APRIL 14, 2026 #011 M.SIMPSON/B.CHARLESWORTH/L.MORRISON (I-24/I-75 INTERCHANGE)

REPLY/COMMENT 

 In this episode of Talkin’ Grit, M.Simpson, B.Charlesworth, and L. Morrison share the real story behind the I-24/I-75 interchange project. From the challenges and unexpected setbacks to the moments that had everyone laughing on-site, this conversation highlights what it truly takes to get the job done. It’s not just about the work it’s about the people, the memories made along the way, and finding humor even on the toughest days. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

From the job site to the office, from lessons learned to stories worth telling, this is Talking Grit, brought to you by Wright Brothers. Here's your host, Jared Walger.

SPEAKER_05 0:13

Welcome to the latest episode of Talking Grit. And today we have Brian Charlesworth and Lane Morrison. And if you haven't caught up on the podcast, we've got a growing catalog of episodes. So I just want to remind you you can go back to the feed if you missed one and go check out these conversations. We have some great ones worth a listen to, talking about vision. We've got some safety updates with Shirk. Uh, we've got an episode that lays out just news from North Carolina with Jeff Ball and Cody Jett. We've got a conversation with Will Ollis, a great leadership talk from Mitchell Simpson, conversation with Lucas Sawyer and Industrial South, special word from chaplain Jeff Spry. I mean, there's so much more to come. So it's worth going back and checking out if you've missed one. But we're going to keep the conversation going. First off, we want to hear from you. So keep the feedback coming at podcast at WBCCI.com. Get your name in the hat for the next drawing. But then we're getting into it today. We're going to jump into the conversation with Brian and Lane. So, Mitchell, let's get this going.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yeah. So, guys, appreciate y'all being here. We're here talking about 7524 interchange. Lane, you put the bow on that. When were you officially done? April 2nd.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

So it was last Thursday. It was a nice gift right before Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

So that's pretty awesome, wasn't it? It was. Yeah. And you've heard me talk about liquidated damages on that job for how long now? A while. So just so everybody knows, the liquidated damages on this job was $30,000 a day for the first 30 days. And then after that, it jumped to a $100,000 a day. So there's a little bit of pressure on us. But, you know, with the podcast today, guys, we're just going to walk through memory lane on this job, lessons learned, things that have happened. And just, you know, how did we get through this? How did we get through this big job? It was an impressive job, $160 million. And you guys cranked it out in two and a half years, right? So it was an impressive deal. So, you know, you kind of got to go back and look at all the stuff we've done in Chattanooga over the past 15 years. We've had an amazing run down there. Brian, you came on board, what was it, 2012?

SPEAKER_03 2:27

Yeah, 2012, 2011, end of 2011.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yeah, so right before Brian showed up, we were blessed to land the first US 27 job between Signal Mountain Boulevard and the river. And that's that's the job in Chattanooga with all the big retaining walls up on the hill. It's just a it's a cool job, amazing job that we pulled off there. And that was kind of the beginning of a string of just an amazing amount of work down there. So, you know, we did the first 27 job, we got the second Appison Pike job. We did the first one several years before that. That was a design build job with a bridge over Norfolk Southern Railroad, and then we weren't successful on getting the second 27 job that was next to downtown, but we worked out a deal with Dement Construction Company, and we came on as a subcontractor and did the grading and did the paving on that, which was a blessing for us. We fit in the slide in bridge down in Dade County, Georgia, in the midst of all of that. That was a fun job. We'll have to have another podcast about that at some point in time, right, Brian? I'm excited. Great memories. And then absent pike number three, more railroad stuff. I think everybody's heard about that at this point in time. That'll be another great podcast. And then we get to 7524. So 7524, this is the second phase of 7524 for the Tennessee DOT. We lost the first 7524 job. So the interchange at 7524, it's all been underneath the contracting method of a design build. So the department, they look at qualifications, the shortlist people. We've been blessed to be shortlisted twice on that. And then you take about six months and you put together what you think is the best design and you bid off that design. And round one, it was a joint venture between Tally and Wright Brothers with Arcatus as our engineer, and we didn't get it. CW Matthews came in out of Georgia, they got the job. Brian, do you remember how how much they beat us by on that job? Wasn't it 20 or 30 million dollars? It was significant.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

Yeah, close to 20 some change, probably.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah, it was pretty it was significant. So then after that, you know, we had a string of jobs as we were chasing stuff. We just kind of got shut out. There was a job in Middle Tennessee, Buckner Road. We got beat on it. We got beat on a few other things here and there down Alabama. And we were we were looking for some work. We were we were pretty hungry. So we got after the bid, probably got a little bit too aggressive. And on bid day, when they finally read out the bids, we had an oh my gosh moment. Right, Brian? They yes, I think you were on the floor. Yeah, I think I was on the floor. They read out the bids and we figured out we were $40 million low. And that was a great opportunity. Steve came over and said, Do you know what you're doing? And then we had we had a moment, right, Brian? You and me and Dean, and we went back through everything at least a thousand times. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:53

We immediately started reviewing the bid.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

And, you know, we didn't find any holes, but we we we knew we were very, very aggressive on the job. So then we went down the road with the job was awarded, we went after it. And I would say this is one of those jobs where we probably, you know, we knew out of the gate that we were behind the eight ball. And we pretty much stayed there throughout the whole job. But we got it done, and I'm proud of that. So, you know, we found out we were $40 million low and we immediately signed the contract with T Dot and we launched into the design process. And as we started going through the design process, we started finding gremlins out there of problems. I don't think we realized all the problems in this corridor, but there was there were s several. And one of the first things that we turned a stone over on in the design process was there was a major right-of-way issue with the CSX railroad. And if you're not familiar with Chattanooga, on the 75 leg of the interchange, there's a railroad that goes underneath the interstate. It's a CSX rail line, and it goes to downtown to the Debusque Rail Yard, which is where we're looking at the Wilcox bridge right now. Same rail line. And an amazing thing about this is the right of way for that rail line dates all the way back to Civil War times. Really? All the way back to Civil War. So when we jumped in and we were trying to get the ride of way for that, we thought we would be negotiating with CSX, and we quickly found out that CSX didn't have the right of way, that the state of Georgia had the right of way. Oh wow. So nobody had any idea that the state of Georgia owned property in the state of Tennessee, right?

SPEAKER_04 7:49

That's correct, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

And it was basically when we ran aground on that, it was basically full stop right there. And they sat there, guys. How long did they sit there and try to figure that out?

SPEAKER_03 8:03

So the they had to figure out how to get an agreement with the state of Georgia. So there was the whole process of figuring out who to talk to with the state. Yeah. Two states trying to work out an agreement. Yeah. So this was, I believe, their first interaction as far as agreements. So it took a while between attorneys. I believe it was a six-month gig.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Sounds right.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

It was at least six months. Yeah. But it was going back and forth. It's such a wild deal, though. But if you the the reason that this happened was, you know, after the Civil War, you know, Sherman came through Georgia. He started here in Tennessee, or he started outside Chattanooga and he marched, he marched through Georgia and just burned it. And after all that happened, after the Civil War, you know, the state of Georgia came out and said, hey, we got to rebuild. And instead of them sitting back and waiting and trying to figure out how to make it all happen, the state of Georgia jumped out and they started buying ride of way to connect the states back together. And they bought the rideway from Atlanta all the way back up to Chattanooga, to the Chattanooga rail yard. Wow. And they connected Chattanooga back with Atlanta. So pretty interesting history, you know. When we hit that, all just looked at each other and scratched their head and were like, oh my lord, what happened here? But you know, while that was going on, the 75 design kept going, 24 design was going, and we didn't have that rideway worked out. Like you guys have said, it was like six months. Y'all started construction on the 24 section of the project before that rideway ever got worked out, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:44

That's correct, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

So when did y'all start construction on 24?

SPEAKER_03 9:49

It was uh July of 23.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

So, what were the first few things you guys did down there?

SPEAKER_03 9:55

So we had an early work package to get started on the two bridges. Yeah. Um, so basically keeping everything under an acre, still waiting on permits. Yep. So going and and demoing and and getting the middle done.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

So we started all the nasty work in the middle of 24, working on more and McBride roads, and then you finally got full release with the permits and everything in November, right? And when you got that in November, what all did y'all open up at that point in time? Were you able to get to 75 by then? I don't remember.

SPEAKER_03 10:33

We did. Yep. We we went ahead and set rail on both 75 and 24, and we started them both. We were ahead on 75, you know, get all the dirt work done and kind of waiting on the bridge.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Yep, waiting on the right-of-way.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

Yep. So Jacob uh handled that piece when we first started, and then we had everybody else on on 24 there.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yes, starting on the outsides. So when we were setting the rail out there on 75 one of the first nights, you had a funny incident that happened. It could have been really bad, right? Right. You know, in typical Brian fashion, you send one of your project engineers out there to be with the sub while they're setting out rail. Explain what happened that night.

SPEAKER_03 11:17

So as a newer project engineer, you know, he was on that shift in that part of town. There were some homeless folks.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

A few, a few.

SPEAKER_03 11:28

Yep. So, you know, the creepy crawly guys started coming out of the woodwork, right? Nighttime walking around. Kind of one guy came up to the gentleman's door there and decided to take his truck. Pull him out.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

He pulled him out. Awesome.

SPEAKER_03 11:49

Yep. So the guy takes off down the road, goes to Georgia. Is that a gas station or the road on the side of 75? Oh jeez. Okay. Takes off down the road to 75 South. Goes heads towards Georgia. You know. Our employee calls cops, you know, whatever what happened. You know, his blinky lights are still on. So the guy goes down to a gas station, I guess, I think he buys a banana and some other stuff. Okay. Comes back through, the police pick him up on northbound, and he goes right by him. Or he, you know, northbound on the other side of the road. So he sees his truck pass him. And he still has the blinky lights on. So I think they've they finally end up wrecking him or something there in the other.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

But throughout the spike strips.

SPEAKER_03 12:39

Yeah. Oh my god. They're they're in Utah, uh, just north of the job.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

So great way to start the job, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:46

Oh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

So the job was kind of snake bit all the way along, right? So I mean, you know, you had that first opportunity right there, and then it was just like one opportunity after another, right? So you're trying to crank out $160 million worth of work in two and a half years, and it was just one hurdle after another, right? Correct. So the first major hurdle was railroad submittals. Now just explain what that was with everybody on the railroad submittals.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Wayne, you'll hit that one, buddy? Sure. So I know the first task was trying to get them to review submittals before we even had a construction agreement with the railroad, which they could not fully approve. Because of the right-of-way. That's correct. So by that point, we never had any 100% approved submittals until April of 2024, I believe it was. And beyond that, I mean there was there were several unknowns within that realm that, you know, were never listed in CSX's public project manual. Oh, yeah. So it was certainly a task, and I think we were up to four revisions on some of the submittals. So it was definitely a learning curve.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

It was like he had to move and target. You know, the real frustration there was, you know, we thought we had all this time because we had the design process that was going to happen. We thought we had plenty of time and we could never get ahead there because of the right of way issue because they could never get that construction agreement done. CSX just refused to work with us on letting us get ahead. Yeah. So you were always behind the eight ball there. And then, you know, the next opportunity that showed up was the old dilapidated sewer lines that ended up being in the subgrade. Lane explained that. I mean, what what were those sewer lines made out of?

SPEAKER_02 14:44

I think some of them were cast iron, maybe. Parts of it were just pieces of cast iron stubbed into an oversized concrete pipe with no collar anodles up from the Civil War era, too. Crazy brittle. So how old were those pipes? Do you remember?

SPEAKER_03 15:01

I don't recall that. I believe they were there and then they had to modify them when they built the interstate before the interstate.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

So they had to lower them in the 60s. In the 60s. Ah. Okay. So I mean it was crazy brittle when we started looking at all of it. You know, it was in the subgrade. The city of Chattanooga was very, very, very worried about us shutting them off. Because everything, you know, water flows downhill, right? Mm-hmm. If we broke the pipes, it was gonna mess up everything. I mean, it was gonna shut off everything flowing from Chattanooga back south toward East Ridge, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

So Yeah, a lot of the existing line was you know, some of it was a foot of cover. Yeah. And obviously a foot of cover ain't enough. Wow. Right. So you guys worked with the city on that. Explain what you ended up doing on those two right there. What happened there with those two.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

So we ended up teaming up with RK on a new fresh design for both of those sewers. I think one of one of those ended up getting oversized from a 15 to 16 inch. Yeah. But they pretty much went on new alignment. We had a bore underneath the interstate, dig the launch pits and the receiving pits, and pretty much make all new tie-ins. And I know one of the sections, the section that was west of Belvoir, we ended up having some manholes that were 25 to 35 feet deep. So that was a pretty challenging thing on on uh shoring and also trying to construct the noise walls, drainage, everything else in that vicinity.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Yeah, you had a very limited window where you were trying to get everything shoved in there together.

SPEAKER_03 16:45

Yeah, the old pipes were running full the entire time. Yeah. So, you know, way above capacity. Yeah. So tying those in were special.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

It was a mess. Wow. I mean, it was just a mess. And then, you know, one of our first big lessons learned on the job is hey, when you're working with subcontractors, you got to make sure you lay out your sub exactly what happens, right? What you want happen. So, you know, one of my pet peeves in the fall of the year, right, Brian, you and all your guys want to go hunting. And yeah, you you love that. I do love it. And one of our subs that was clearing the job ran off and got into a stream that we didn't even realize was there, right? It was a it looked like a ditch to me.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

Yeah. Trash ditch. That was classified as a stream.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What interchange was that right there? Uh Germantown. There at Germantown. So that would be the southwest corner of Germantown. We got into a ditch, we cleared, we thought we were doing right. We cleared the right of way, but we tracked all over the the the ditch that was a stream, right? Correct. And we quickly figured out that was a problem. And we got to mitigate all that. So explain what that mitigation process was like, guys. Explain what that mess was.

SPEAKER_03 18:04

So basically had go had to go through back through TDEC, you know, notify people and come up with a mitigation plan and figure out how much of the dis of stream was affected, and they score stuff.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Yeah. Right. Yep. They score the quality of the stream.

SPEAKER_03 18:24

Yeah. Yeah. So depending on how you score, depends on mitigation credits, right? Yep. And money. Yep. So we we had to basically add all that mess up and figure out how much we owed them.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yep. And we had to redo the stream and plant lots of pretty trees and all sorts of stuff. So this is not the first time that this has happened for the record. You know, I'm picking at Lane and Brian here about this, but you know, several years ago, Wendell can attest to this. We were working in Fentress County on US 127, and there was a supposed stream that was running through an abandoned quarry floor. Just rise a bone. We tracked through there, and same thing. You know, everybody loses their mind. Oh, you're destroying the stream. Well, I mean, where is it?

SPEAKER_05 19:14

Pretty much any.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Yeah, prove it to me. But I think it just underscores that when you're clearing and stuff, you really gotta pay attention to where everything is on the plans. You gotta pull it out, you gotta manage it, guys. You gotta keep your finger on it because look, you're gonna you're gonna get into something you don't even know is there. You don't even know's there. So terrible situation. We can kind of sit back and chuckle about it now. Was humorous at that wasn't humorous at that point in time, but it is now. Next next debacle y'all got to experience was the colonial pipeline. So everybody explain what colonial pipeline is on this job. What's colonial pipeline, Carrie?

SPEAKER_02 19:52

It's a petroleum line that runs the whole eastern corridor of the U.S., maybe. Yep. Yes. I think that section does. Runs up Interstate 75. That's correct. Yep. So that one ended up being pretty shallow under the subgrade as well.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

And it was in the slope, and long story short, we had to cut out the slope. The pipeline was there. Awesome. So we had to work through that with them. First, they were not going to relocate. We tried to figure out ways to leave them there and just build some sort of slab over their thing. Then they'll they couldn't get back to their bend and their vents if we did that. So it was probably about a year worth of back and forth.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

It was. Yeah, and we even went to the point of having conversations with T Dot of, hey guys, if we can't move the petroleum line, what are you gonna do? I mean, you're gonna you're gonna charge us all these liquidity damages. I mean, it's just sitting there. And we'll build everything around it except for, you know, 30 foot on both sides of it. What do you think? They really didn't like that. But I mean, they kind of had us back in the corner there for a minute. So it was an interesting situation. And then after that, you know, we had all these bridges we were building. We took delivery for several beams. We were trying to go as fast as we could. And we ended up having camber issues on multiple bridges with the beams. Guys, can you explain to everybody what camber is in the beams and explain what the situation was and what we tried to do?

SPEAKER_03 21:33

Yeah, so camber is the arch part of the beam that helps it loads and helps support the beams.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

And this is specifically pre stressed concrete girders. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:46

Yep. So when they uh they design a certain piece based off dead load and live load and come up with that def deflection type deal there, right? And so basically they're When you load the deck, it'll come down and it'll still have an arch in it, camber. Okay. So what happened was is we had some really tight grades on both these bridges. Okay. So they tried to keep the camber at a minimum to help with the elevations, tie-ins. A lot of times you'll have build-up and a little bit of buildup to play with, right? To move it up and down to help with that. We did not on this one. So got the beams made, got them set out there, and we we did a profile. So we had, you know, surveyors go through there and do a profile and buildups. And we noticed some of the buildups were not really coming out right. And they were less than the deadload deflection. So when it was flat, they were flat. Yeah, so when it was if we're gonna pour the deck on it, it would actually go the other way. Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah, so the girder would have been inverted is what would have happened. Oh my gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:04

Yeah. So sort of a problem, right? Small problem, small problem. Yeah, so structurally, our engineer said it was fine. Okay. T dot per their specification, you cannot have negative cambring beams. Okay. So we went back and forth for a minute because it's a big deal to pull them beams off. Huge schedule killer to get them remade. And you know, and I think at first we were coming up with I don't know, 10, 15 beams per bridge or something.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

It was bad. It was something like that. It was bad. I mean, we ended up going to Nashville, what was it, twice? Yeah. Trying to work it out. Yeah, we just we couldn't.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

Of course, we're all scratching our head, you know, blaming the bean guy and the you know designer, and everybody's pointing fingers at another. Well, guess who gets to deal with it? Well, we do. We get to deal with it. Right. So regardless, we had to we come up with ideas about, you know, trying to lighten the the deadload of the of the bridge to help with camber. So there's a few different ways you could do that. So we end up putting some styrofoam in the metal decking between the slats there, and then we tossed around ideas for lightweight concrete. T Dot did not like that. So basically went through there and chopped as much weight as we could. And I think we got it down to three, four beans per bridge, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Yeah, yeah. So we've got five beams sitting here on the backyard now where we had to take down uh take the so it's two on one and three on the other. Yeah, on Moore and McBride, we had to take them off. Yeah. Wow. They remade the beams, we reset them, and we hammered through and got the deck board.

SPEAKER_05 24:53

So, what it sounds like so far, what we're talking about, is you guys are trying to work, and there's all sorts of just hand grenades being lobbed into the middle of one. Everything you guys are trying to get done.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

One after another, one after another.

unknown 25:05

Man.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

So then you you you have the under camber issue on the Moore McBride Road, and then when we get to the 75 bridge, when we finally able to work on that, we've got an over camber issue.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Right right here at the end of the job. So explain the overcamber issue.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Yeah, so uh this one was real special too, as well. So it's the other way. Uh so this when we started looking at you know, not having this issue again, you know, had the brilliant idea of let's put an extra strand, you know, make sure we don't have an under camber because we don't want the same problem over the railroad. Right. Because you don't have options with the railroad, you have to meet a certain height. Sure. So this is during phase two. Okay. The f we have to match phase one.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

We're running to the finish line.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Run into the finish line. I could see the finish line ahead. We thought we were going to be done a couple of months earlier. We did, yeah. I was I was I felt feeling good about it, right? You know. And then we get the you know, profile. I was like, well, this, you know, beans look a little funny, right? You know, I was like, ah, we'll just we'll get the profiles. No, no, this the deck was was it six inches higher, whatever. Yeah, three or four, anyways. Yeah. So basically you'd have a joint in the lane that's four inches higher than another. Wow. Okay. If we were to pour it the same thickness, yeah. Okay. So that's not gonna work, right? In the middle of the interstate. So uh we had brainstorming sessions on how we're gonna fix it. So we all put our heads together, you know. One was tie some well, the first option was can we swap some beams around? The pro most of the problem was getting back to the beams. We set those beams when we built the two center bents, so our cranes were down in the hole. This is over a railroad. Yeah. So in order to get new beams and be able to set them out there, pull them out and set them, we'd have to have a completely different setup for cranes. So, which means I gotta put in a new submittal for the railroad.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Whole new lift plan. Whole new lift plan. Plus, you would have needed a 600-ton crane to be able to get out there.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

Yeah, so good grief. We're not making our deadline if we do that. Right. Right? So bad problem. Yeah. So we go to the drawing board, you know, we're all trying to think of stuff, right? So, you know, first idea was can we swap beams around? You know, of course we had to go through that mess. Second idea was what if we tied uh some cable to the beams and hold them down, you know. Another idea was put basically load the beams prior to a pour and pour up to them a certain amount of ways, you know, to lock them in. What we ended up going with was we end up pouring the middle piece of the deck, loading it, and then and then and then pouring the rest of it.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Yeah, so when he's saying loading it, how many pieces of barrier rail did we stack on there to shove it down?

SPEAKER_02 28:41

I think Mark had 20 or 30 on at least one of the sides. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Small problem. But hey, it worked. And then to make the to make the joint look right, we ended up grinding it down to tie it all together like we needed.

SPEAKER_03 28:57

Yeah, we had a feathering in there, but but feathered in.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Feathered in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Grind it.

SPEAKER_03 29:02

A little bit of finesse. That's wild.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

And then the final major debacle that happened on the job that it's one of those acts of God is the flood. So the flood, what was it, guys? Was it August, September?

SPEAKER_05 29:20

August 12th.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

August 12th.

SPEAKER_05 29:22

You're probably gonna remember how August 12th.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

So tell tell us about the flood lane. What happened?

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Well, actually, we had just finished swapping I-24 eastbound into its final alignment, at least on the stretch between Belvore and Moore more, excuse me, all the way to the split. Yeah. And so I'd worked that night swapping traffic and kind of stayed out the rest of the day, try to adapt back to days. And I was I started receiving a whole lot of calls from T Dot that evening, hey, you need to get out here right now and start pumping water. And well, where are we going to pump it to whenever Chickamauga Creek is backing pretty much the entire project up? So I started seeing some of the pictures and videos come in, and pretty much the entire interstate was flooded between Moore and McBride, basically, and a good section towards Spring Creek.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

So how many how many inches of rain did you get and how fast on the project?

SPEAKER_02 30:22

I think six and a half and three hours is what it amounted to.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

And the real problem was is what you just alluded to, you had a rain event prior to that, and Chickamauga Creek was already full. That's correct. Yeah, so there was no place for the water to go. So when you drive through this job, specifically if you're going toward downtown, Chattanooga, if you're going west, once you get through the interchange, take a look to the left and the right, and you're gonna see flood walls down through there. You would not expect that, but right here in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that interchange is built in the floodway. It's built in the floodway, and every 20 or 30 years it floods. And guess what? We got to be the recipients of that.

SPEAKER_05 31:07

The stuff on social media was crazy, just the the videos and the pictures people were taking. It just it was the craziest visual, especially that that shot of the car just circling the the sinkhole or the whirlpool or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Circling the drawing pipe.

SPEAKER_05 31:24

Yeah, something it was just it was bananas.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Like you know, and that event was what else could happen. It was kind of icing on the cake for the whole job, right, guys? It was kind of icing on the cake, it was just one thing after another. So that's all the crazy things that happened. Brian, what what are just lay out there by the stats on the job of what actually happened in the midst of all that?

SPEAKER_03 31:48

On the flood.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

No, no, no, no. On the job itself, you know, people, what all we got done.

SPEAKER_03 31:56

Okay. So original contract was 160 million final contracts, 165, so not too bad. Yeah, not too bad. Over in on the on their part. Going through the job, we've had we had a bunch of folks there at one point in time, especially in the the hottest part of the job. Yeah. Everybody piled in one spot, right? We had over 100 Right Brothers employees on the job. You know, over uh 13 plus crews.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

This was a huge self-performed job for Right Brothers. Massive.

SPEAKER_03 32:27

Yep. So first time we did sound walls, uh drilling, then all. So three bridges, retaining walls, sound walls, soldier pile walls, you know, so nail walls, MSC walls, all the above, asphalt, 27 subcontractors, about three, three and a half miles of roadway-ish. Challenges. I mean, just traffic control, weekend closures. So we had a few closures we had to do work in. One of them uh was around Germantown Belvoir. So we had part of our bid was to identify how many weekends and days we needed for stuff for closures. Yeah. We had sent in four weekends for the tie-in down there at Germantown Belvoir. We did it in two. Nice. Um, so and another one was the week weekend rentals on 75. So we had 10. We used all those. That's where we shove stuff down to one line for all weekend, yep. So to get there's a lot of remediation work for that to old stuff where we didn't go full depth. Um so we had to get uh all that stuff patched up. Tons of utilities that we had to do with. If if I had to put my money on on what would delay the job when I first started, I would raise my hand and said utilities.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

It wouldn't be Georgia right away. No, it wouldn't be brick bambers.

SPEAKER_03 34:02

Inkling in my mind that 75 would ever be a problem. Really? No. Even with the railroad, because you know, we've we deal with railroads and we know they're a pain, but there were so many utilities on 24 that we had to deal with that that's where a lot of my focus was, you know, at the beginning, but uh obviously that changed. But you know, the colonial Tennessee American, we had two different sewer companies, the gas company, power, uh their fiber, ATT local, ATT long distance, charter. We had everybody all of it. Yes. Man. So everybody in Chat Nigga. So it's pretty typical for downtown stuff, right? Yeah. But pretty tough there. Of course, the railroad, you know, but talked about that. It's impressive. Yeah, the terraces. So if you didn't go down there when we had the the Texas U-turn, so we had a new one on that job. So when we shut down the two bridges, we had what's called a Texas U-turn. You know, nobody is that. So basically you have it's a big loop. It's we created a big loop. It's a big loop. Yeah, yep. So, you know, standard roadway, you got you know, one set of folks going one direction on one side and and you know, coming the other way on the other side. So we basically split traffic and then used one side of the roadway to go backwards against traffic.

SPEAKER_04 35:27

So it was pretty special. It sounded like the whole thing was pretty special.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:32

Well, I mean, it did work. It worked awesome.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

What was your what was your largest monthly estimate line? What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 35:40

It was over 10.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

10 million change. That's all that's a lot of work in one month.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:49

Well, guys, what what was your like some of you, you know, you guys went through all of this, it was a lot to to manage and just like pivot thinking on your heels, you know, and having to just react, you know, so much. You know, you've got what you're supposed to do, and then there's so much that you have to stop and have to do in the middle of doing everything you need to do. What are some are there any big takeaways where you're like, man, I learned this, or this is like a solid takeaway from you know, this experience that you know I'm gonna carry into the future. Anything that you're like, man, okay, this this was a crazy experience, but I I learned this from leading through this job. Anything you guys want to share on that?

SPEAKER_02 36:39

Oh, absolutely. I mean, really how important traffic control is to accessing different parts of the job. Something I had the luxury of in North Carolina is getting to work new alignment projects. So this one was definitely a new one for me.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

Good deal. Yeah, so it's this job was everything I've learned in my career, all put in one job at an accelerated pace. Wow. So I mean, if I had to do it over again, I mean, you go through design so fast because you're up against time, right? If you're late on this job, it's you could you could bankrupt the company if it's really bad, right? Sure. So you go through design, you do the best you can with it. You know, I wish we would have had more time to look at drainage. There's a lot of drainage errors on that job. Tie-ins, stuff didn't quite match. We had to make adjustments to the field. That's pretty common though. Making calls on stuff to bring people in early that you normally wouldn't do. Uh they might mob an extra mob or two to get something done that you normally wouldn't do. There was a lot of that going on. Yeah. But, you know, just keeping the ball moving and keeping track of like delays, right? Yeah. That's a big thing. So keeping up with the railroad d deal, right? Yeah. Working through that T Dot, getting them to give us more time. On that job, you know, part of the deal with the utilities, which I was scared of, you are not allowed time if there was a utility delay. Which is crazy. Yeah. Right. So that was my biggest fear. And that's why I said that earlier. But but we worked through that. But I said it's you know, I don't know, it's just everything all in one.

SPEAKER_05 38:33

Yeah, and then part of the reason why I love this podcast is because you hear the inside story, you know, of just you know, I wasn't aware of everything that you guys were up against day in and day out. And it's awesome to hear you guys recount, okay, you know, high profile Chattanooga, major traffic, everybody's watching, and you have one battle after the other, and to be able to lead your way through that under pressure, huge. You know, that's that's amazing. And so hearing that recounted, I mean, I think everybody in the company, if you're listening to this, man, that's that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 39:17

Anytime something went wrong, we were always in the news. Joel's she loved Chel 9. So feels feels fun.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Well, guys, I'm proud of you, proud of the whole project team. You know, we can't list out everybody here that made it happen, but you know, I just want to give a shout out to my buddy Mark Jenkins for leading the charge on this and making it happen. Appreciate everything that he does, you know. Bobby and John Rowe mines and Bryson, Lane, Brian, appreciate you guys, appreciate what you guys have done. And, you know, everybody that was down there, there were so many people. You know, like you said, Lane, $10 million a month, and we were self-performing the vast majority of it. Amazing stuff. Amazing stuff. Good job, guys. Good job. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 40:07

Yeah, guys, thanks for being on. Great stuff. And hey, this is gonna wrap it up for Talking Grit. See you next time.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

That's gonna do it for this episode of Talking Grit. Thanks for listening, and thanks to everyone out there putting in the work day in and day out. If you liked what you heard, be sure to follow the show and share it with someone who knows the value of hard work. We'll catch you next time right here on Talking Grit.