Alaskan rail offers a change of latitude
 Alaska’s motto, “North to the Future,” dares residents and visitors alike to look to Alaska as a land of promise.
For Hanson and its employees, Alaska offers a new horizon of opportunities in the railroad engineering industry. These involve establishing new partnerships, expanding rail transportation statewide and adapting to life in Alaska.
Hanson has a partnership with longtime Alaska-based engineering firm Tryck Nyman Hayes Inc. The TNH-Hanson joint venture overall combined the companies’ resources to include more than 500 employees working in offices nationwide.
Alaska rail projects beckon
 One of TNH-Hanson’s initial projects was the Alaska Railroad Corp.’s (ARRC) Northern Rail Extension. This involves extending the railroad approximately 80 miles from Eielson Air Force Base southeast to Fort Greely near Delta Junction.
The ARRC, a state-owned railroad serving ports and communities from the Gulf of Alaska to Fairbanks, is the last of the full-service railroads in the U.S. to offer both freight and passenger service.
TNH-Hanson is also completing
three other ARRC projects:
• Ship Creek Intermodal
Transportation Center
(Anchorage),
• Fort Wainwright Railroad
Realignment, and
• Fairbanks Area Railroad
Realignment Study.
At the end of July, TNH-Hanson’s ARRC program increased significantly with the award of phase I engineering services for the Port MacKenzie rail line extension.
This work will include conceptual engineering and an alignment alternatives report for a new 40-mile branch line from the ARRC mainline near Willow to an existing port across the Knik Arm from Anchorage. Overall, these services are part of a $2.9 billion project to provide Alaska coal to a fertilizer plant on the Kenai Peninsula.
TNH-Hanson expands its team
As the ARRC continues to expand its services, its capacity and safety improvement needs also increase.
To accommodate the railroad’s project requirements, TNH-Hanson continually evaluates its staffing needs—ensuring that talented, experienced and qualified team members are available to commit to the railroad’s projects as needed. This includes deploying seasoned senior railroad engineers and managers as well as up-and-coming professionals who are willing to accept the challenges that these arctic rail projects present.
These challenges and opportunities are what attracted Mike Pochop, P.E., and his family to Alaska. In 2005, Pochop was named project manager for an Alaska Railroad Corp. project.
Pochop joined the TNH-Hanson Anchorage office and became one of five team members working on Alaska rail projects.
“Staffing engineering teams in Alaska can be difficult, and the companies that meet that challenge will win the available work. A combination of things has helped us attract the talent needed to pursue new opportunities—major railroad projects, exciting environmental challenges and wonderful lifestyle prospects,” says Pochop.
 Two other Hanson employees recently have made the transition from the Lower 48 states to Alaska: Laura Schutte and David McCourtney, both transportation engineers.
Schutte joined Hanson in 2006, and has primarily worked on rail projects. Her background as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign included developing and executing a plan to research methods of slope stabilization on military training ranges for the Department of Defense.
McCourtney, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, worked in Anchorage last summer assisting on ARRC projects.
Engineers consider frigid factors
As relative newcomers to Alaska, Pochop and his colleagues realize that tackling engineering and construction projects in the great state isn’t for the fainthearted.
Engineers working in cold-climate areas such as Alaska face design issues not inherent to warm-climate regions. Permafrost and seasonally frozen soil, weather factors, access issues and construction costs are just a few of the issues TNH-Hanson faces during its Alaska rail projects.
Other aspects include thermal expansion and contraction, water permeability (freeze-thaw cycles, condensation and ventilation), thermal resistance and transmittance, solar inclination and range, wind speed and direction, materials durability, and construction schedules.
Pochop says that field activities can take place throughout the year, but work in the winter is obviously tougher and more expensive.
Yet he adds that cold weather can be helpful, freezing the ground and covering the area with snow. This allows the project team to access areas that are swampy or environmentally sensitive during the summer.
As work on the Northern Rail Extension progresses, the TNH-Hanson team expects it will deal with several frozen soil and ice issues along the 80-mile alignment.
But for Pochop and his TNH-Hanson counterparts in Alaska, looking north to the future is more than just a vision of things to come; it is a way of life.
For more information, contact Mike Pochop at (800) 770-0543 or at mpochop@hanson-inc.com.
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