Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West Closure Complex Project

Belle Chasse, Louisiana

Kiewit and its joint venture partner completed the construction of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West (GIWW) Closure Complex, a $1 billion hurricane storm surge protection facility for the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas. This included one of the world’s largest interior drainage pump stations and one of the nation’s largest navigable floodgates. In collaboration with the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the project operated double shifts, seven days per week for 22 months to meet schedule and came in millions under the client’s budget.

Construction included a series of flow control sluice gates, 6,500 feet of new levee and 130,000 cubic yards of cast-in-place concrete. Pile driving for the pump station was a critical component of this project, involving twelve hundred 600- to 750-millimeter diameter piles in just 100 days. The team developed specialized mix designs and ran its own on-site batch plant. The cofferdam and dewatering system used vertical wick drains and horizontal drainage blankets.

The project reached a major milestone when eight of the 11 pumps were operational prior to the 2011 hurricane season and raised protection to the level of a 100-year storm. GIWW won ENR’s Best Civil Works/Infrastructure Project and Best Project of the Year in Texas and Louisiana.

Foundations work included construction of a slurry-trench for an 85,000-square-foot soil bentonite slurry cut-off wall along the Western Bank & Vicinity (WBV) levee.

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