Dive Brief:

• Fast is when a state agency, in this case the Washington Department of Transportation, requests proposals for repairing the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River, opens bids two weeks later and puts a contractor to work the day after awarding the job.
• Max Kuney IV, head of his family's Max J. Kuney Co., won the bid, bringing in Parsons Brinckerhoff and Omega Morgan as partners.
• Kuney said everyone pulled experts off other projects to create a top-flight team, and they worked in state offices so the client could review as they accomplished the Sept. 15 reopening of a bridge that had a section sink into the river on May 23.

Dive Insight:

Jared Smith, who headed Parson  Brinkerhoff's Northwest operations at the time, said, "There was a tremendous sense of teamwork among the contractor, design team and [DOT]" to make it all work fast. The Kuney company has had challenges before, the fourth-generation owner said, but not anything that had the time demand of getting a temporary fix replaced with a new span and traffic back to normal.