PNDANNIVERSARY Engineers, TIMELINE Inc. 27 1979: The company is founded by Roy Peratrovich, Jr. and Dennis Nottingham, two civil/structural engineers, as Peratrovich & Nottingham, Inc. (P&N). Paul Reynolds, a silent stockholder, helps incorporate the company. Peratrovich and Nottingham met each other in the 1960s while working together at the “We were a Alaska Department of Highways. They designed team together, multiple pioneering bridges across Alaska and and we did were already being published for innovative some wonderful design solutions in Alaska – Peratrovich for things. Most welded steel for friction and torsion dolphins; brilliant man I Nottingham for pressure-treated timber floats k n o w.” standardizing Alaska boat shelters. ~Peratrovich Their prize bridges pre-P&N: on Nottingham Cordova Ferry Transfer Bridge: Peratrovich Gulkana River Bridge: Nottingham designed designed the first modern, all-steel, all-welded the 400-foot tied-arch pipeline bridge using steel orthotropic bridge, replacing timber dolphins piles driven into permafrost, setting a new arctic and setting a new marine engineering standard. engineering standard. Hurricane Gulch Bridge: Nottingham performed all seismic calculations by hand – with boxes of pencils and a slide rule – for this 551-foot-long arch bridge that crosses Hurricane Creek and the Canyon divide, 254 feet aboveground. “I spent many sleepless nights wondering if the Hurricane Gulch Bridge would withstand an earthquake, and I went over those calculations over and over again. Several years after that bridge was built, when I had a computer program to analyze the design of the Sitka Harbor Bridge, I went back and checked all of my calculations on the Hurricane Gulch Bridge and found out they were right. Four years after it was completed, I knew the bridge would work.” ~Dennis Nottingham, Alaska Business Monthly, 1986 28 Knik-Matanuska Rivers 29 Sitka Harbor Bridge: In 1969, Peratrovich, the design squad chief, and Nottingham, who performed design check and structural analysis, designed the country’s first cable-stayed vehicular crossing bridge, the John O’Connell Memorial Bridge. It was the third time Peratrovich (Susitna River) and Nottingham (Copper River) had proposed a cable-stayed bridge in Alaska. The bridge design effort won a national award and piqued the curiosity of engineers nationwide. “The early Alaska Highway The Sitka Harbor Bridge Department administrators are to be design team: Bill Gute, commended for allowing a new idea Roy Peratrovich, to surface which has led others to use Dennis Nottingham, more advanced methods to design and Alaska Department and build the many beautiful and of Highways aesthetic cable-stayed bridges now Commissioner gracing the USA.” Robert Beardsley. ~Dennis Nottingham, White Paper titled “The Evolution” Yukon River Bridge: Nottingham’s innovation included unprecedented aboveground twin oil and natural gas pipelines. The low-temperature steel box girder bridge design is believed to be the first in the world to incorporate modern seismic loading calculations. “If the world was to end, that would be the flood. We designed it so that if an aircraft flew into it and cut one girder in half, it would still stand. After the 2002 (7.9) earthquake, everybody ran up to the Yukon River Bridge to see the damage. None. That bridge will be there 200 years from now.” ~Dennis Nottingham, Northern Innovators Hall of Fame, 2015 30 1980: Peratrovich & Nottingham contracts with Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) Alaska, Inc., providing design concepts and crossing alternatives for the Kuparuk River Module Crossings in support of the Kuparuk oil field expansion. • Peratrovich & Nottingham designs its first permeable wave barrier (right) at a U.S. Coast Guard facility in Oregon. (Nottingham, far right, performing an in-house wave test.) • Associated Pile and Fitting Corp. “They were always conical tips are used on the Homer so curious. ... Dock fender system improvements That was their nature. ... project in Homer, Alaska. Peratrovich & It was a really Nottingham adds structural fins to the creative atmosphere.” pipe piles to increase load bearing and ~Bill Gunderson on pullout resistance. (The headline is from Nottingham a 1980 edition of Piletips magazine.) and Peratrovich 1981: Brent Drage (pictured at far right with Peratrovich and Nottingham), a civil engineer with extensive hydrological experience, becomes a stockholder, and the company’s name is changed to Peratrovich, Nottingham & Drage, Inc. (PN&D). • PN&D provides value engineering to the City of Cordova, Alaska, for its small boat harbor expansion project, replacing the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF) design. • PN&D begins development of its OPEN CELL SHEET PILETM technology. The first OPEN CELL structure was designed by P&N and completed for ARCO to support and protect a bridge servicing the North Slope oil fields. (PND disclaimer: PND has spent years testing, observing, and refining the OPEN CELL SHEET PILE {OCSP} system and holds all related information to be proprietary. The OCSP system is patented, holding U.S. Patent No. 6,715,964 B2; U.S. Patent No. 7,488,140 B2; and U.S. Patent No. 8,950,981 B2.) 1982: PN&D wins three Alaska Construction & Oil Heavy Construction and Engineering Awards, including first place for its Kuparuk River Module Crossings (pictured at right) on the North Slope, the company’s first major awards. 31 1983: PN&D trademarks the SPIN FINTM name for the new piledriving technology. • PN&D provides value engineering to the City of Homer, Alaska, for its small boat harbor expansion project, replacing the DOT&PF design. 1984: Designed in 1982, constructed in 1983, and awarded in 1984, the Tanana River OPEN CELL SHEET PILETM bulkhead wins the Alaska Construction & Oil Project of the Year Award. Built at the confluence of the Tanana and Nenana rivers for the City of Nenana, Alaska, the OCSP bulkhead is the company’s first of its proprietary award-winning and internationally acclaimed design. • PN&D acquires Tongass Engineers, a Juneau engineering firm, which eventually becomes PND’s Juneau office. *Anchorage Daily News 1985: PN&D provides design, including first use of its SPIN FINTM technology, for the Seward Coal-Loading *Alaska Construction & Oil, 1986 Facility, linking the Usibelli Coal Mine in Interior Alaska to the Korea Electric Power Company, Alaska’s first hardrock mineral export deal, which was nine years in the making. 32 1986: PN&D designs its first berm breakwater. Brent Drage designs an innovative solution to an engineering challenge in the Pribilof Islands, Alaska, that attracts international attention. “It is unique for its use of a *Engineering News-Record, 1988 berm design in the most severe conditions under which no such breakwater design has yet been used; for the extent of physical modeling – done by five laboratories in several nations; for use of a worst-case storm criteria, based on the depth-limited site and the extremely high frequency of severe storms; and for the consideration of 20- to 50-second wave periods in design and modeling. The low- cost/high-stability advantage anticipated for the St. George project indicates that communities served by underdeveloped ports around Alaska, and the world, can now afford to upgrade them using locally available materials.” ~ PND Principal Alan Christopherson, Alaska Construction & Oil, November 1986 • The first GUNDERBOOMTM is used in Homer, Alaska, where a harbor-dredging project threatened to dump potentially deadly sediment on fish and crabs. Bill Gunderson, PN&D engineer, develops *The Daily Astorian the barrier calling upon his experience in the commercial fishing business. PN&D patents the technology. Three years later, the GUNDERBOOM is the most successful and widely deployed boom system following the Exxon Valdez accident that spilled 11 million gallons of oil in Prince William Sound, Alaska. 33 • PN&D wins two Lincoln Arc Welding Awards for its fast-tracked Alaska Railroad Bridge project (top left) at East 76th Avenue in Anchorage, Alaska, and its coal car unloading system for the Seward Coal-Loading Facility project (top right) in Seward, Alaska. • A PN&D report, “Cost to the Public Due to Use of Corrosive Deicing Chemicals,” is published by the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. 1987: PN&D introduces geotextiles for use in roads and retaining walls (Harris Harbor, Juneau, Alaska, at left). 1988: Roy Peratrovich, Jr. co-founds Architects & Engineers Insurance Company (AEIC), the nation’s only architect- and engineer-owned insurance company. • PN&D opens its office in Seattle, Washington. • PN&D writes “A Guide to Maintenance and Operations *Alaska Construction & Oil, 1987 of Small Craft Harbors” for the DOT&PF Standards Division in Juneau, Alaska, replacing the older version. The text is widely distributed throughout the state and the Lower 48. 34 1989: PN&D, on its 10-year 1994: PN&D designs a anniversary, wins two Lincoln Arc geotextile (GT) retaining Welding Awards for its mooring wall using recycled dolphins design in Dutch Harbor, tires to appease Alaska’s Alaska, and its welded steel box responsibilities mandated by girder bridge in Wainwright, the 1991 Intermodal Surface Alaska. Transportation Efficiency Act. • According to the Alaska Journal The GT wall provides a low- of Commerce, as of December cost method of reducing tire 1989, 475 SPIN FINTM piles stockpiles on a national scale. had been installed in Alaska “This is exactly what we should and Washington, representing be doing. We’re trying to change nearly $2M in savings, and 38 the way people view wastes … OPEN CELL SHEET PILETM and help them to be innovative structures had been built, with with waste materials.” nearly 16,000 sheet piles driven ~David Wigglesworth, and millions of dollars saved by Department of Environmental project owners. Conservation, Anchorage Daily News, 1994 • PN&D engineer Bill PN&D wins a national-best four awards from the Lincoln Arc Gunderson, inventor of the 1995: Welding Foundation to boost its record total to 14.