Dust will soon settle for the last time in four lakefront subdivisions near Eutawville, SC, where general contractor W. Frazier Construction Inc. and several subcontractors have teamed up to pave 21 existing dirt roads.
Rea Construction will handle the paving portion of the project, which has a total value of nearly $1 million. Hutto Construction has the responsibility for building the drainage structures, while G.H. Furse will take care of fences, moving items and seeding new grass on road shoulders.
“Santee-Cooper wanted to turn the responsibility for the roads’ maintenance over to Orangeburg County,” said David Barker, construction manager of W. Frazier Construction Inc. “In order for the county to agree to the arrangement, Santee-Cooper had to make sure that the finished roadways meet the South Carolina Department of Transportation [SCDOT] standards.”
“The current project is the fourth and final phase of a four-year cooperative effort with Santee-Cooper to pave the dirt roads near Lake Marion in Orangeburg and Clarendon counties,” said Kevin Webber, resident construction engineer at the Clarendon County office of SCDOT.
“SCDOT’s Road Design Preliminary Engineering office usually designs large-scale projects,” he added. “But since we were dealing with existing roadways and utilizing a standard design, we did all the engineering for this project here in the Clarendon County office. We will also handle the inspections from here.”
After formulating the plans for the project, SCDOT advertised the project for bid and W. Frazier Construction Inc. of Ravenel, SC, was the successful bidder. The contract contained 167 items of work. These included clearing to the right-of-way limits, relocating moving items, installing storm drainage with structures, grading and widening the roadway, installing the aggregate base course, and putting in asphalt.
W. Frazier Construction has become one of the state’s largest minority contractors. The firm, which Willie Frazier founded in 1983, has won numerous awards for excellence through the years. Most recently, the Federal Highway Administration honored the company as National Minority Business Enterprise of the Year in 1999.
“We take great pride in doing what we say we’ll do and doing it right,” Frazier said. “Our workplace philosophy is to work hard, work safe, do a job only once and treat our customers the way we want to be treated.”
“Many of the people in our office have worked with W. Frazier Construction before,” added Webber. “They definitely do a good job.”
As officials with W. Frazier Construction began making preparations to tackle the job, representatives of Santee-Cooper and SCDOT held meetings with those who leased or owned lots in affected subdivisions to inform them about the road-widening plans. The primary purpose of these meetings, which took place in early 2001, was to identify items that property holders wanted to retain and move back behind the roadway clearing limits.
“In all, they identified approximately 130 moving items on the 21 roads,” Barker said. “These included fences, shrubs and a variety of other items.”
By the time SCDOT completed this process, W. Frazier Construction had its equipment on the scene. To complete the work in a timely fashion, the company scheduled multiple operations. W. Frazier Construction deployed one of its crews to clear the project to the right-of-way, Furse to relocate the moving items, another Frazier crew to install storm drainage and Hutto to install structures. An additional Frazier crew took care of grading and widening the roadway, and installing the aggregate base. Rea Construction then installed the asphalt, and Furse seeded grass from the edge of the new asphalt to the right of way.
“The success of any general contractor revolves around its employees and the subcontractors working together with the same goals,” Barker said.
A Frazier crew headed by Mark Washington installed the storm drains and handled some of the clearing and grubbing chores. In all, Washington and his crew installed 3,400 ft. (1,036 m) of drain lines and 45 drainage structures.
To complete their part of the project, Washington and his team utilized equipment that included a Kobelco 220 excavator and a John Deere 544E loader. W. Frazier Construction obtains its Kobelco equipment from W & W of Moncks Corner, SC, and purchased its John Deer equipment from Construction Equipment Sales in Charleston.
“I try to do business with local dealers as much as possible,” said Frazier, whose company has more than 40 pieces of machinery in its equipment inventory. The company also operates its own fleet of trucks.
W. Frazier Construction’s grading crew, which was headed by Lester Jenrette, utilized even more of the company’s machinery when it moved in to get the roadways ready for the Rea Construction paving crew. In addition to widening the road enough to make traffic lanes that are 10 ft. (3 m) wide, Jenrette’s crew had to haul in, grade and compact approximately 40,000 sq. yds (33,445 sq m) of aggregate.
By the time it finished the job, W. Frazier Construction had utilized a John Deere 590 excavator, a Caterpillar 322 excavator, a Caterpillar D5 dozer, a Caterpillar 12H motorgrader, a Caterpillar 416 rubber tire backhoe, a John Deere 410 rubber tire backhoe, a Caterpillar 613 scraper, a John Deere 762 scraper, a John Deere 310 rubber tire backhoe, a John Deere 544B loader, a Dynapac CA15 vibratory roller, a Dresser nine-wheel roller, a Challenger II power broom, and a Volvo A25 off-road truck. The company purchased its Cat machinery from Blanchard Machinery Co. in Summerville, and obtained its Volvo truck from L.B. Smith Inc. in Columbia.
“Our crews had to grade the roadways, valleys and ditches to the new elevations,” Barker said. “Otherwise, the topography of the road didn’t change much.”
As soon as SCDOT engineers gave their seal of approval to the new road beds, the paving crew from Rea Construction moved in to install the new asphalt driving surface.
“We assigned about a dozen people to work on the roads in the Santee-Cooper subdivisions,” said Sinkler Boone, area operations manager of Rea Construction. “By the time the project is completed, our people will lay more than 2,800 tons of Type I hot mix asphalt to form the new driving surface.”
The Rea Construction crew will utilize a variety of machinery to complete the paving work. This equipment includes a Cedar Rapids 461 track paver, a Hamm HD110 vibratory roller, a Ferguson 8- to 10-ton (7.2 to 9 t) static roller, an Ingersoll-Rand PT 125 rubber tire roller, a New Holland tractor equipped with a front-mounted Champion broom, and distributors manufactured by Etnyre and Rosco. The company obtained its Cedarapids Equipment from A.E. Finley & Associates, and purchased its Hamm roller from Pioneer Equipment.
“We try to base our equipment purchases on the track record of specific models, the likes and dislikes of our individual operators, and the way we plan to use the machinery,” Boone said.
Boone added that he believes the equipment assigned to the paving project in Santee-Cooper’s four subdivisions will enable the Rea Construction crew to meet the scheduled completion date with ease. Barring extreme weather conditions, the entire project should be completed by Oct. 31, 2001.
“The job has been pretty straightforward and, right now, we’re slightly ahead of schedule,” Webber said. “When the project is completed, the residents of Red Bank, St. Julian, Fountain and Belvedere subdivisions will have a much smoother ride than they ever had before.” CEG
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