2008 - Images of the Year
The process of construction is a work of art in itself, often covered up by the utility or beauty of the project's final form. Construction often starts out under conditions that are difficult, challenging and sometimes dangerous, as the following pages of ENR photo-contest winners demonstrate.
John Ratliffe
Photographer: John Ratliffe, senior project manager, Kokosing Construction Co. Inc., Fredericktown, Ohio
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: Ratliffe, one of Kokosing’s most prolific site photographers, was intrigued by this image of a lone ironworker perched precariously but safely atop the Main Street Bridge in Columbus, Ohio, patiently awaiting placement of the innovatively designed span’s final arch segment. The cable-stayed bridge is the first in the U.S. to feature a single rib-tied arch design that tilts 10° from the roadway. Placement of the bridge’s fifth and final 63-ft-long arch segment was completed last July. The 660-ft-long span over the Scioto River is scheduled to finish in mid-2010. Ratliffe captured this shot from an upriver location using a telephoto lens.
Matthew Guillotel
Photographer: Matthew Guillotel, project manager, Danny’s Construction Co. Inc., San Francisco
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: Guillotel was standing on an upper-deck floor beam when he saw his crew of ironworkers setting steel on the lower deck. He was inspired by the sight of the old San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in the background, with the new temporary bypass bridge in the foreground. “[Through] today’s ironworkers, [they] will soon be connected to each other, bridging the old with the new,” he says.
Jamie Thronson
Photographer: Jamie Thronson, Wanzek Construction Inc., Fargo, N.D.
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: “It’s the grandeur of the 660-ton crane lifting the 85,000-lb blade and hub assembly into the sky that makes the erection of a wind turbine a captivating sight,” says Thronson, Wanzek’s marketing coordinator, about this shot at Duke Energy’s Notrees Wind Farm near Midland, Texas. When completed later this year, the wind farm will generate 150 MW of electricity.
Patrick J. Cashin
Photographer: Patrick J. Cashin, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New York City
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: Cashin, an MTA staff photographer, took this shot of a worker being lowered to the bottom of a shaft at 11th Ave. and West 26th St. in Manhattan, a launching point for a tunnel-boring machine mining the No. 7 Line subway extension. Cashin stood on a ledge to gain perspective as dust clouds filtered the sun at 11:45 a.m. on Aug. 28.
Gowen Dishman
Photographer: Gowen Dishman, resident engineer, HNTB, Greenville, Miss.
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: “This was my fourth cable-stayed bridge project and I have always attempted to capture a picture of the unique vistas that heights on the towers provide,” Dishman says of this shot atop the cable-stayed U.S. 82 Greenville Bridge, with a 1,378-ft-long main span. “So, yes, it was planned.” However, it is rare. The photos taken this day were the only ones in fog during the 4-year-long main span construction. Dishman stood 380 ft above the Mississippi River.
Richard Tonnessen
Photographer: Richard Tonnessen, project manager, FCI Constructors Inc., Grand Junction, Colo.
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: The View Hotel and Dining Room Project has an apt name, located in Monument Valley, Ariz. Tonnessen took the photo as the firm was pouring the concrete slab for the dining room portion of the $7-million project. “Every time I go out there, I take pictures,” he says. “It is just a spectacular place.” The project has just been completed.
Jeff Slotta
Photographer: Jeff Slotta, vice president, J. Harper Contractors, Inc., Seattle
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: Taking down a 70-ft unreinforced masonry wall directly above and around power lines as part of a $1.5-million structural demolition project was a painstaking process, says Slotta. The construction crew spent three 18-hour days gingerly removing the wall, using an excavator and stick that extended to 80 ft. “This photo tells the story. It was a very difficult project,” he says.
Joseph A. Blum
Photographer: Joseph A. Blum, People and Work Photography, San Francisco
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: Says Blum, who stood inside a cofferdam for the suspension span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge: “The piledriver is using iron magnesium bars and compressed oxygen to cut loose the steel grillage falsework.”
Kevin Baumann
Photographer: Kevin Baumann, project engineer, Alberici Constructors Inc., St. Louis
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: This image depicts a test of a state-of-the-art foam fire-suppression system built into a massive U.S. Air Force hangar in Memphis that will house the C5 transport plane, the service’s largest aircraft. Alberici’s $80-million project to build three such hangars at an Air National Guard base, each with a 257-ft-long truss span, was finished in October. Baumann says the suppression system’s strict design specs were a construction challenge. “It took us a year to work out all the bugs,” he says. The test depicted here was the first successful one involving the C5 aircraft.
Alissa Hollimon
Photographer: Alissa Hollimon, Hollimon Photography, Dallas
Submitter: Jennifer Jonas, senior graphic designer, Zachry Engineering Corp., San Antonio
Description: A surveyor guides a tracked excavator’s operator within a grid of foundation columns set for an upgrade of Topaz Power Group’s Barney Davis/Nueces Bay combined-cycle powerplants in Corpus Christi, Texas. From her perch high above them Hollimon was attracted by the workers’ obvious concentration on safety and by the creamy texture of the soil "...like you were walking on the beach,” she says.
John V. Robinson
Photographer: John V. Robinson, photographer, Crockett, Calif.
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: Robinson took this shot of ironworkers on a temporary truss for the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge in February. “I try to capture the human element of heavy construction,” he says. “When I saw the iron workers laying across the diagonal brace I knew it would make a dramatic composition. I set myself up in an inconspicuous place and waited for the right moment to release the shutter.”
Silas Crews
Photographer: Silas Crews
Submitter: Michael Sweeney, marketing communications, Ames Construction Inc.
Description: At an interchange project on I-35W and Highway 62 in Minneapolis, Crews captured these workers pouring the deck of one of the bridges. “I’m like a kid in a playground when I get to photograph on a construction site,” he says. “My background in newspaper photography has been one never-ending hunt for the perfect moment while layering multiple elements in a frame to tell a story in an aesthetic way.”
Karen Collins
Photographer: Karen Collins, Outreach Process Partners, New Orleans
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: Working as a public affairs contractor for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Collins spotted this hydromulch team from Resource One Nursery, Lettsworth, La., icing the cake—seeding restored levees below New Orleans. “I yelled, ‘stop the car! I’ve got to get in there!’” she recalls. “I was excited. It’s an important part of the process. Grass isn’t there for aesthetics; it’s there for a structural process.” She says she shot until her camera got slimed and she had to stop to clean it. Her clothes were wrecked. “I keep them in the jeep for rolling around construction projects,” she says. “That stuff really doesn’t come out.”
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David Jett
Photographer: David Jett, David Jett Photography, Houston
Submitter: Stephanie Schneider, communications manager, Quanta Services, Houston, Texas
Description: As the second-largest producing onshore natural gas field in the U.S., the Barnett Shale requires installation of many miles of pipeline to distribute product throughout the nation. Here, a Quanta Services foreman oversees the transport of pipe from the supply yard to the construction site.
Carl Van Rooy
Photographer: Carl Van Rooy, project engineer, F.A. Wilhelm Construction Co. Inc., Indianapolis
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: Realizing F. A. Wilhelm’s photo file had few shots of the kind of concrete work for which the company is well known, Van Rooy started looking for good candidates. “The average person, if he hasn’t been on a construction site and seen a slab poured, has no idea how much work and teamwork is involved,” he says. He found his shot as one of the crews were pouring steps for position rooms in Indiana University’s new endzone seating facility. Wilhelm is prime contractor on the concrete structure and also on an interior finishes package.
Cody Elliot
Photographer: Cody Elliot, assistant superintendent, Walton Construction Co.
Submitter: Gloria Rolling, business development mgr., Walton Construction Co.
Description: Springfield, Mo.-based Walton is building the $63-million replacement terminal at the Springfield-Branson airport. “I knew they were pouring concrete early in the morning and ended up with a pretty good shot,” says Elliot, who was taking progress photos.
David Mathlasmele
Photographer: David Mathlasmele project manager, city of San Jose Public Works Dept., San Jose, Calif.
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: The photo was taken at the site of a new 3,500-stall consolidated rental-car garage at the Mineta San Jose International Airport. Mathlasmele says workers cut off the tops of 70% of 2,274 piles installed, “none of them easily.”
Chris Lamon
Photographer: Chris Lamon, project engineer, McCarthy Building Companies Inc.
Submitter: Heather Riekena, McCarthy creative services coordinator
Description: Lamon had the ENR photo contest in mind when he took this shot of a 30-ft rebar cage in the lay-down area at Central Arizona Project’s water-treatment plant reservoir in Mesa, Ariz. Lamon was an intern when he took this photo but since landed a full-time job with McCarthy. He says he sees lots of “cool shots” around construction sites.
Terry McGettigan
Photographer: Terry McGettigan, Tower Crane Support, San Diego
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: For tower crane operator McGettigan, the silver lining to the low clouds that forced him to shut down his Peiner crane one October morning was time to capture the view from his 450-ft perch, where he was working on a 37-story condominium. “You have the best seat in the house,” says McGettigan, who now operates his own inspection firm. Having left his digital camera at home, he grabbed his cell phone to take the shot. This is not McGettigan’s first time in ENR. Three photos of faulty slew ring bolts he found on the same crane appeared in an article on crane accidents. He was also quoted in the article (ENR 6/9/08 p. 12).
Heather Riekena
Photographer: Kevin O’Keefe, assistant superintendent, McCarthy, St. Louis, Mo.
Submitter: Heather Riekena, creative services coordinator, McCarthy, St. Louis, Mo.
Description: O’Keefe says he did not realize the shadows were so clear until he uploaded the photo to his computer. It was taken while repairs were being made on a drain line on Manhole Drive in LaGrange, Ga., for the West Georgia Health System South Tower expansion.
Tim Jewett
Photographer: Tim Jewett, Portland, Ore.
Submitter: Mark Bodyfelt, project manager, Stacy and Witbeck Construction, Alameda, Calif.
Description: Jewett has been shooting light rail projects in Portland, Ore., for a decade. He took this on the $170-million I-205 LRT expansion for Stacy and Witbeck as girders were being set on a bridge. He says, when that’s happening, “I always try to go onsite because it’s going to make for some pretty dramatic photographs.”
Bruce Heimbach
Photographer: Bruce Heimbach, Project Management Advisors Inc.,
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: Heimbach, PMA vice president, captured this carpenter foreman building a stair-wall form at a $45-million facility for the San Diego County Medical Examiner in San Diego. PMA is consultant and owner’s representative. Heimbach says the worker’s broad-brimmed hardhat shields him during the California summer. Photography is the “fun stuff” on a construction job, in between the challenges of project management, he says.
David Jett
Photographer: David Jett, David Jett Photography, Houston
Submitter: Stephanie Schneider, communications manager, Quanta Services, Houston, Texas
Description: A lineworker climbing a transmission tower at dawn to install fiber backbone breaks the geometric monotony of the tower’s lacing. “There are little pictures in the pictures there,” says the photographer. “There are 1,001 different angles at each tower.” Jett provides photos for Quanta’s annual report and marketing communications.
Kunal Bhagwat
Photographer: Kunal Bhagwat
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: Now a graduate student at Texas A&M University, Bhagwat took this photo in April when he was working as a site engineer in the precast yard for Hindustan Construction Co. Ltd. on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link in Mumbai, India. Using his Sony DSC-W55 camera, he shot down on the pylon of the cable-stayed bridge from a crew basket lifted by the tower crane. “I will surely be going back to India...I simply love working in the field,” says Bhagwat.
Evan Fuller
Photographer: Evan Fuller, field engineer, PCL Constructors Canada Ltd., Winnepeg, Canada
Submitter: Rick Ford, PCL health, safety and environment supervisor
Description: Fuller peered down to the Winnipeg streets last July and saw double. This yellow tower crane had just finished its task of hoisting cargo to build the 24-story headquarters of Manitoba Hydro. As workers jack the crane down to the ground, its latticed mast, steel collar and support struts temporarily face their doppelgängers in the glass curtain wall.
Sofia A. Pechorskaya
Photographer: Sofia A. Pechorskaya, Thornton Tomasetti Inc., Moscow
Submitter: Alexander Konidaris, Thornton Tomasetti Inc., New York City
Description: Moscow’s Federation Tower, with its central observation tower designed to rise to 509 meters when completed in late 2010, is on its way to becoming Europe’s tallest building and one of Russia’s first modern skyscrapers. Project structural engineer Thornton Tomasetti was fortunate to win its contract when the building’s owner found that a principal of the design firm spoke fluent Russian. This photo appeared in a recent ENR cover story about the project, along with an accompanying article on the market and advances in high-rise construction in Moscow (ENR 12/15/08 p. 109).
Patrick J. Cashin
Photographer: Patrick J. Cashin, photographer, New York City
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: Cashin took this picture of a worker walking along newly laid track for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s widened $500-million South Ferry subway station on May 24. “I turned around and saw to my left that he was walking down the track, so I got into position. I knew that's where I wanted him to be,” he says. “I’d been down there off and on for a year photographing the sites.”
Paul Turang
Photographer: Paul Turang, Paul Turang Photography, San Pedro, Calif.
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: “I knew it was going to be a cool shot,” says Turang, who used a tripod and slow shutter speed to capture the tracing sparks. The Southland Industries shop in Garden Grove, Calif., was deafening and he couldn’t see anything for the brilliant glare of the arc in the smoke until the flange on the slowly rotating pipe spool blocked the star and gave him his shot. Turang says he always questions the workers before shooting on a job like this. “I ask them ‘what are you going to do and what’s going to happen here?’” he says. Then he knows what to expect, sets up, and gets his shot.
Dwight Dempsey
Photographer: Dwight Dempsey, senior bridge engineer, Figg Engineering Group, Tallahassee, Fla.
Submitter: Submitted by photographer
Description: In early September, while making a routine check on the around-the-clock replacement of the Interstate-35W crossing over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Dempsey grabbed this shot with his point-and-shoot camera, capturing dramatic lighting, shadows, water and sky. Dempsey says he frequently competes with colleagues for magazine-worthy shots. Clearly he won this round, demonstrating that practical-minded field engineers also can have an artistic side.