Waterways Council Recommends Program Manager for All River Construction Projects

“The nation’s inland waterways modernization program would benefit from being managed as a single, coordinated national program rather than a collection of competing individual projects,” Tracy Zea, president and CEO of the Waterways Council said. “Establishing an Inland Navigation Construction Organization (INCO) within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would improve accountability, reduce cost, mitigate risk and help Congress and American taxpayers achieve better returns on infrastructure investment.”

Zea also pointed out that construction programs—such as the $1.6-billion Montgomery Lock and Dam modernization near Monaca, Pa., which began in the last two years and has a planned construction timeline that stretches to 2033—require more coordination with other projects along the entire river system than other infrastructure projects.

The council and representatives in districts along rivers, such as Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.)—whose district includes the area around the mouth of the Mississippi River—have long sought more efficient and faster lock and dam projects along major rivers where goods flow. Projects such as the Olmsted Locks and Dam have had long delays and cost overruns as the Corps deals with infrastructure that, in cases such as Olmsted, should have been updated decades ago. The Corps has learned over the last three decades better means and methods for updating its network of locks and dam such as sinking concrete monoliths for underwater construction and minimizing diving.

However, the Waterways Council points out that projects are still taking too long and even the use of building information modeling and the Corps standardizing on Autodesk’s design and Forma cloud services have not delivered timelines for reopening locks and dams more quickly and better outcomes for goods traveling on systems of rivers whose barges and ships can be held up by slow navigation during long construction periods.

River users also contribute to lock and dam construction on the inland waterways through funding formulas for Corps projects and taxes and docking fees.

Zea said the HDR study and other council research showed that “if you only have one or two projects going on at a time, you can successfully fund those projects to completion within 3-5 years. Then, how do you rack and stack design so that when a project is completed, you can move right into construction on the next one? So, really, really managing it like a program.”

The Corps design center in Vicksburg, Miss., is in charge of design for all river projects and there are executives at the headquarters district in Washington, D.C., that have responsibility for overall construction on the inland waterways. However, they also have responsibility for operations and maintenance, and working with contractors is often delegated to individual geographic districts where projects such as Montgomery and the Kentucky Lock Addition are not connected for planning or sharing of resources such as the specialized batch plants the Corps sets up for most of its lock and dam projects.

Rep. Craig was not immediately available to comment on the proposal but a bipartisan group of representatives and senators have already studied the council’s white paper from HDR and are considering the feasibility of introducing the new INCO organization as early as this year.