JOB: I-29 & Russell Project Sioux Falls, South Dakota
CONTRACTORS: Ames Construction and T & R Contracting
Rebuilding the 1-29 and Russell Street Interchange in Sioux Falls, South Dakota

When the spotlight is on, good performers usually rise to the occasion. That is the case for two construction companies using Bid-Well pavers on two high profile projects in South Dakota.

Ames Construction of Burnsville, Minnesota, has been using Bid-Well pavers for more than a dozen years. When they won the right to rebuild the I-29 and Russell Street interchange in Sioux Falls, SD, they knew the paving part of the job would be handled by a Bid-Well.

Ames purchased a new Bid-Well 4800 Paver for the $33 million project. A total of 5 new bridges were to be built, with 400,000 square yards of concrete paving.

Project Manager Todd Planting said the Bid-Well paver is kept busy with some unique paving challenges.

"We use a Bid-Well 4800 on all five of our bridge decks," Planting said. "The Russell Street bridge is two pours. It's about 240 feet long, with 2 pours that are 55 feet wide each, but it's on a skew, so we set up the Bid-Well for 72-foot (52.4 m) width on skew.

"The Benson Avenue bridges are 208 feet long, 56 feet wide. They're single span, steel girder bridges, two rather big, identical bridges.

"The smaller ramp bridge is a 42 foot wide bridge, but it's 67 feet wide on a real funny skew that's actually on a radius. That will be a tricky little bridge."

The I-29 and Russell Street project is on a two-year schedule and is running on schedule so far, thanks in part to Bid-Well performance.

"The Bid-Well 4800 has been fantastic. We haven't had one problem with it. The Bid-Well is very flexible. We can use the one machine to do a lot of different work. We're doing these big bridges on skews, they're big pours and everything has gone smoothly."

Rich Marquez knows about Bid-Well performance firsthand. Marquez is the Ames Construction Bridge Superintendent on the project. He has worked with Bid-Well pavers for a majority of the time the company has owned and used them.

"Ames Construction got our first Bid-Well in 1990 to pave bridges at the Denver International Airport from the parking structure to the terminal," Marquez said. "We've been using them ever since."

Some of the new features on the Bid-Well 4800 Ames is using on the Sioux Falls project have worked well, especially in terms of labor saving and efficiency.

"The bottom carriage has a lifting device that lets us walk from one approach slab to the next one, right over the bridge," Marquez said. "That's a real handy feature.
"This heavy-duty machine has a manual crown adjuster, which comes in real handy. You don't have to crawl up on the machine, you can just do everything from the deck, put the crown into the bridge deck itself. If you have to crank all your legs manually to crank the machine up it can be uneven at times, and then you're looking at another complete setup. With this feature, we just lift it up, walk across the bridge and we're ready to pour the other approach slab. It takes all of the headache out of doing another setup and saves us all kinds of time. You can do both approaches in one day."

The versatility of the 4800 has impressed Marquez, especially on a project that has different paving requirements for virtually every one of the 5 bridges.

"This Bid-Well does a radius, straight bridge, skewed bridge, and we have all that on this job. And the Bid-Well is going to be able to do all of the different aspects of what we have going. With one machine we're able to do all these different jobs."

Marquez' 12 years of good experiences with Bid-Well goes beyond the machines, including the service offered by the company.

"They're just good machines, and the people at Bid-Well are helpful. They'll come out and help you set up, and if you ever have a part or anything you need they'll get it to you overnight. They're just a good company to work with."