SBC-BART Transbay Tunnel Project Allen's foremen, Darin Stroud and Jesse Garcia, made quick work of getting accustomed to the difficult working environment and Underground finished the cable tray installation n ahead of schedule. Once the tray was completed, Superintendent Chris Stream came to help install the 22,000 feet of fiber optic cable. In just three short nights, Underground crews completed the cable pull and had done what had never been done before; installed the longest run of 432 strand ribbon cable that the manufacturer had ever produced. Not only was the fiber optic cable record setting, but the fiberglass cable tray manufacturer had never produced a single run of cable tray this long ever before. Underground has a lot to be proud of on this project. We completed a quality project that the owner is extremely happy with and we built it ahead of schedule and under budget. We look forward to many more challenging projects like this with SBC and BART in the future. In this Issue... President's Column Stanford University Job Profiles Spotlight: Tom Thornton Applause All Around In Memory: Larry Yamamoto Every so often, Underground is fortunate to come across a truly unique project. This summer, SBC awarded Underground a project to install 19,300 feet of 24 inch wide fiberglass cable tray in the BART Transbay tunnel from Oakland to San Francisco. The project required drilling into the upper gallery's concrete walls between the two BART tracks and installing brackets every ten feet with epoxied studs. Also, the tube was built in pre-manufactured sections and sunk into place with barges back in the 1960s. Each concrete section is about 350 feet long and has a steel joint connecting one to the other. At these 57 tube joints, we welded stainless steel brackets onto the joint walls. Then, after all the brackets were installed, we assembled and installed the entire cable tray and placed on the brackets. While all this work sounds rather simplistic, access to the site was anything but that. Working in a tunnel underneath the bay required a great deal of coordination. All of the materials had to be brought in on a BART work train from Oakland.  The only times we could run the work train so that it would not interfere with BART's normal operating hours was on the weekends, at night. Furthermore, in the BART gallery between the tracks, the hatches from the lower gallery to the upper gallery are spaced about 1,000 feet apart. Therefore, we had to stage all of our materials at the hatches in the lower gallery every 1,000 feet and distribute it throughout the upper gallery by hand. Additionally, in order to work in the upper gallery, we had to have BART safety monitors in the upper and lower galleries at all times for our protection. Throw in performing all the work at night and we had a tough job of planning the project. Underground assigned Superintendent Allen Ellison to run this complex project. With years of airport work under his belt, Allen quickly adapted to the new working restrictions and created a great working relationship with both SBC and BART.  next Back to Top of Page Copyright 2001 Underground Construction Co., Inc. All rights reserved.