By Craig Wilkins

Maintenance crews from District 8 joined other responders Oct. 29 when a freight train derailed in Clara City, spreading a cloud of noxious, acidic fumes over the area.

The 3:30 a.m. mishap forced an evacuation of the area and required closing part of Hwy 7 for about 14 hours. Two of the 80 tanker cars involved came to rest against pillars of the bridge that carries Hwy 7 over the Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks.

A tanker car carrying hydrochloric acid ruptured during the incident, releasing the fumes.  

Dennis Marty, maintenance supervisor at Willmar, said district maintenance workers and bridge inspectors arrived at the scene about 6 a.m. They worked with Chippewa County officials, the State Patrol and area fire departments to bring the situation under control.

Marty was alerted about the empty ethanol cars that rolled into the pillars by Kurt Haugen, a District 8 transportation specialist on duty as a volunteer with the Clara City Fire Department.

BNSF officials granted Mn/DOT’s request that the tanker cars leaning against the pillars be removed first and that inspectors Geri Vick and Howard Strom be on hand. Marty said he wanted the inspectors to see how the pillars reacted when the tanker cars were pulled away.

Their inspection, Marty said, found only superficial damage.

Workers from the Granite Falls, Montevideo and Madison truck stations provided traffic control during the incident.

Marty said government and railroad officials meshed well in their response to the derailment.

“We need calcium chloride for dust suppression on our gravel road detour, so the railroad obtained a truckload from the Twin Cities,” Marty said, “and they paid for it.”

Judge denies request to halt work on project

The construction of the new Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis will continue on schedule with today’s ruling by a Ramsey County District Court judge who denied a request for a temporary restraining order to halt the new I-35W bridge project.

“The citizens of Minnesota should be very pleased with Judge (Edward) Cleary’s well-reasoned decision to allow the I-35W Saint Anthony Falls bridge project to move forward,” said Bob McFarlin, assistant to the commissioner, in a prepared statement released to the news media.

“The economic impact of the loss of the I-35W bridge is approximately $500,000 per day. It is vital to metro area commuters and the state’s economy that the I-35W bridge be reconstructed as soon as possible. On all points of law used in analyzing the motion to halt the project, Judge Cleary ruled in favor of Mn/DOT and the state. Mn/DOT and its design-build contractor, Flatiron-Manson, will continue to move the bridge project forward toward its anticipated opening by the end of 2008.”
News media tour of construction site scheduled for Nov. 1                                      

Mn/DOT and the Flatiron-Manson construction team will conduct a photo opportunity Nov. 1 of construction activities at the new I-35W bridge replacement site.  

In addition to concrete demolition this week, work crews will drill a test shaft on the north side of the river (near the new bridge pier 3) beginning Nov.1. The test process uses a diesel-powered pressure rig to test how deep into the ground crews must insert the structure of the new bridge to support its weight.  

Community members select design elements for new I-35W bridge

More than 80 community members gathered at a northeast Minneapolis hotel Oct. 24 to help designers of the new I-35W bridge make final decisions on a number of aesthetic features of the bridge design.

Residents, business and community members, representatives from the parks, preservation and arts communities, as well as various elected and appointed officials from local, state and federal governments, voted on various aspects of the bridge design including pier shape, lighting and color.

Their preferences?

• Pier shape – Pier Design A, with curved 70’ tall pillars, was selected by 74 percent of community participants.
• Retaining walls – Retaining walls built of Mississippi River Valley stone were selected with an average rating of 7.7 out of a possible 10--nearly twice as high as ratings for the other two options.
• Gateway monuments – Participants provided comments and feedback that will guide designers as they finalize designs for the entranceways of the bridge.
• Railings – Full open railings were selected with an average rating of 7.4 out of 10.
• Color – White was selected by nearly 67 percent of participants.
• Feature lighting – Voting ended in a tie between a full lighting option and an option that involved lighting the superstructure and underside of the bridge piers. Participants agreed to allow the Visual Quality Advisory Team for the project to make a final decision on lighting after reviewing all of the completed design choices.

The results of the charette process will be combined with public feedback from recent Mn/DOT open houses and other opportunities to complete the bridge design process.

Images of the design choices selected during the charette process can be viewed at http://www.dot.state.mn.us/i35wbridge/rebuild/.

By Craig Wilkins

Where there’s a will, they say, there’s a way.

In this case the will centered on finding the resources to create a 10-ton, north-south route to link northwestern Minnesota cities more directly with state highways in the region.  

The needs of manufacturers in Roseau, Warroad and other communities to ship their products safely and efficiently spurred the project.

The way to get it done involved Bemidji/District 2 and three counties. Each pooled their resources to upgrade existing county roads to become part of the state’s 10-ton highway system.

“At first there was no money appropriated, but we put our heads and resources together to find a way to do it,” said Lou Tasa, state aid engineer with District 2/Bemijdi.

Planning for the project started in 2000.

Officials from Polk, Pennington and Marshall counties, District 2 and the region’s Area Transportation Partnership agreed to improve 35 miles of seven- and nine-ton county state-aid highways to 10-ton per axle standards, Tasa said.

The route extends from Gully north to Grygla.

The district and the counties combined state aid funds while ATP officials and other regional leaders secured $6.4 million in high-priority project funds from Congress.  

“Before this project, our section of it had extensive cracking and rode like a roller coaster,” said Rich Sanders, Polk County engineer.

The four-mile section of Polk County Road 2 near Gully traverses a tamarack swamp and a peat bog.

“The peat goes from 20 feet deep to endless,” Sanders said.

Two miles of the road had to be completely rebuilt. Sanders said the county used two layers of polypropylene grids and two 7.5-inch layers of aggregate to increase drainage and add flexibility to the roadway. It’s surfaced with four-inches of asphalt.  

In addition to being strengthened for heavier loads, the route now includes additional turn lanes that minimize traffic conflicts when the big rigs need to slow down and move over to make their turns.

The new 10-ton system provides trunk highway access that extends from Hwy 11 in Roseau south to Hwy 2 in Bagley. Tasa and county officials expect the project to be completed in November.

“Completing this project wasn’t easy,” Tasa said. “We had to innovate as we went along, whether that was rebuilding roads through deep bogs or keeping a host of people informed of our project’s purpose and progress.”

“Roads don’t stop at county lines,” said Rick Kjonaas, systems manager with the State Aid Division. “This initiative is a great example of people coming together to find ways to improve the state’s transportation corridors.”

By Craig Wilkins

Watch out—standard behavior in this work place includes shouting, swearing, trading insults and occasionally throwing tools of their trade at coworkers.  

And what kind of work place might this be?

• The pit area during a NASCAR race?
• A meat packing plant?  
• A hospital emergency room?

Give yourself an A if you chose the ER.

Donald Gault, director of Ramsey County’s Initiative for Violence-free Families and Communities, cites the emergency room’s dysfunction as an example of what he calls “normalized deviance” in the work place.

“At first, doctors, nurses and other staff used those behaviors to deal with intense situational stress,” he said, “but without intervention, the behavior eventually became the norm.”

Gault spoke during a violence prevention workshop for managers Oct. 17 in St. Cloud. Mn/DOT’s Violent Incident Advisory Team sponsored the event.

VIAT chair DeLorah Curry, Workforce Development, said the workshop was held to re-energize Mn/DOT’s efforts to ensure a safe, inclusive and productive workplace as well as to prevent workplace violence.

“It’s also time for district and office leaders to share what they’ve learned about managing challenging situations with their counterparts from other areas in Mn/DOT,” Curry said.  

Mn/DOT staff participated in the workshop that included performances by Theater at Work.

Discussions focused on the need for Mn/DOT staff to remain alert about behavior in their workplaces in the wake of stressors such as the Interstate 35W bridge collapse, floods that ravaged southeastern Minnesota and intense public scrutiny of the department’s performance.

Theater at Work’s presentation used professional actors to illustrate how troublesome workplace situations can suddenly arise from poor communication, unclear role assignments and losing sight of common goals.

Actors demonstrated how easily disagreements can become disruptive or violent from gossip and teasing, rumors and unclear job responsibilities, for example.

Then the actors replayed the sketch to show how early intervention can clarify and resolve the underlying issues and restore team harmony.

Participants explored those options and considered how they might use them in their places of work.

Joe Pignato, right of way program manager, Land Management and Surveys, said he was stunned by research presented and the extent of workplace violence in the United States.

Each year, participants learned, there are 16 million incidences of verbal harassment and bullying in the nation’s work places. An average of two million instances of physical contact such as shoving, pushing and hitting occur each year.

“The sketches showed how quickly verbal harassment can lead to violence,” he said. “They made it clear how we all are responsible to achieve our goal for zero tolerance in the work place.”

“This was a very helpful presentation,” said Brenda Wrobel, Willmar District administrative manager. “It showed us how easy it is to look the other way until a situation erupts. We need to use a more proactive approach and provide all district employees with tools to prevent violence and other abusive behavior.

By Donna Lindberg

Consider this: by 2011, about 26 percent of all Mn/DOT employees are eligible to retire. The numbers are even higher in the engineering classifications with an average of 46 percent eligible to retire by 2011.

This trend is not unique to Mn/DOT. The transportation industry as a whole is experiencing a loss of expertise due to retirement and attrition, according to Trent Weber, Workforce Planning/HRIS supervisor.

“Changes in business priorities and technology have impacted the number of employees performing certain activities and the skill sets associated with those activities,” Weber said.

Staffing shortages will affect all state agencies in the near future. By 2017, approximately 39 percent of state workers will reach the average retirement age of 61 and the availability of skilled workers is projected to decrease. These statistics prompted Gov. Tim Pawlenty to issue an executive order on Oct. 2 directing state agencies to conduct workforce planning.

The governor’s executive order is the result of the efforts of a Drive Toward Excellence steering committee that includes agency Human Resource directors or delegates. Weber represents Mn/DOT on this committee.  

“We need to analyze where Mn/DOT is going and the required skills sets for our future workforce,” Weber said, adding that workforce planning is not just replacement filling.

“Workforce planning provides staffing strategies in areas where changes are likely to occur in the future so management can better prepare for the unknown,” Weber said. “It will help management make more informed staffing decisions based on where to focus resources to meet the department’s future needs.”

Every agency will do a workforce plan and report back to the Department of Employee Relations next year. DOER will then do an enterprise-wide workforce plan.

Mn/DOT is ahead of the game since many aspects of workforce planning have been in progress for over a decade, said Mark Wikelius, acting Human Resources director and Drive Toward Excellence director.

“Mn/DOT is one of the leaders in this effort,” said Wikelius. “We are far ahead of any other agency.”

Mn/DOT’s workforce planning model consists of five phases. The first—determining potential future changes in activities and the resources needed for these activities—has already been done. Phases two through four—determining what training, recruiting and staffing efforts will be needed—will be done over the next year.

The final phase, and report to DOER, will involve all Human Resource activities: staffing, training, labor relations and organization development.

“The agency is always looking at ways to be more efficient and streamlined,” said Weber, who recently presented a “State of the Workforce” report to division directors describing Mn/DOT’s workforce opportunities and challenges for the future.

 “Now is the time to examine where Mn/DOT is going as an agency and start to do the required actions to attain that vision,” Weber said. “Efforts like this take time and commitment from all levels of the organization. As my uncle used to say ‘It takes time to turn a battleship around in a bathtub.’ The time to take action is now.”

Minnesota won two awards at the recent National Association of State Aviation Officials Convention in Portland, Oregon.

Ray J. Rought, former director of Aeronautics, received the Kenneth A. Rowe Ambassador of Aviation Award that honors state aviation directors who “embody the spirit, optimism and fierce pride in the capabilities of the state aviation agencies.” Rought is the sixth state director since 1994 to receive this award.

Janese Thatcher, Aeronautics Aviation Safety, Education and Training manager, accepted the Most Innovative State Program Award, which is given to a state program that contributes to the quality of service in the aviation community or the public. The award recognized Minnesota ’s program for reducing general aviation accidents and fatalities. This is the third national award Thatcher has received for aviation Safety, Education and Training section programs.

Carlo Lachmansingh, a Minneapolis electrical equipment supplier, earned recognition as the disadvantaged business enterprise owner of the year by Mn/DOT’s Office of Civil Rights.

Each year the department recognizes a business owned by people of color or women for their contributions to the community and the goals of the DBE program.

The program’s purpose is to increase the numbers and percentages of women- and minority-owned firms that receive contracts for work on federally funded transportation projects.

A native of the South American nation of Guyana, Lachmansingh has operated his business, Carlo Lachmansingh Sales, for 15 years. The business has three employees. The firm posted sales of more than $4 million in 2006.

He was cited for having exceptional knowledge of the highway construction industry, setting high ethical standards and upholding the principles and standards of the federal DBE certification program. He was also recognized for his support of other DBE firms in Minnesota.

Deputy Commissioner Lisa Freese, and Hope Jensen, Mn/DOT’s civil rights director, presented the award to Lachmansingh on Oct. 18.