Bayou St. John, Fairgrounds, Roadway Improvement
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans Department of Public Works
Project Overview
As part of a construction administration and resident inspection contract with the City of New Orleans Department of Public Works, Royal was tasked with providing construction management services for a $23M FEMA-funded roadway improvement project— one of the largest ever in the city. The project area covered 110 city blocks and construction replaced over 29,000 square yards of asphalt and 18,000 square yards of concrete. The project required the replacement of roadway pavement, water lines, sewer lines, and drainage. The work also included modifications to improve consumer mobility related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Project Work and Royal Solutions
As a joint infrastructure project, the initiative essentially had three “owners,” the City of New Orleans Department of Public Works, the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, and the Sanitary Sewerage Emergency Replacement Program. In addition, the construction budget was separated by multiple funding sources across all contract items.
Tasked with construction administration, resident inspection, and overall construction management, Royal provided field management of the contractor and all construction activities, including conducting progress meetings, resolving resident issues, reviewing, and approving monthly pay estimates, field adjustments, change management, and applying knowledge and experience in civil construction to ensure that all project changes were properly verified and documented.
Using our proprietary software platform RoyalVUE, we were able to monitor and keep track of progress on all 110 city blocks, which allowed us to provide real-time updates to all project stakeholders. Updates included the monitoring of construction activities to determine and document the progress of the project, as well as compliance with the construction contract. We reported on meeting the City’s standards and policies with an emphasis on site safety, the timely review of submittals, shop drawings, samples, substitute materials, the timely rejection of all non-conforming work and materials, the application of resources to particular portions of the work, the conformance of the work to the construction contractor’s schedule, and the timely execution of change order work on the job.
The project kicked off during COVID throwing additional challenges in our path such as material shortages on common construction items such as reinforced concrete pipe. In addition, the project site was last surveyed many years ago, forcing a majority of the blocks to be up-scoped, which included about $7 million in change orders. However, we were able to be on-site with the client at all times, keep track of our overages, and use real-time “as-builts” entered into our RoyalVUE platform to stay on track.
The project wrapped up in the early summer of 2024 and upon conclusion, we were able to manage all of the changes and provide the City an accurate history of the work performed on an extremely large and challenging project, that ultimately improved an important, much-traveled part of the New Orleans community.