WEST BETHESDA, Md. –
Many residents of the Washington, D.C., metro area remember a time when the Woodrow Wilson Bridge had only three lanes crossing the Potomac River for each direction of traffic. Today the bridge is much bigger, with six lanes each way, coming from an inner and outer loop of the Capital Beltway to accommodate the immense amount of traffic flowing between Maryland and Virginia.
To commemorate National Engineers’ Week, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division hosted guest speaker Jim T. Ruddell on Feb. 28 to talk about his experiences as the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Replacement project manager. At the time the project was being planned, the old bridge was nearing the end of its lifespan. Ruddell, the current vice president of engineering firm WSP USA, was involved with the project from 2000 to 2009, and experienced a wide range of ups and downs throughout its duration.
The execution of the bridge project belonged to four sponsors: the respective transportation departments in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, as well as the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). River dredging construction began in 2000, but the pre-bid meeting for the bridge construction contract was set for Sept. 11, 2001. The tragic events of that day dealt a bevy of blows to the nation, to include the construction industry. Ruddell said that their bids for the project felt an impact, so much that the headline in a Dec. 14 Washington Post article later that year read “Wilson Bridge Bid Called a ‘Budget Buster.’”
That bid’s price tag was $860 million, exceeding the estimated cost by $373 million. It was also the only contract bid for the project, which added a degree of difficulty to the steps taken to cut down the cost. “It took a lot of soul searching to figure out how to bring the cost of this project back into a range we could swallow,” Ruddell said.
To make their plan work, Ruddell said the contract was broken up into three smaller pieces. “We felt like the construction market could consume projects of the range of $2 (million) to $3 million much better than one $600 million contract.” Other measures taken included reworking the language in the contract to make it more appealing to the contractors, like reducing the insurance requirements or the performance and payment bond. The product of these steps was a set of three contract bids at total cost of $492 million, falling within 1 percent of the original estimation of $487 million.
Being in a highly congested area, one of the major goals in the project was to avoid impeding on the flow of traffic, which meant working around the traffic for as long as they could. “We were building this job for almost six years before we touched any traffic, but we weren’t playing with the lanes,” Ruddell said. Once they couldn’t avoid traffic any longer, Ruddell said the contractors had to follow a very precise schedule during that phase of construction to prevent massive backups and resident displeasure.
While Ruddell finished his involvement with the project in 2009, the entire project closed out in 2014. Much of the process was hard work with countless hours spent in meetings and in labor, but there were plentiful fun moments, as well. When the original bridge was set to be demolished in August 2006, those in charge of the project decided to add some flair to the event.
“We had a bridge demolition competition where the person with the worst commute got to push the plunger,” Ruddell said. After temporarily closing flights at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and clearing mariners off the Potomac river, “we put on some fireworks,” he said.
Financially, the project came full circle when the finished product amounted to less than the permitted budget. According to Ruddell, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge’s total project cost by its completion was $2.357 billion, which was $86 million less than the approved budget in 2001 of $2.443 billion and included added spending in throughout the project.
Whether they reside in the area or are just passing through, those who use the bridge will get to enjoy it for a long time before having to worry about new construction again. Ruddell said that the modern Woodrow Wilson Bridge is expected to function properly for 75 years. For a project faced with multiple challenges early on, the bridge is considered a modern-day success story on all fronts.