Specialty Contractors Excel in Their Niche

When Work Is a Blast

Drilling and blasting company Advanced Blasting Services provides something a lot of civil projects require but which is not always available: rock.

“Maybe a diggable rock source isn’t available locally, or maybe hauling rock isn’t cost-effective,” says Advanced Blasting General Manager Kevin Gill.

It’s a common occurrence in Western Alaska, where easily excavated rock can be difficult to source. Simple road repair jobs might require barging rock in from another community, which drives up costs considerably. In such cases, it can be more cost effective to work with Advanced Blasting to turn local rock into construction material of the specified size.

Stabilizing rock is another aspect of Advanced Blasting’s work. Gill says the company is currently subcontracting on a project to repair the Denali National Park road through Polychrome Pass, where the Pretty Rocks landslide at Mile 45.4 closed it in 2021.

“We are essentially trying to stabilize that area as best we can through blasting in benches to control the slope… and installing rock bolts to stabilize the formations, as well as stabilizing the ground at either side of the slide zone for the new bridge that is getting installed,” Gill says.

He notes that the Denali project aims to maintain the natural beauty of the area, which means using a color-matched grout that blends with local geology to cover the rock bolts.

While preserving natural beauty is one focus, his crew works hard to tame the unpredictable geology of the area as well, adding stabilization measures and mesh where possible to prevent future slides.

Another current project for Advanced Blasting will change the face—in a limited way—of Prince William Sound. In Cordova, a Turnagain Marine/GMC Contracting joint venture is constructing an oil spill response facility at Shepard Point, about 5 miles from Cordova. Advanced Blasting is a subcontractor, brought in to help pioneer the access road.

The 18-foot-wide road requires a significant amount of blasting, Gill says, so minimizing the environmental impact is a huge factor.

“We want to minimize the impact on local flora and fauna, staying out of tidal zones and minimizing the general footprint of the road,” he says, noting that the narrowness of the road is a nod to the effort to minimize impacts.

Gill says the road project was started in the middle of the 5-mile corridor, at the Cordova power plant. Advanced Blasting teams are working outward in both directions to complete it.

While about 95 percent of Advanced Blasting’s work deals with rock, Gill says the company performs a few structural demolitions as they come up every few years. While the demolition projects aren’t as dramatic as videos of high-rise implosions, he says the jobs are still impressive.

“We’ve taken down some towers in the state, but… we don’t have a lot of very tall structures in Alaska. Even the towers are few and far between,” he says.

Towers for communications or navigation are often good candidates for blasting, as their often remote locations make dismantling by crane prohibitively difficult.

Typically, Gill says, Advanced Blasting is called in to take structures down if explosive demolition is the only safe, or most cost-effective, way to bring it down.

Pouring New Life into Pipes

Putting the “narrow” into narrowly focused, Nu Flow Alaska rehabilitates the insides of water pipes using an array of cured-in-place epoxy solutions.

Cast iron pipes have an estimated lifespan of about fifty years, says Nu Flow President Joe Jaime. To halt deterioration and extend the system’s useful life, Nu Flow Alaska can re-line pipes with a pull-in-place structural liner—typically used on mains, horizontal laterals, vertical stacks, sanitary systems, storm or roof drains, vent systems, and process, industrial, and chemical piping—or a blown-in epoxy coating, ideal for rehabilitating pressurized pipes. The company can repair potable drain lines between 0.75 inch and 12 inches in diameter, and non-pressurized piping from 1.5 inches to 24 inches in diameter.

The process is fairly straightforward, as Jaime explains. With the pull-in-place liner, the pipe is first cleaned, then the liner is snaked through and expanded with a bladder. When the bladder is removed, what’s left is a hardened epoxy tube inside the original pipe. The blown-in epoxy coating is similar; the pipe is thoroughly cleaned, dried with heated air, and then the epoxy coating is injected with filtered air until the pipe is fully coated, creating a barrier between the damaged pipe and the pressurized water it contains.

Nu Flow has been operating since 2011, mostly to federal clients. Nu Flow has done work on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Jaime says, as well as several hospitals.

Hospital work is how Jaime got acquainted with Nu Flow’s technology. Working as a project manager on a hospital construction job in Los Angeles, he says, a complication came up: an unexpected pipe repair was needed, with an estimated price of $500,000. A Nu Flow contractor came out and conducted the repair for around $15,000. Jaime took note and saw a potential market in Alaska, where water and sewer infrastructure is aging and, in some cases, failing.

“I was born and raised in Alaska. I thought it would be a good process to bring to Alaska, and it’s been pretty successful,” he says.

Jaime says the company recently completed a job for the city of Galena, lining 3,000 feet of 6- to 8-inch wood-stave pipe. To replace that pipe would have cost around $5 million, Jaime says. Nu Flow got the job done for about $1 million. Re-lined, the pipes are good for another fifty years.

Jaime says there is room to expand; potential clients are still learning about Nu Flow’s technology and how it could be applied.

Temporary Walls, Permanent Efficiency

One of the newest specialty contractors in Alaska is Temporary Wall Systems (TWS) Anchorage, a company that provides temporary walls for construction projects where customers or clients need access during construction.

Owned by husband-and-wife team Peter and Ena Laliberte, the company officially launched May 1. Peter has a background in oil and gas business development, while Ena’s background is with domestic and international nonprofits. The couple says they wanted to start the business to invest in Alaska, bringing a service that would provide value to the community.

Looking for a small business opportunity aligned with the Lalibertes’ lifestyle—one that doesn’t produce a lot of waste, for example—the couple came across TWS as a franchise opportunity. It eliminates waste from temporary walls erected at construction sites, such as drywall that is used once and thrown away, plastic sheeting, or disposable ZipWall dust barriers.

Instead, TWS provides prefabricated modular walls, with one side galvanized steel and one side coated aluminum with a foam core to block noise. There are also transparent components that can be added as windows, Ena says.

“They all click together, so you don’t have to screw into the wall,” she notes. “Removing drywall creates a lot of dust. Our walls keep out dust, noise, and fumes and are quicker to install.”

The wall components can be adjusted to size, and it’s easy to add doors.

“They’re very well suited for hospital construction,” Ena says, noting that the panels have Infection Control Risk Assessment rating levels. The rating is used in healthcare construction to indicate what precautions need to be taken by a construction team; for example, Ena says the modular wall systems are airtight and include vents with scrubbers, so clean air passes into the non-construction space.

TWS rents the walls and provides full service by delivering, installing, and removing the walls when the job is complete.

After training at the TWS headquarters and completing further remote training modules, the company launched at the Alaska Society of Healthcare Managers and Engineers conference May 1 and 2. It was gearing up for its first job later that month.

For clients in need of that very specific solution, there’s a specialty contractor that gives that job its undivided attention.