Cherry Hill Construction is no stranger to very large heavy-construction projects in our nation’s capital.

By Jeff Winke

Over its 36 years, the 500-plus employee firm, Cherry Hill Construction of Jessup, MD, has constructed a new taxiway right outside the president’s hangar at Washington Dulles Airport, handled the earthmoving and mass excavation for the 2.3-million-square-foot Washington Convention Center, and completed the building excavation for the new US Department of Transportation building in Washington, DC—which was casually referred to as “a 25-foot hole in the ground for probably four or five city blocks.”

It is no surprise that Cherry Hill was also selected to perform the primary earthwork for the US Capitol Visitor Center project.

GPS tracking can help expedite the check-in process for every truck entering a construction site.

At first thought, a visitor center may bring to mind a simple 15- by 20-foot-frame building staffed by a park ranger with a pocket full of acorns for the friendly squirrels. Far from it, this $13 million project requires the phased excavation of over 600,000 cubic yards of soil and demolition rubble.

Primary responsibilities are a 50-foot-deep hole located directly next to the Capitol building's east side; a 1,000-foot curving, open-cut trench excavation under Constitution Avenue for a connecting truck tunnel; and a pedestrian tunnel under First Street to link with the Library of Congress. The project also includes locating and test-pitting for underground utilities on the site and beneath the surrounding streets of Capitol Hill, site sediment and erosion controls, street maintenance services for the project, site demolition, traffic control for construction of the offsite tunnel structures, and a large-diameter utility tunnel.

Plus, Cherry Hill was called on to provide the temporary site infrastructure and to perform selective demolition of conflicting portions of the existing Capitol building. The project has required close coordination with the separate slurry wall and shoring subcontractors preceding the mass excavation, with tieback, jet-grout, and foundation subcontractors whose work is concurrent with the excavation, and with electrical, plumbing, and structure work that follows in several ongoing phases within the primary excavation.

“It’s a bit of an understatement when I say the Capitol Hill project is complex,” states Ben Brown, chief of surveys/3D control for Cherry Hill. The massive project will take two years to complete.

Inspection Procedures Take Time
Early in the project, Cherry Hill became concerned about delays every time a truck entered the construction site. “As you can imagine, with a project of this size, we have a lot of traffic to and from the site,” Brown says. What was happening was that every time a truck entered the construction site it had to undergo a 15- to 20-minute security check. There were no exceptions or pass-out-and-return options. Understandably, with heightened security concerns, no risks can be taken while working in the backyard of the nation’s Capitol.

“During a weekly progress meeting with the Capitol Hill authorities, it was explained that if we had a GPS tracking system in place on our fleet of trucks, and if security had access to the vehicle tracking data, then we could speed up the check-in process with return options,” Brown says.

For Brown, the prospect of eliminating delays for his company’s dump trucks, lowboy trailers, rollbacks, water trucks, and fuel/lube trucks would save time and increase productivity. “I contacted Trimble, since I’ve been using their surveying and machine control products for years,” Brown states. “I said, ‘We have the need for tracking our trucks; we think you may have something that can help us.’”

Shortly after that initial inquiry, Brown bought the first 25 units of the Trimble Construction Fleet Management solution. Today, Cherry Hill has 65 units with an order for several more in process.

Precise location expedites activities such as rock delivery.

Shaving off all of that collective delay time from the workday has been accomplished with the Trimble system, but Brown has found several other benefits that include having an online, real-time map to see the locations of all trucks in the fleet.

“The best thing about the system is that we now have the ability to know where every truck is every minute of the day,” reports Brown. “This is used every day when we need to make dispatch decisions on the fly. For instance, if we need a fuel truck on the other side of a large site, I can see online where all my fuel trucks are and direct the closest one to the equipment in need.

“Our trucking foreman is very pleased with the system—he can keep an eye on his people at all times,” Brown says. “He can monitor the lowboys, for instance, and see if they’re sitting idle on a job waiting to be loaded. It helps to know if the job is holding things up.”

Benefits Beyond Vehicle Tracking
Knowing where its trucking assets are at any given moment is extremely helpful for Cherry Hill, but others in the company are quickly realizing benefits of the system, as well.

The office manager completes and verifies the drivers’ time sheets right off the fleet management system. She can see what time they start in the morning, how long they break for lunch, and what time the ignition was cut off in the evening. Accurate time sheets are completed for the operators—freeing them from having to track their work hours and turn in time cards.

The mechanics use the system to track mileage and routine maintenance requirements. The safety department uses the system to ensure safe operations, monitor speeding, and confirm or dismiss complaint calls from motorists that come from the “How’s my driving” telephone number posted on the truck trailer. With the complainant’s time and location information, the safety manager can review the fleet reports for location and truck speed.

Even the company owner likes the idea that he can know at any given time where all of the company’s rolling assets are located—not to mention the ability to generate useful management reports with ease.

Brown says that Cherry Hill’s reporting and accounting systems have improved. He likes the fact that thorough information helps the company better understand cycle times and manage resources. Details such as hours/mileage on assets, engine idle time, location and duration of all vehicle stops, locations visited, truck speeds, and when the engines were started and stopped are converted to simple management reports for further study and analysis. “I like the fact that I can now e-mail reports to myself so I don’t have to be in the system all the time,” Brown says. “Plus, I can save the reports on a CD and hold on to them forever if necessary.”

Options for the Future
“I’m sure we’ll see more and more options for further use of the Trimble Construction Fleet Management solution in the future,” Brown says. “For example, if fuel prices continue to remain outrageously high, we may end up going with the fleet management software to monitor engine idle time.

“Right now our trucks and equipment are scattered among 62 major site-prep and highway jobs going on from Virginia to Delaware, as well as four jobs in Florida,” Brown states. “Plus, we have the US Capitol Visitor Center project in Washington, DC, which has the strictest security requirements we’ve ever faced. Yet, with Trimble Fleet Management, we can handle it all.”

Jeff Winke is director of public relations and special projects for High Velocity Communications in Waukesha, WI.

GEC - March/April 2006