June, 2008 TunnelCast spoke with Bijan Sartipi, Director of District 4 for Caltrans at the North American Tunneling (NAT) Conference in San Francisco about the Caldecott 4th bore and other major tunneling projects for the transportation department.

These are exciting times for Caltrans with so many major projects in the pipeline.

In several projects around the country it appears the Geotechnical Reports have fallen far short of providing a clear or accurate picture of expected ground conditions. While ground conditions around Caldecott are fairly well documented, what is your program for site investigation?

While 14 prime contractors took out plans, Caltrans received only two bids on the Devil's Slide tunnel contract, some in the department expressed disappointment, what do you account for the low number of bids and how do you increase competition for Caldecott?

Lessons learned from Devil's Slide?

How about risk management?

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These are exciting times for Caltrans with so many major projects in the pipeline.

In several projects around the country it appears the Geotechnical Reports have fallen far short of providing a clear or accurate picture of expected ground conditions. While ground conditions around Caldecott are fairly well documented, what is your program for site investigation?

While 14 prime contractors took out plans, Caltrans received only two bids on the Devil's Slide tunnel contract, some in the department expressed disappointment, what do you account for the low number of bids and how do you increase competition for Caldecott?

Lessons learned from Devil's Slide?

How about risk management?

Going back to Devil's Slide for a moment. Kiewit has fallen behind its ambitious construction schedule. While its $272.4 million bid was $32 million more than Caltrans' estimate, it planned to bring the job in a year early by cutting 400 workdays off the engineer's estimate of 1,900 days. How are they planning to make up lost time?

Overall how is the Devil's Slide project going?

Gas and diesel prices are over $4.40 a gallon, materials and labor costs a way up and funding sources are down, how is the current economy impacting you?

Caltrans has had a number of major successes recently in terms of bringing major bridge and highway projects in on time and on budget, what do you attribute this success to?

Finally, I know it's not in your District and is still under investigation but what can you tell us about the proposed HWY 710 tunnel in Los Angeles?