PND settles with municipality over port: engineering firm stands by its Open Cell Sheet Pile[TM] design.

AuthorAnderson, Tasha
PositionENGINEERING

At the end of January PND Engineers, Inc. announced that it had settled a lawsuit initiated by the Municipality of Anchorage over the failed Port of Anchorage Intermodal Expansion. The Municipality had sought more than $100 million and settled for $750,000. To grossly oversimplify the suit: the city asserted PND's Open Cell Sheet Pile[TM] (OCSP) design was flawed and PND says it was not.

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PND President and Senior Engineer Jim Campbell, PE, says PND maintains the strength and quality of their design. "Of course we want to defend ourselves, but we certainly have no interest in continuing to fight the case." A part of that is due to the cost of litigation, which is unpredictable and could cost in the millions. Additionally, lawsuits, especially those determined by juries, are inherently unpredictable. With those significant risks, "It really is better for us to settle," Campbell says.

To be clear, PND settled with the city on a payment amount: the engineering firm maintains the assertion that their design was in no way flawed and legally did not admit fault. The fact that the city sued for $100 million and settled for $750,000 indicates that "they probably knew that we were right, that the design was fine," Campbell says. "The damage that the Municipality suffered, in terms of the cost, was really caused by the failed construction."

A Difficult Project

There's no doubt it was a difficult project. According to the July 2016 deposition of Brad West, president of West Construction, the Port of Anchorage is a difficult site for construction: "The tides, the currents, the deep fills, the hard driving, all of those things make this [sheet pile installation] a difficult project." When asked if this made the project impossible, West replied, "No. Difficult means it's hard. You just have to put forth the appropriate effort and planning."

West was deposed in conjunction with the Municipality's lawsuit.

West considered the project difficult from the perspective of West Construction, which has decades of experience installing OCSP. In fact, West provided a spreadsheet of OCSP bulkhead projects, the majority in Alaska, ranging back to 1981, both constructed and under construction. Of those listed, West Construction completed the work for twenty-eight projects, a total of approximately 20,500 sheets of OCSP in various soil and weather conditions. In that same time, the contractor originally selected to install PND's OCSP design at the...

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