Tonawanda Creek Bank

Back a little bit less than seven years ago a sheet pile wall was installed in a failed attempt to stabilize a roughly three hundred foot long stretch of Tonawanda Creek in Lockport, NY.

Within a very short period of time, the sheet pile project (of which Arbour had no part) failed and Arbour was asked at that point to provide a recommendation of an engineering consultant who would preform an independent analysis of the failure mechanism and provide a new design to remove and replace the original work.

Once such redesign was complete Arbour was asked to provide construction management services related to such work. Extensive preconstruction services were preformed which included several visits to local quarries and development of a procurement strategy which allowed for separate and combined bids for various components of the work.

Separate Prime contracts were let in June of 2007, separation of the work was proven to save approximately fifteen percent of the total value of the work. The project has had it’s challenges, but the dry summer minimized the extent of required NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation temporary stream controls and allowed side wall excavations to be held tight.

The base of the excavation readily accepted the scheduled geotextile mat and select fill and eighteen inch lifts of same have been installed in fairly rapid succession.

Two inch run of crusher stone has been overlaid with heavy stone fill (rip rap.) To the date of this writing Arbour continues to provide a broad range of construction phase services related to the project.