Port of Gulfport Restoration

GULFPORT, MS

Port restoration was aimed at changing Gulf Coast shipping landscape

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, resulting in one of the most significant natural disasters in United States history. The Port of Gulfport infrastructure was severely damaged or destroyed by the storm.

The Mississippi State Port Authority’s (MSPA’s) Gulfport Restoration Program funds restoration of public infrastructure and publicly owned facilities; mitigation against future damages; and long-term recovery and revitalization of the Port’s operating capacity.

Neel-Schaffer was the design lead for the program, providing a wide variety of engineering services in support of the masterplan implementation.

One of the goals of the Restoration Program was to prepare the Port of Gulfport for the Post-Panamax era of shipping that was created by the $5 billion Panama Canal widening. Completed in the summer of 2016, the expansion doubled the shipping capacity for the 48-mile corridor that joins the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

While coordinating the work of subconsultants, Neel-Schaffer :
• Managed document control for all planning, design, and construction tasks;
• Provided HUD Section 3 reporting for Neel-Schaffer and all subconsultants;
• Maintained Primavera PS schedules for all planning and design tasks;
• Managed a Mentor/Protegee Program for a Disadvantaged Business, including quarterly reporting to CDBG;
• Facilitated multi-discipline design projects that included multiple offices and subconsultants working together;
• Tracked costs and prepared and delivered invoices for more than 50 separate task orders;
• Facilitated weekly conference calls with design teams;
• Facilitated design review meetings with design teams on milestone submittal reviews;
• Maintained a QA/QC process on all planning, design, and construction related deliverables;
• Participated in weekly conference calls with the Mississippi State Port Authority and MDA to give updates and discuss planning, design, and construction-related issues.

As the design lead firm, Neel-Schaffer provided a variety of engineering services in support of the masterplan implementation. Services included civil, utilities, geotechnical, water, wastewater, structural, road, rail and environmental. Neel-Schaffer sister firm Maptech worked on the project, too. Among the projects Neel-Schaffer managed was a $118 million, 84-acre expansion of the west side of the west pier, with a new warehouse, administrative buildings, roads, and an intermodal rail yard, and a $60 million upgrade of the west pier wharf, needed to support three new $36 million, 360-foot tall Post-Panamax ship to shore rail mounted gantry cranes that were installed in 2016.

The restoration was completed in 2018.

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