By John Fulmer

All Lanes
PROFILE

Wellington Power works to alleviate Washington’s tough traffic

W
ELLINGTON POWER CORP., a Pittsburgh-based rooms under the bascule section’s roadbed and routed through
electrical contractor, is helping to relieve one of a platoon of Cutler-Hammer switchgear to feed the 16, 150-hp
the worst bottlenecks in the United States by gear motors and corresponding bridge controls.
electrifying the world’s largest drawbridge. Wiring any job of this scope would be tricky enough, but
For more than two years, Wellington has been working on the majority of this “wire” is four inches in diameter, 1,000
the new Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge that will cross the feet long and weighs 14 pounds a foot. It is protected by steel-
Potomac River near Alexandria, Va., on the Capital Beltway. The cable armor, wrapped in tar-impregnated jute and polyethylene
Beltway, an eight-lane highway, circles Washington, D.C. The jackets, and laid in a trench dug well below the Potomac’s
PHOTO COURTESY OF POTOMAC CROSSING CONSULTANTS

Beltway narrows at one spot: at the existing drawbridge and ap- navigation channel. The cable reels weigh 7 tons and trans-
proaches, which crimp traffic into six. Since the Beltway carries porting them—or any material—to the project site was difficult
up to 225,000 vehicles a day and the 45-year-old bridge was since trucks had to rumble through Alexandria’s Old Town, the
built to handle 75,000, this squeeze play can become a driver’s kind of neighborhood rife with commercial restrictions, a slice
nightmare, routinely resulting in backups that are miles long. of real estate full of $2-million-plus town homes and narrow
The Beltway, part of Interstate 95, the East Coast’s heavily streets once strolled along by Washington, Jefferson, Monroe
traveled main corridor, has undergone several widening projects, and Madison.
but nothing touches this effort. When completed, the new draw- Scott Winters, Wellington project director, said community
bridge, constructed parallel to the old span, will have a 257-foot relations played a big part in the new Wilson bridge preparations.
wide, 12-lane bascule. The eight bascule sections—the steel His construction trailer complex is tucked under the old bridge,
leaves that open for boat traffic—are lifted by huge semicircular along with other job site trailers and staging areas, all hemmed in
gears. One of Wellington’s jobs is to provide two 35-kilovolt (kV) by Jones Point Park along the Potomac. There is very little room
primary circuits that are terminated at substations in electrical to move, park work trucks or store materials.

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 Clear

©JOSEPH ROMEO
Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project

with bridge project

On a cold, sunny December morn-
ing, Winters and Jim Fuss, general
superintendent, led a guided tour of
the project. From the top of the new bridge, 20 feet taller than its CCTV, a wireless roadside weather information system, remote
predecessor, there is a close-up view of Old Town’s wintry streets traffic microwave sensor and fiber optic communication systems,
and nonstop traffic. using Transdyn, Pleasanton, Calif., as a subcontractor to design
“You have two factions here,” Winters said. “You have the the bridge’s “intelligent transportation system.”
state and all the motorists and the commuters that can’t wait for In addition, Wellington was awarded the electrical contract for
this bridge to open up. Then you have the people who live right the $191 million Maryland bridge approaches. President and CEO
there—and I can understand their feelings—they have all this Paul Loftus said Wellington received $30 million in contracts for
construction that’s been going on for two years, and it’s going to both the bascule and Maryland approaches. Loftus said Welling-
be a five-year period before it’s done. They have to listen to the ton has changed dramatically over the years through both internal
equipment, trucks rolling down past their beautiful homes, in a growth and acquisitions, some they have retained and some they
very quiet, lovely neighborhood.” have shed, and once had double their current work force.
“We’ve been up the ladder and find the area we’re in now fairly
Wellington wins contract comfortable,” Loftus said, adding Wellington has recently put a
What made Wellington a good choice for the new bridge is the marketing firm into the mix. “First, we’re having them upgrade
full-service contractor’s financial strength and experience with all our business-development materials. I think of marketing as a
marine, bridge and traffic-management projects. Besides the presentation of what we do and since we do many specialty projects,
submersible bridge-control cable, secondary power, lighting, a lot of people aren’t aware that we’re more broad-based than the
pedestrian-warning and gate systems, Wellington will install conventional electrical contracting firm.”

www.ecmag.com MAR.06 ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR 135

PROFILE / WELLINGTON POWER

PHOTO COURTESY OF POTOMAC CROSSING CONSULTANTS

The cable
The bridge-control cable design and installation was the
project’s most challenging aspect. Graybar, St. Louis,
handled distribution of the Draka Cableteq USA cable,
which was custom-made at Draka’s North Dighton,
Mass., plant. Steve Stone, a Graybar datacom sales
manager who had never worked on submarine cable,
said his Pittsburgh branch office normally didn’t chase
this type of project. The cable spec came in “volumes,”
and he conferred with a Draka team and Winters to get
the design just right.
“Large projects like this became a niche market,
and I really wasn’t all that familiar with Draka,” Stone
said, adding that the cable manufacturer did a lot to make the pro- the other electrical room. This cabling arrangement provides the
cess smoother. “They understood this product, all the intricacies, power and control systems with total operation redundancy.
and they actually taught Graybar a lot about this product. I doubt “There’s a backup for every operation system that’s in place,”
there are many manufacturers in the world who could have made Winters said. “If utility power is lost on the Maryland or Virginia
the product the way it was specified and the way that it came to the side, we can automatically switch through either substation by
job site. I think Draka had to retool some of their capabilities just means of switchgear interlocks or two standby generators, de-
so Wellington could make the runs that needed to be made.” pending on which side is lost.”
As the cable installation got underway, Graybar facilitated ca-
ble deliveries every other day into Alexandria, which, if handled A gold-plated job
incorrectly, could result in heavy fines for Wellington. Graybar As one might expect, the cable management on this project is
also negotiated copper prices as they fluctuated during the mul- something to behold. The tray and conduit are not only jumbo
tiyear production process, and helped Wellington lock in a good sized, they’re top quality. Vibration from traffic—it constantly
deal. Stone said this type of job, with its complicated logistics, rattled the Wellington trailer complex—and opening the bas-
showcases Graybar’s expertise. cule leaves has nearly ruined the old bridge, and the new one
is designed to withstand this endless fatigue for the next 50
The installation years. All conduit is PVC-coated GRC, Winters said, and all cable
By December 2005, Wellington had installed most of the sub- tray is stainless steel. Pull and termination boxes, enclosures,
marine cables. Since the bridge opening precludes connecting hardware, are made of 316-grade stainless, and supports are
utility lines between Maryland and Virginia, another subcontractor fabricated from hot-dipped galvanized steel.
Marine Technologies, Baltimore, cut a trench through the channel Once Wellington had negotiated and executed the contracts,
using a clam bucket. Wellington’s installation requires that 24 Winters spent months preparing outlines, developing goals and
four-inch cables go to the Beltway’s “outer loop” bascule section assembling a staff.
with nine more to the inner loop section; this is accomplished “We have a lot of layout and design responsibility,” Winters
with assistance from Marine Tech divers. said. “The project’s on-site staff includes two engineers and two
“In supposedly an orderly fashion—you can’t see your hand superintendents. We spent a good bit of time just developing
in front of your face—once all the cables are in the trench, the the different layouts for all the equipment, material, conduit,
divers backfill with gravel,” Winters said. cable tray to the point where we basically engineered everything
To handle the cable, Wellington set a huge reel on top of one on our own drawings.”
of the V-shaped bridge piers—or arch rib—where the electrical Winters said he’s done the gamut in the industry—power-
rooms are located. Dominion Virginia Power provided utility power houses, manufacturing facilities, prisons, hospitals—but this was
for the two Wellington-installed 35 kV feeds that run 2,500 feet another experience altogether.
underneath the bridge approach through six-inch conduits. The “I’ve either managed or been involved with just about every-
feeds terminate in the Virginia-side electrical room. thing in the industry,” he said. “But this is neat. It’s an interesting
Ten four-conductor sets of 500 MCM cables, 18 119-conductor job. It’s personally the most challenging thing I’ve ever done.”
bridge-control cables and three 48 multimode and single-mode But most important, D.C.-area commuters and thousands of
fiber optic cables continue down through the accessible, hollow weary travelers rolling down I-95 won’t have to worry as much
arch rib. At the rib’s bottom sits a concrete piling pier with embed- about another traffic jam. EC
ded six-inch conduits that are directed away from the bridge and
extend into the navigation channel. The cables run down through FULMER is freelance writer based in Joppa, Md., and
the Virginia-side arch rib and piling pier across the river channel former editor of ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR. He can be reached at
and up the Maryland-side piling pier and arch rib terminating in [email protected].

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