Atkinson & Griffith Complete SR 99 Project in Bakersfield

The Caltrans State Route 99 Corridor Enhancement Master Plan spans seven Central California counties and endeavors to create an improved freeway system between Bakersfield and Lodi. Those counties are Kern, Tulare, Fresno, Madera, Merced, Stanislaus, and San Joaquin. Collaboration between Caltrans and local communities has paved the way for a transformative initiative aimed at enhancing the freeway system while embracing the unique identity of the valley. The Atkinson Construction Team recently completed a key phase of the plan in the Kern County city of Bakersfield where they joint ventured with The Griffith Company.

The scope of the project included replacement of more than 26 lane miles of pavement with 85,000 cubic yards of continuously reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP), which included 10 million pounds of reinforcing steel. In addition, 20 ramps were repaved under 25-day ramp closures in order to minimize disruptions.

The project team dealt with extreme temperature fluctuations in a desert environment, with the mercury ranging from lows in the 30s and to highs of 110 degrees during the summer months. A strong focus on safety paid off, with the team completing 55,000 person-hours of work with zero first-aid, recordable, or loss-time incidents.

The Caltrans and Griffith-Atkinson Joint Venture worked together to implement a Value Engineering Cost Proposal (VECP) to combine staging in order to minimize disruptions and eliminate additional staging traffic patterns.

A big tip of the hard hat goes out to the Griffith and Atkinson crews for their outstanding safety performance on this project and their dedication to quality work. They demonstrated an unwavering commitment to safety that resulted in zero incidents across the board, and significantly minimized the impact on traffic during the project, which resulted in a safer environment for both the public and the project team.