It won’t take many people to tear down two dams.
The total number of workers toiling at the dams, including subcontractors, “could approach 40,” said Brian Krohmer of Barnard Construction Co. of Bozeman, Mont.
“The number of subcontractor employees will fluctuate significantly throughout the project, depending on the work being performed at that time, and will average around 15,” said Krohmer, the company’s Elwha project manager.
Barnard Construction Co. of Bozeman, Mont., won the $27 million dam tear-down contract with a bid $13 million less than what the National Park Service had budgeted.
That totals less than 10 percent of the entire $325 million Elwha River Restoration effort to bring the waterway’s salmon run back to life.
Overseeing Barnard Construction’s work is URS Corp. of Seattle, which has the National Park Service’s $2.6 million management contract for the dams’ demolition.
A call requesting an interviews with an official from that company was not returned.
International company
Barnard, with an offices in Canada, Mexico and Australia, is privately held and consists of nine affiliated companies.
The company, which builds dams, has never torn one down, company officials said when awarded the contract in August 2010.
Krohmer referred questions about Barnard to the company’s website, www.barnard-inc.com.
After Timothy Barnard founded Barnard Construction Co. Inc. in 1975, it grew from “a one-man operation” into a multimillion-dollar heavy civil contractor, the website said.
Variety of projects
“The variety of projects we’ve constructed are as varied as the terrain and regions of the country in which they’ve been built — from a cooling system on campus at Cornell University in New York to a utilities tunnel under a busy thoroughfare in Orange County, Calif., or from a . . . backup dam in South Carolina to assembly of an intake structure 270 feet below water surface in Central Oregon. At Barnard, we enjoy challenges.”
Four Barnard employees arrived on the North Olympic Peninsula in May to begin planning for the project.
The company plans to bring 12 to 14 workers to the North Olympic Peninsula for the duration of the project, half of whom are supervisory and administrative, and four of whom will live in the area for the duration of the project, Krohmer said in an email.
Some are renting properties, but Krohmer would not say where or describe their living arrangements.
As of Wednesday, there were nine Barnard employees on the Peninsula, including two local employees, and three more Barnard employees were en route Wednesday, he said.
The total number of workers toiling at the dams, including subcontractors, “could approach 40,” Krohmer said.
“The number of subcontractor employees will fluctuate significantly throughout the project, depending on the work being performed at that time, and will average around 15,” Krohmer said.
Krohmer would not discuss the value of subcontracts awarded for the dams removal.
Local subcontractors
Local subcontractors include Bruch & Bruch Construction Inc., which was awarded a $2 million to $4 million contract to haul debris from the project.
Barnard also gave subcontracts to Northwestern Territories Inc., Pacific Office Equipment Inc., Star Welding & Wrenching, NC Power Systems and United Rentals, and Straits Electric, all of Port Angeles, and D&H Enterprises of Forks.
Workers have been paid prevailing wages for the area, a requirement of the federal Davis-Bacon Act, which governs wage structures for public works projects, according to the National Park Service, the lead agency for the project.
Straits Electric’s subcontract was “probably $50,000,” owner Christie Tucker said last week.
Her company, a union shop, added two people to Straits’ then three-person workforce to complete the subcontract.
Straits installed the ancillary connections for Barnard’s equipment staging site on Lower Dam Road about a quarter-mile from the Elwha Dam.
“The portion we’ve done so far has not been huge, but it’s been a fairly significant amount for our small company,” Tucker said.
Prevailing wages for the area, which Tucker said are close to union scale, will be paid to those working on the dams.
Compensation for electricians includes $47 an hour in wages and $18 an hour in benefits compared to about $25 in wages for electricians in a nonunion shop, Tucker said.
Explosives work at the Elwha Dam site in October, January and February will be done by Superior Blasting from Nampa, Idaho.
Subterra Inc. from North Bend will perform the blasting and pre- and post-blasting surveys.
Krohmer said the only other specialists engaged for the project will be Performance Abatement of Seattle and PBS Engineering & Environmental of Portland, Ore., asbestos abatement and contaminated-soil testing.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
