The $80 million Kiewit job involved sinking a four-hundred-foot shaft on a peninsula in Lake Mead, driving a tunnel out to the lake, and “tapping” the lake, which more or less meant installing a drain at the bottom of it so it could more efficiently supply drinking water to the region. Creating the water tap required87 excavating a twelve-foot-diameter, sixty-foot-deep shaft in 240 feet of water. That’s where Norwesco came in. The dive job would keep crews from Roger’s company busy for about a year and a half, and Kiewit would pay Norwesco close to $3 million. Because of the water depth, divers would be required to spend so much time decompressing that on an average day, they would each usually get less than half an hour of time working at the bottom of the lake. So Harald designed the job to get the most out of each dive. Among other steps, he employed ROVs and used prefabricated construction so divers could multitask during their limited bottom time.
Harald’s innovative approaches had not gone unnoticed by Kiewit managers, including Tom Corry, the executive who had solicited the proposals for the Deer Island job in Boston. In fact, Roger knew that Harald was the main reason Norwesco had been asked to bid.
The Kiewit managers, in searching for a solution that would extricate themselves from their Deer Island quagmire, had first reached out to Black Dog and two larger companies in New England. However, after touring the tunnel and seeing what was involved, the two larger companies had declined even to bid on the job, citing safety concerns. “We do not possess the engineering prowess88 or the safety program/procedures/controls to conduct this work in the manner it requires to provide a successful and safe outcome,” wrote the president of one of those companies.
So Kiewit was left with just one bid for this high-risk job, submitted by Tap Taylor and his tiny Black Dog outfit. Seeking reassurance on Tap’s plan, Corry sent it to the hotshot Canadian engineer who was wowing him and other Kiewit managers at Lake Mead. At the time, Norwesco hadn’t been asked to bid the job, so Kiewit was treating Harald like a consultant in requesting that he review Tap’s proposal.
In late March 1998 Harald sent Kiewit his extensive comments about the Black Dog plan. Two weeks later Kiewit changed course, asking Harald to bid on the job, shifting his role from a consultant commenting on Tap’s plan to his competitor. After Harald made a site visit to Deer Island, he and Roger submitted Norwesco’s bid to Kiewit on May 21. Harald, who had previously been sent Tap’s plan without Tap’s knowledge, took no chances now with his own submission. Using his Canadian spelling, he included this warning89: “Any information, concepts, and equipment contained in this document which was hitherto not known by the recipient, or in which there subsists a proprietary right must not be disclosed or used by any other organisation without the written permission of Norwesco Marine Inc.”
Now, just one week after Harald submitted the bid, he and Roger were sitting in Omaha. Tap was also there, knowing Kiewit had asked them to work together, but he was beginning to realize that his company would be asked to play only a supporting part. By now, it was becoming clear to everyone that Harald’s plan would carry the day.
Tap was used to dealing with engineers who always believed they were the smartest guys in the room. But Harald, whose CV distended over seven pages including attachments, struck Tap as someone who took this self-assuredness to an extreme. Tap found himself learning a lot about Harald—how he had written for respected dive magazines, how he had done mixed-gas dives with zero visibility, how he had experience with those “Michelin Man” personal submarines called Newtsuits, how his designs had solved one knotty dive challenge after another. Tap, who had never even gone to dive school, couldn’t help but be impressed. He knew he couldn’t begin to compete with Harald’s credentials.
Early on in the meeting, the Kiewit executive excused himself so that Tap, Roger, and Harald could iron out more of the details on their own. To Tap’s disappointment, they devoted no time to talking about the proposal he had spent months crafting. Tap’s plan involved a diesel flatbed truck90 that would tow, deep into the tunnel, a twenty-foot-long tube trailer carrying seventy-five thousand cubic feet of high-pressure, or HP, compressed air. That, Tap estimated, would be enough air to sustain his ten-man dive crew for up to twenty-four hours. The tube trailer was not an exotic piece of equipment—it looked like the same trailers that regularly travel along interstates. Tap estimated the truck could make it as far as riser number 22, and then a small excursion crew could use a battery-operated vehicle to keep moving east.
Tap still didn’t know that Kiewit had asked Harald to review his plan and that Harald hadn’t been shy with his criticism, calling it “overly complex91,” questioning the maneuverability of that tube trailer, and faulting Tap for having only one main air supply. “Reliance on a single large source is unsafe,” Harald noted. Now in Omaha, as Harald presented his own plan, Tap found it so outside-the-box that he struggled to comprehend it. The differences between the two plans were stark. For transportation in the tunnel, Harald proposed using a pair of diesel Humvees, one towed by the other. The off-road vehicles would be customized to work in the oxygen-deficient tunnel, with a scrubber attached to their exhausts, and an oxygen bleed and monitor added to their air intake systems. From the Humvee setup around riser 12, an excursion crew, attached to the Humvees by umbilicals, would slog on foot to the end of the tunnel.
By far the biggest difference between Harald and Tap’s plans concerned the air supply. While Tap’s had relied exclusively on the tractor-trailer of HP air, Harald had determined92 that the cramped confines and nearly ten-mile length of the tunnel would make it impractical to transport a sufficient supply of bottled air. Instead, he called for three separate sources of breathing air. There would be a small HP air supply, as well as backup contraptions known as rebreathers. But the most unusual source was a cutting-edge system by which liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen would be mixed in the tunnel and converted into gaseous breathing air. Simple arithmetic explained why he was calling for liquid gas. He’d get the same amount of breathing gas93 from “vaporizing” four 180-liter liquid tanks as he could from using seventy standard “K” bottles of HP air, a conventional supply that would exceed four tons in weight. So the liquid option would spare the divers a whole lot of lugging.
In addition to being more nimble, Harald’s plan even carried a lower estimated price tag. Whereas Tap’s would cost about three-quarters of a million dollars, Harald’s would come in at around six hundred thousand. His plan called for one week of training and two weeks to complete the plug-removal operation.
During the Omaha meeting, Tap asked a few general questions about Harald’s plan, but stayed mostly silent about the liquid air breathing supply. He had absolutely no experience with that kind of work, and didn’t want to give Harald the chance to lecture him if he asked a question that somehow revealed his ignorance.
87 (Chapter 4, note 9)
Creating the water tap required: Kiewit’s Bob Kula to author, September 20, 2011.
88 (Chapter 4, note 10)
“We do not possess the engineering prowess”: Specialty Diving Services of North Kingstown, R.I., to KAK’s law firm, declining to bid, May 18, 1998. A similar letter from the Massachusetts firm CLE Engineering, dated March 16, 1998, had read, “Our decision not to bid is based on our site visit, safety and operating constraints, and thorough review of the proposed project documents.”
89 (Chapter 4, note 11)
he included this warning: Harald Grob to Robert Fitzgerald, “MWRA Contract No. 5637, Re: Effluent Outfall Tunnel, Diffuser Bulkhead Removal—Revision I,” May 21, 1998.
90 (Chapter 4, note 12)
Tap’s plan involved a diesel flatbed truck: Tap Taylor to Robert Fitzgerald, “MWRA Contract No. 5637, Effluent Outfall Tunnel Proposal,” March 11, 1998.
92 (Chapter 4, note 14)
Harald had determined: Harald Grob to Robert Fitzgerald, May 21, 1998.
93 (Chapter 4, note 15)
He’d get the same amount of breathing gas: Calculations have been checked against breathing equipment suppliers and confirmed by Dan Kuhs of Local 56 and regional manager, Specialty Trades, New England Regional Council of Carpenters.