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As you know, Ariat is the official Dirt Talk podcast sponsor. And at this point, we've talked plenty about their footwear, their workwear. But now it is winter and boy, is it cold. It was 17 degrees this morning. I had to warm the truck up. But just because it's cold does not mean the work stops. So to get the job done, you need the best, warmest workwear possible. And Ariat has a long list of outerwear, amazing jackets, pants and other goods available now. You can shop at their website, ariat.com Dirttalk that is ariat.com Dirtttalk hi, everybody. Welcome back. Dirt Talk podcast, Monday edition. We are going to read more from the Kiewit story. This will be the last reading. Just one more very cool chapter. All the chapters are very cool, but this one is about building stuff, which is extremely cool. So to get right into it, here we go, chapter XVII, which is. What would that be? 10, 15, 17, I believe. If I'm not a total idiot, well, I'm a total idiot. We all know that. Adams and Waterways. When the government in 1952 asked PKS, Peter Kiewit and Sons to handle one of the biggest construction jobs ever to be undertaken by a private construction firm, the company was ready to accept the challenge. I should also say this is. Let me, let me, let me, let me, let me see. This is from the book the Kiewit Remarkable Man, Remarkable Company by Hawas J. Lemprich. I did not say that. Right, but that's it. Okay. When the government in 1952 asked PKS, Peter Kiewit and Sons to handle one of the biggest construction jobs ever to be undertaken by a private construction firm, the company was ready to accept the challenge. The Atomic Energy Commission wanted PKS to build all by itself, not in a joint venture, a complex, a complex of buildings and facilities for a gaseous diffusion system to refine uranium 235 for its military and peaceful nuclear operations. Project consisted of scores of buildings, some nearly half a mile long, on a 3,700 acre site 20 miles north of Portsmouth, Ohio, 70 miles south of Columbus. The project cost was 1.219 billion, and it was to take five years to complete. And it meant marshaling a workforce of more than 20,000 craftsmen of all imaginable skills, plus support personnel. The proposal was staggering. Pate already had his best people engaged in giant projects at Greenland and Garrison Dam. In the thoughts of accepting another job, which was more than Greenland and Garrison put together, concerned him deeply. Later, after he had agreed to get going for the AEC he gave a little talk at a luncheon of local business and civic leaders at Portsmouth and told them he wasn't so sure he didn't have a yellow streak down his back. When, after his acceptance, he began to understand the enormity of what faced his company. This was the biggest operation it had ever gotten into. One of his major concerns was that PKS might concentrate so heavily on Portsmouth that it would overlook its normal business. He told his employees in a signed editorial in the company publication keyways in October 1952. We believe this is the largest contract ever awarded a construction company. There has been much publicity about our being awarded the contract, but the reasons for our receiving it have not been so well publicized. We were selected because of our construction, labor safety and financial record. Because all employees have had a part in our accomplishment, the award of this contract should be a source of satisfaction to each of you. At the same time, however, we must recognize the fact that this job presents a real challenge to us. Although the Portsmouth job is a big one, projects of this size are few and far between. This one will be finished in five years. While it is being performed as well as when it is finished, we want to continue doing business the same as we have in the past. To stay in business over a period of years, we must continue to compete for all types of work, maintain our same high standards of construction, avoid work stoppages, complete our work on time to the satisfaction of the contract owners, and last but not least, make a profit. If we do the big job well and at the same time keep our other work running efficiently, we will be one step nearer to our goal, which is and always has been to be the best contracting organization on earth. Having given the warning about not putting all of PKS's eggs in the Portsmouth basket, Pete Kiewick got busy assigning key personnel to the job. George Holling was brought back from the Greenland project, took a brief vacation, was told by Pete that he would be in charge, and then accompanied Pete and a half dozen of other PKS supervisors on the company DC3 to Knoxville, Tennessee. Evelyn Kiewit also went along. It was her and Pete's honeymoon. Their Atomic Energy Commission people from Oak Ridge conducted a series of lectures and seminars, briefing all told some 30pks people on what would be expected of them and what they would be asked to construct. At first, the government had not decided on a location for the plant. The site was involved in the inevitable politics of a federal employment plum. But finally the choice of Portsmouth area was announced based on the high unemployment in the south Ohio, north Kentucky region. That's when PKS people moved to Portsmouth. The first couple of years were pretty hectic, said Holling. We pulled people out of every district we could get our hands on to build an organization. I think it was one of the biggest jobs of all time in terms of the number of people working on it. At one time, more than 20,000. What it amounted to is that I spent most of my time being the mayor of a pretty good sized town. Clarence L. Galmore, flown in from a visit to the Garrison Dam project, supposedly on a temporary assignment, lived in the Portsmouth Hotel for six months before Pete told him he might as well find a permanent place to live. PKS's job was to oversee the construction of the entire facility, scores of buildings, utilities, roads, and service facilities. Two of the buildings were 600ft wide and close to 2,000ft long. Another was even wider, although not quite as long. PKS had never done anything of that magnitude before, but then neither had anybody else. So PKS people approached it as they did everything else. Big means that it is a combination of a lot of smaller elements. That meant breaking everything down to its simplest forms. In order to spread the business around, the AEC asked PKS to employ as many subcontractors as it possibly could. This meant working with some companies unknown to pks, but no serious problems arose. PKS simply put one of its supervisors in control of each subcontractor's contribution and demanded PKS standards. It worked out well, said Holling. Logistics, the process of getting the right amount of material to the job site in time but not too soon, was at the heart of organizing the job. Each structure was broken down to its components. Each of the bigger buildings became a separate project in itself. The AEC had its representatives there, as did the architects and design engineers, Goodyear Company, which was to operate the finished plant, suppliers and subcontractors. Every day over lunch, so as not to impinge on work time, these representatives gathered in a kind of board of directors session, with George Holling as chairman. They ate regular cafeteria fare in a small, separate temporary building decorated with white Sheetrock walls and nicknamed the Blue Room. Each morning, Holling's assistant would prepare an agenda for the day's luncheon. Get together without an agenda, meetings wander afield, said Holling, and the core of the agenda was the schedule. Everything that had to be done for the next 14 days was outlined on the schedule, and every noon day one was crossed off and a 14th day was added to the list. We didn't waste any time, said Holling. We talked while we ate. The meetings weren't allowed to drag. Everybody was too busy to sit. And Gabriel, one by one, I would go around the table to hear of their problems. We wanted to hear about problems while they were still small. You know, you don't help yourself by walking around a problem. You have to wade right in. At first, Pete Kiewit was around a lot, helping with the major problem, getting sufficient talented supervisors at the right spots. When that problem was solved and it was early on, he didn't feel it necessary to be around so much and devoted himself to seeing to it that PKS was awarded its share of convention work in other states. One of my major satisfactions, said Holling, now retired, is that an awful amount of top people today worked for me. At Portsmouth. It was a major proving ground for personnel. Ron Smathers, home Office administrative manager today, was there as a project comptroller. There were 400 people in the fiscal unit alone for timekeeping, payroll and accounting. PKS had to build parking lots for the thousands of workmen before it could hire them. Then it had to provide ways to keep accurate records of their working hours. And it was responsible for the extreme security measures required by the aec. There were doctors and nurses, housekeepers and cooks. We had to take charge of a lot of things not connected with the construction business, said Smathers, because of the magnitude of the project, including the fact that it covered a vast amount of ground. The normal process of a supervisor talking to his subordinate, who in turn would pass the word along to a foreman, would not work. By the time instructions got down to the man with the hammer, they might become garbled. So written procedures had to be established for nearly all types of orders and instructions. Ed lynch, later a vice president, board member and regional manager, was a young engineer at Portsmouth. We got involved in all kinds of things you aren't ordinarily involved in, he said. He was placed in charge of unloading railcars, commonplace today at major projects. But something new. Back in the early 1950s, two rail lines led into the job site, the Norfolk and Western from one side and the Chesapeake and Ohio from the other. And they kept lynch and his crew of 350 men hopping, unloading crushed rock lumber and other materials from the 50 to 80 boxcars that arrived every day. Lynch remembers vividly one incident involving Pete Kiewit. It allowed the young engineer to learn a lot about his top boss. Lynch's men this day were unloading lumber, lumber that was loaded by hand and unloaded by hand. They had at their disposal just about every piece of equipment they needed once the lumber was out of the car. Straddle type carriers, flatbed trucks, rollers, cranes, forklifts. Over a period of days, a system had been devised. So many men inside the car, so many operating the roller to get the lumber to the flatbeds. A man operating the straddle carrier. So many to unload at the lumber yard. It worked out well with a crew of 11 men per boxcar. One day, project manager George Hauling and Pete Kiewit dropped by to see Lynch's operation. Pete watched for a while and wondered if there wasn't a more efficient way to do it, said Lynch. They shifted a man from the boxcar to the roller, from the roller to the boxcar. They turned the roller this way and that. They tried every conceivable combination of men and equipment to get the lumber out of the boxcar and over to the lumber yard quickly and efficiently. They spent two hours at it and finally came up with a combination that allowed us to do the work with 10 men instead of 11. Pete didn't really have to figure out a way to save one man on that job. One man out of more than 20,000 on a project that was being done on a fee basis rather than a fixed price. But neither could Pete Kiewit rest easily and move on to another inspection. If he thought there was a way to do something, a better way, his better way. Dedication paid off handsomely, not only for PKS profit, but the taxpayer. The Portsmouth job was finished in four years instead of five, and it cost the government $800 million instead of the estimated 1.219 billion. This kind of performance caught the attention of the entire contracting industry and brought two letters of praise from officials of the AEC. The first, written in September 1953, was from Louis L. Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who commented on a congressional investigation of work at Portsmouth. Congressman George Bender has sent me a copy of the report of his subcommittee's investigation of the conduct of the Portsmouth project. I commend you and your entire organization for the high quality of work which has led to the issuance of such a report. We are particularly gratified that one of the largest construction projects ever undertaken by the commission has earned the commendation of the committee. I would appreciate your conveying this commendation to your entire staff. Pete saw to it that the letter was reprinted in Keyways. And then, three years later, at the conclusion of Portsmouth, another letter found its way into Keyways. It was from K.E. fields General Manager of the AEC and said, I am taking this opportunity on behalf of the Atomic Energy Commission to express appreciation for the excellent record set by your company in its work at Portmouth. The completion of such a complex operation in advance of schedule and the knowledge that the Commission's defense program has been accelerated by it should be a source of great pride to your organization. Pete Kiewit didn't see the letter as a tribute to himself personally. He told his employees, the above letter is a tribute to the sincere effort of all the people who contributed to the successful completion of the AEC plant. While Portsmouth was being wrapped up in 1956, PKS turned its attention to another major project, this time an international one involving both the United States and Canada. The St. Lawrence Seaway on the St. Lawrence river that serves as the boundary between the United States and Canada for 200 miles or so east of the Great Lakes proved to be a mixed blessing. A French explorer by the name of Jacques Cartier in 1534 became the first white man to sail up the St. Lawrence river, the mighty stream that drains the largest body of freshwater in the world. The Great Lakes system. For centuries the river served as a means of transportation and commerce into the North American continent. Early in the 20th century, interest grew in the possibility of sending oceangoing vessels into the Great Lakes to Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, even as far into the United States upper Midwest as Duluth, Minnesota. At mid century the dream began to become a reality. Canada took the lead. Then, by 1954 the United States Congress had established the St. Lawrence Seaway Corporation to oversee this country's contribution to providing a channel that would support large ships. First construction got underway in 1955 to create a system of canals and locks, permitting ships of 25 foot draft to sail to America's heartland at the western tip of Lake Superior, 602ft higher than the sea level Gulf of St. Lawrence on the Atlantic Ocean. PKS was involved in five of the first major projects, two as a contributing partner in joint ventures and three as the sponsoring partner. Its contributing participation was in the Long Salt Dam, entirely in the United States and Barnhart Island Powerhouse, half in the U.S. half in Canada. And it was the managing partner on the Long Salt Canal and Diversion Cut F, both with Morrison Knudsen and the Iroquois Dam with Arthur A. Johnson Corporation and Al Johnson Construction Company. The Iroquois Dam is located about 70 miles downstream from the eastern ridge of Lake Ontario near the town of Ogdenburg, New York. Its purpose is to regulate the flow of water out of Lake Ontario, controlling both the Lake level and the volume of water flowing down the river. The term downriver creates some confusion. Look at the map and you'll see that the river flows in a northerly direction, contrary to the flow of most rivers in the United States. The concrete control dam, finished in early 1958, was 2,400ft long and 72ft wide at its base. Rising 60ft from the spillway slab to the roadway running across the top. 32 Vertical lift sluice gates control the river flow through the dam. Another 24 miles downstream or northeast of Iroquois Dam near Messana, New York. PKS was at work on the other two major projects, the Long Salt Canal, which enables ships to travel around Long Salt Dam and the Barnhart Island Powerhouse and diversion Cut F across Long Salt Island. The cut was required to provide a channel for diverting the river through the completed first section of Long Salt Dam. During a part of its construction, it was necessary to remove some 12 million cubic yards of glacial till and marine clay for excavation of the six mile long canal, which was 54ft deep in places and 440ft wide. Locks at either end of the canal are capable of raising and lowering ships 90ft in two separate lifts from the pool level above the dam and powerhouse to the downstream river level. It was also necessary to build 5 miles of compacted earth filled dikes to confine the dam's reservoir. Cut F called for a channel across long salt island. 3,600ft long, 600ft wide and 92ft deep. The canal and the cut were pretty fair sized ditches, sliced out of material which had been deposited by glaciers centuries and centuries before when the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River Valley were created. Ah, the glacial till. They called it blue mud. Among the names fit to print. One supervisor described it as the damnedest, hardest, orneriest stuff ever contracted On a common excavation basis. It was heavy, tenacious, contrary. It was hard to dig and load, wearing out the teeth of front end loaders and dragline buckets, tearing up shovels dry. It was like a rock. When it rained, the material turned to mush and flowed like soup. What appeared to be a solid surface was actually heavily compressed rock powder, an overlay of the stuff resting on a layer of wood watery muck. There was no way it could be used for haul roads because the pressure of heavy equipment brought the moisture to the surface and the vehicles would sink to their axles. Everybody who bid on the St. Lawrence work, winners and losers, were fooled by the soil and the work was bid far too low. The contracts were let in a series, one right after the other, and all five that PKS was involved in were signed before the facts were known. PKS people, for example, thought the material would be similar to Platte river gravel, easy to work with and good for compacting. This is a case where the whole industry missed it, said Vice president Lero. It's not that exact of a science. You know, a dry road looks a lot different from a wet one. You can be fooled. Some of the contractors involved went to court, but were unable to convince the court that the actual working conditions had not been adequately interpreted by the owner's borings. Pete took full blame. I contributed to this fiasco by committing and perhaps encouraging the district manager to spread himself too thin, he said, with the result that we face what could well be a substantial loss. There was an error in judgment, a breakdown in communication. PKS's five contracts ranged from 12 million to 35 million, and most of them lost some money. Homer Scott was commiserating with Pete Kiewit one day about the company's losses and Pete decided to look on the brighter side. He told Homer, one of the contractors has a $5 million contract and he's losing $5 million. The company had violated one of its own rules in that it did not have all of the facts on the weather and subsoil. But PKS fulfilled its obligation and in 1959 the St Lawrence Seaway was opened to ocean going vessels. Nine years later PKS had the gumption to go back and bid and win a contract to repair a set of locks. And the St Lawrence did have its lighter moments. You could stand in one place near the locks and almost reach over and shake the hands with the Russian sailors as their ships sailed upriver. PKS is an old hand at moving water. In 1946 it had started construction of the Friant Kern Canal in California, building more than 100 miles of this 151 mile long concrete lined canal which turned the deserts into an agricultural wonderland and created prosperity in Southern California. California has always had plenty of water, but much of it is in the wrong places. The California Water Plan, inaugurated shortly after World War II and still underway, is an ambitious program to transport excess fresh water from the northern portion of the state to arid counties in the south. The overall project, a grandiose one, consists of huge dams and reservoirs, hundreds of miles of canals and numerous pumping plants to lift water over the mountains. It is the greatest undertaking of its kind, overshadowing irrigation along Egypt's Nile river in the history of mankind. And will ultimately deliver four and a half million acre feet of water a year. PKS had been involved from the very beginning, starting with the Friant Kern Canal, 85ft wide at the top, 36ft wide at the bottom and 17ft deep. In six years from 1945 through 1951, PKS built enough of the F and K canal to pave a highway 150 miles long, 6 inches thick and 30ft wide, used enough cement to fill a train of boxcars 20 miles long and enough reinforced steel to build 3500 cars. One of Bob Hyde's first assignments for PKS shortly after World War II was to head for Southern California and scour the colleges and universities for young engineering graduates to work on the canal. A job that was going to take five or six days lasted six weeks, but Hyde found enough, either from the schools or getting out of the service to handle the canal work. The first PKS stretches went through the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas where excavation was difficult. Eventually it carried water from the Friant Dam near Fresno to Bakersfield. Ed lynch was a young engineer on the job in 1950 and he recalls one veteran PKS superintendent telling him that as soon as they put water in those things, property values were going to jump. And he was so right, said Lynch. In 1951, PKS received a letter from Jack Rodner, district manager from the Bureau of Reclamation. On those reaches of the Friant Kern Canal that were constructed by your company, a splendid record was made. The workmanship and the manner of which your contracts were expedited made it possible for water users along the canal route to receive delivery one irrigation season in advance of specified contract termination dates. This accomplishment has had inestimable value to the general economy of the Sand Hoaquin Valley. As soon as pks would complete one contract, most were for 10 to 15 miles at a time, it would bid on and win another, A process that continued for more than six years until the canal was finished, bringing water to nearly a million acres of now fertile cropland in California's Central Valley. In later stages of the California Water Plan, PKS did its share of projects too, including Monticello Dam, 35 miles west of Sacramento, a reservoir for water storage used in lifting water 254ft to the head of the California Aqueduct. The California Aqueduct, begun in the 1960s, is a concrete lined, 444 mile long man made river carrying water from the San Francisco Bay Delta area to central and Southern California. PKS's first four contracts included the San Luis Canal, Button Willow, Settlement Ponds, Button Willow Canal and Pearl Blossom Pumping Plant. In another project, a joint venture to build the Newhall and Balboa tunnels, PKS people worked in a bore, part of which was 50ft high and 27ft across, using a 320 ton mining machine that literally ripped the face of the tunnel loose with its five fingered hands that oscillated across the face of the tunnel. So big was this device that 30 hydraulic rams were required to push it forward in four foot spurts. @ Pearl Blossom, a gigantic pumping station designed to lift the water 540ft into the final section of the canal over the Tehachapi Mountains, concrete for the four story underground structure was poured in 118 degree temperature. It was necessary to add crushed ice to the concrete mixture drum to compete with the steaming summer heat. And California wasn't PKS's only contribution to the miracle of irrigation. Some of the other projects included in 1951, PKS built the Angostura Canal near Hot Springs, South Dakota to irrigate 25,000 acres and included a 30 mile long main canal plus 60 miles of laterals. Built 389 miles of waterline near Conrad, Montana to serve a seven county area covering 1,150 square miles of prime wheatland, the largest single water district in the world, and participated in a $1.6 billion program of diverting water from the Colorado river to south central Arizona, lifting water from Lake Havasu and bringing it southeast via aqueducts to the Phoenix and Tucson areas. It provides domestic water for the two cities and the irrigation water for the surrounding desert. Some of this water is carried beneath riverbeds that normally are dry but occasionally become torrents during the desert's flash floods. PKS won a $34 million contract to lay 24,000ft of giant pipe 24 1/2ft in diameter, including three such river crossings. So that is the final reading from the book A Kiewit Remarkable Man, Remarkable company. It's a great read. Very hard to find because it's an old book. Let me see the year here. Copyright 1981. So it's over 40 years old. I'm glad I have a copy, but hopefully you were able to enjoy those readings. If you haven't heard the other two, there are two. If you scroll back into the podcast feed, you'll find them. They're great on Greenland and on building missile silos. Highly, highly recommend. If you have any other suggestions as far as what I should on future podcasts, let us know. Dirt Talk buildwith.com. if you enjoyed it, send it to others. Help us grow the show. And with that, we'll see you next time. Stay dirty, everybody. Bob's your uncle.