughest aspect of the project involved finding all the broken Salt River Project power transmission conduits. "DCS repaired them while under a tight-schedule SRP power outage where we were providing temporary power to the City of Chandler Water Reclamation facility,” he says. “This included long hours with our electrical subcontractor, Kimbrell Electric, and SRP crews to investigate existing conduits that had been crushed due to other utility work in the past and repair them within the one-week timeframe that SRP crews were onsite.”
Another issue was that the Old Price Road project bordered the Gila River Indian Community. “We were not permitted to access our project from the west side of the right of way,” Stanley says. “This provided a challenge to complete the new improvements within a limited work area. We fabricated a custom grading edge and attached it to a small skid-steer to perform the parkway grading on the west side that borders GRIC.”
Subcontractors on the project included Agave Environmental Contracting Inc. (landscaping), Allstate Rent a Fence, Inc. (temporary fencing), APL Access & Security (gate security), Asplundh Tree Experts, LLC (tree removal), Associated Fence Company (permanent fence and access gates), ATC Group Services, LLC (quality control and testing), Cholla Pavement Maintenance (asphalt paving), D2 Surveying (survey layout and as-builts), Franklin Striping Inc. (pavement markings & striping), Kimbrell Electric (electrical & streetlights), National Barricade LLC (traffic control & permanent signs), RAC Construction Co Inc. (concrete drainage structures), Spear Construction (utility adjustments), T2 Utility Engineers (private utility locating), Torrent Resources Inc. (dry wells), and WSP Inc. (asphalt milling).
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This article originally appeared in the bimonthly Arizona Contractor & Community magazine, Sep/Oct 2021 issue, Vol. 10, No. 5.