Dive Brief:
- The Gateway Development Commission has approved an $88 million change order for contractor Weeks Marine to remove about 500 submerged wooden piles for the Hudson Tunnel project in New York and New Jersey.
- GDC expects work associated with the change order to begin later this year and be completed before the planned start of tunnel boring under the Hudson River in 2028, said Jim Starace, GDC chief of program delivery, during a July 8 agency board meeting.
- The removal of remaining piles from Pier 68 and ground stabilization work will substantially reduce the possibility tunnel boring machines will encounter obstructions as they proceed through the area, according to the GDC.
Dive Insight:
The change order, added on to the Hudson River Ground Stabilization portion of the Hudson Tunnel Project, proactively addresses factors that could negatively impact tunnel boring under the river, said GDC CEO Tom Prendergast during the meeting.
Scope consists of first removing obstructions from the route the tunnel boring machines will travel. Then, the construction team will mix lightweight concrete into the riverbed soil to ensure it is firm enough for the machines to dig through, according to the GDC.
“Megaprojects, especially as large and as complex as the Hudson Tunnel Project, bring new challenges every day. GDC has delivered this project successfully to date by thinking ahead, anticipating problems and taking proactive action,” said Prendergast during the meeting. “This change order is an example of this. In all of my years of project management, one of the central themes is identification of risks that you will foresee, mitigating those risks and taking actions to make sure that you’ve done as many of the mitigations as possible.”
The scope of the original project was to prepare a specific 1,200-foot-long by 100-foot-wide section of the riverbed for tunnel boring. Work began in the middle of the Hudson River in 2024 and has been progressing eastward toward Manhattan since, according to the GDC.
“This project provided important lessons that are being applied to the change order work, including the need to work within a cofferdam to protect against strong Hudson River currents, the possibility that some piles may break as they are being extracted from the riverbed and the need to strengthen the soil around the removed piles to account for voids,” said Starace during the meeting. “After assessing multiple options, it was concluded that adding this work to the scope of the existing Hudson River Ground Stabilization Project is the most efficient and cost-effective approach.”
The change order extends the original work area by about 265 feet toward Manhattan and adds additional activities to address piles remaining in the riverbed from the demolition of Pier 68.
Weeks Marine, a Cranford, New Jersey-based contractor and Kiewit subsidiary, is already mobilized in the Hudson River, said Starace. He added the contractor has specialized marine construction expertise and has already removed a small number of piles in 2025 to better understand the work required to prepare this section of the riverbed for tunnel boring.
