Bobcat Heavy Civil, LLC
ETT Cenizo Substation and Ranch Road
What makes it interesting?
The Electric Transmission Texas (ETT) Cenizo Substation and Ranch Road project was very interesting and complex because it comprised of many different scopes of work, and it also coupled with another substation project for American Electric Power called AEP Molina Substation. One Friday afternoon, a firefight broke out on the Mexican side of the border, causing our employee manning the pump to seek cover as bullets ricocheted all around him.
How HCSS Software assisted with this project
HeavyBid helped us win the project by being very accurate and precise in our budget building process. We were able to build crews and estimate costs for both of our earthwork crews and our pipe crews.
Project Description:
This project was located on the south side of Laredo and was in a very remote location near the town of Rio Bravo, Texas. The ETT Cenizo Project consisted of constructing two miles of Ranch Road and building a 35-acre substation pad. The adjoining AEP Molina Substation was a 13-acre substation pad that was connected to the Cenizo substation by a common storm drainage system.
Bobcat’s primary scope of work was site work and earthwork for the ranch road and substation. The two-mile ranch road project specified for the construction of a 24-foot wide road with Geogrid and nine inches of crushed limestone flex base. Within the two-mile stretch of the ranch road, there were six drainage culverts ranging from a single 18-inch RCP culvert to a six-barrel, 30-inch culvert system. The ranch road also consisted of four concrete low water crossings, four pipe gates tying into existing property fence, 1,800 cubic yards of rock rubble rip rap, and the application of hydraulically-applied flexible growth medium for vegetative growth and erosion control. The substation pad subgrade was designed for 125,000 cubic yards of cut and fill.
Processing this volume of subgrade, along with subgrade and flex base on the ranch road required a huge supply of water. Because of the remote location, the water supply came via three 4,000-gallon water trucks making 15-mile round trips to the Rio Grande River, which borders the state of Texas and the country of Mexico. Diverting water out of the Rio Grande River requires the purchase of water by the acre-foot from the Hidalgo County Irrigation District and a permit from the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality (TECQ). This permit requires one to post a diversion certificate at all times at or near the pump with the permitted diversion rate declared.
Within the 35-acre Cenizo substation pad, there was an extensive storm drainage system comprising of RCP and HDPE pipe along with 17 drainage structures. The substation pad also consisted of 16,000 cubic yards of 6-inch thick flex base, 5,300 cubic yards of rock rubble rip rap, hydraulically-applied flexible growth medium in disturbed areas, and 3,742 linear feet of station fence.
