Builder of Bridges
11/5/2008 | | After the I-35W bridge fell, alumnus Jon Chiglo help reconstruct the public's trust. Photograph by Dan Marshall |
By Maleah Maynard
For most of 2008, the Interstate-35W bridge over the Mississippi River has looked from afar as if it were alive, a hulking creature teeming with more than 650 people working around the clock in 12-hour shifts no matter the weather. But on a windy day in mid-August, the vast stretch of concrete seems eerily quiet. Only about 50 deeply tanned crew members are at work, finishing up details on the southbound side of the bridge.
Jon Chiglo (B.S. ’97), the bridge’s project manager for the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), stands on the nearly finished roadway, just a few blocks from the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis campus, gazing down at a barge on the choppy waters of the Mississippi River 125 feet below. In another month—several months ahead of its originally scheduled December 24 completion date—the bridge will open to some 140,000 vehicles, the number that took that route over the river daily before the collapse. Asked how it feels to be so close to moving on from a project that has consumed his life, Chiglo, dressed in a hardhat and a yellow-and-orange safety vest fluttering in the wind, offers the understatement of the century, belied only by his sideways smile, “It’s nice to see,” he says. “But there are lots of details to finish, and I’m not going anywhere until we’re through.”
A tall, burly man with broad, linebacker shoulders, Chiglo is an imposing presence—until he begins to speak. Ask him a question about the bridge, and even if he’s answered it 10,000 times (and you can bet he has) he responds in a kind, straightforward, look-you-in-the-eye manner that simply inspires confidence and trust. That is exactly why MnDOT chose him to lead the $235 million project, which had unprecedented public scrutiny from the moment the bridge collapsed on August 1 of last year, killing 13 people and injuring 145 more.
“Jon came to mind right away,” says Khani Sahebjam, MnDOT’s deputy commissioner and chief engineer. “We wanted a sure thing. And he’s extremely bright and technically strong, but he’s also a good communicator. That’s not something most engineers are good at.”
Manager in the making
At just 35 years old, Chiglo was seen by many as being too young to head up a project of such magnitude. After all, his counterpart, Peter Sanderson, project manager for construction firm Flatiron-Manson, is 60 and so experienced with high-profile projects he was asked to come out of retirement to take the job.
Chiglo, who is as humble as humble gets, says people are right when they point out that he’s young. The truth is, he says, life has simply gone well for him. “I’ve been very fortunate,” he explains with a little shrug. “I’ve always been in the right place at the right time.” Of course, there’s more to it than that.
Growing up in Caledonia, Minnesota, Chiglo and his older brother Jay (B.S. ’92) saw how much their dad enjoyed his job building dams and helping farmers with erosion control as a technician with the soil conservation service. His dedication to the farmers and knowledge of the land inspired both boys to pursue engineering. But it is Jay, now an engineer in Chicago, who has long been his younger brother’s role model. “He went through everything before me, so I could always lean on him if I had any issues,” says Chiglo, who followed his brother’s path to the U.
Karl Smith, a Morse-Alumni Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering, was one of Jon Chiglo’s professors at the University in the mid-1990s. “I remember him being a very serious student,” Smith recalls. “But he was also very positive and cheerful, and I’m sure that’s served him well, since engineers increasingly need to have a good public presence.”
Chiglo agrees. “Sometimes engineers can be more arms-length with the public than I was on this project, but it lends credibility to have engineers speak directly to people’s concerns,” he explains. “On this project, there was so much doubt after the collapse that we needed to have decision-makers communicating directly with the public so people could get their questions answered immediately.”
After graduating in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, Chiglo took a job as a general civil engineering consultant for a firm in Kansas City, Kansas. But a few short weeks later, MnDOT called and offered him a job in its graduate engineering rotation program, which helps young engineers develop their skills so they can move up within the department.
Chiglo eagerly accepted and was assigned to Rochester, Minnesota, where he worked in the materials office doing surveying and bridge maintenance. Nine months later, he was given the job of managing MnDOT’s construction office in Owatonna, where he oversaw all of the construction and design activities over the next three years.
And then his big break came. Though it had been talked about for years, funding for the reconstruction of Rochester’s 12-mile Highway 52 was finally made available under Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura’s administration in 2001. Chiglo was asked to return to Rochester to be the project manager for development and procurement for ROC 52, as the $229 million design-build project that included 26 bridges was known. It was exactly the kind of project Chiglo was looking for when he became a civil engineer. “There are a lot of times in engineering that you never see the fruits of your labor,” he explains. “But with civil engineering, you get to see what you work on for so long finally be constructed and that’s really rewarding.”
Next, Chiglo took his first project manager job, running the high-profile $238 million Highway 212 project that rerouted the freeway through the southwest metro. “We stole him away from the Rochester project to lead 212 and he did a great job,” Sahebjam recalls, adding that his comfort level with Chiglo is built on the young engineer’s ability to collaborate, be fair, make decisions, and come up with solutions to tough problems while showing genuine respect for others. “If something’s out of his comfort zone, Jon will say so,” Sahebjam says. “He’ll tell people what he’s thinking and ask their opinion. That’s why people like working with him.”
Working in a fishbowl
The Highway 212 project was an enormous undertaking, with 28 bridges, seven interchanges, and a lot of public input to navigate. At last the project was nearing completion and on August 1, 2007, Chiglo headed off to an Eden Prairie bar to meet some friends for dinner. He walked in a little after 6 p.m.; the room was loud with conversation and clattering plates. Then his wife, Sherri, called on his cell phone. A photographer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, she’d just gotten home from work and was being called to cover a story.
“She said the news was saying a bridge had collapsed,” Chiglo recalls. “I said, ‘What do you mean a bridge? They must mean a piece or a portion of a bridge.’ But she said no, it was a whole bridge.” He asked the bartender to switch the TV to a local news station. On the screen, helicopters hovered above the scene. The entire Interstate-35W bridge was in pieces in the river. Cars were everywhere. A semi could be seen on fire not far from a school bus. “Immediately the whole place went silent,” says Chiglo. “I’ll remember that for a long, long time.”
For the next several weeks it was nearly impossible to  | | Photographed in mid-August, the new Interstate-35W bridge is about a month from completion. The bridge is 1,223 feet long and has 12 support columns, each 70 feet high. Its 10 lanes opened to traffic on September 18. PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVE BERGERSON |
escape the horrific video replays of the collapse, captured by a nearby building’s security camera and quickly posted on YouTube. People were afraid—and not just in Minnesota. If a 40-year-old bridge in a major city could just fall into the river during rush hour, were other bridges going to be next? Was anyone really making sure the structures we count on are safe?
Chiglo had been on the bridge just the day before. What went through his mind that night at the bar was disbelief. Bridges aren’t supposed to collapse. How had this happened? How many people had been killed? How was the department going to handle this? The next day, his phone rang. It was Sahebjam, asking if he would be MnDOT’s project manager overseeing the construction of the new I-35W St. Anthony Falls Bridge.
It was a difficult decision. Before answering, Chiglo and Sherri sat down to talk. They had been married only a year and a half, and they both knew the job would mean the honeymoon would definitely be over. “We both understood it was going to be very time-intensive,” Chiglo remembers. But in the end, they agreed he should take it. “Under the circumstances, I felt obligated to take the job because they wanted me to,” he says. “I knew I wouldn’t be doing it by myself, but I wanted to be sure we talked about what it would mean for us.”
Looking back now, Chiglo says they had no idea what he was getting them into. “I was a little naïve, to be honest,” he says with a laugh. “I just didn’t realize how much scrutiny the project would be under and how long that interest would be sustained. I had no idea what it would take to handle all of that.”
Sahebjam says the I-35W project was a “fishbowl,” with people watching every aspect of the design and construction. That’s what happens when faith has been shaken, Chiglo explains. “People lost confidence in the structures they’re using and that’s a major problem, so we immediately began working to restore the public’s trust.” In addition to mounting scrutiny over what caused the collapse in the first place, people questioned the choice of contractors and the speed at which the new bridge would be built: Were they sacrificing quality and safety just to get the bridge done fast? “We had to manage all of these aspects while making sure people didn’t get injured on the job,” says Chiglo. “We were already in deep. We didn’t want to dig the hole any deeper.”
For the first few months, Chiglo often left home at 5 a.m. and didn’t return until 9 or 10 p.m. He kept this schedule seven days a week until, finally, he was able to settle into an 11- or 12-hour-day routine Monday through Friday. Most Sundays were free as long as he kept his cell phone on. Saturdays he often assisted Flatiron-Manson by leading walking tours on the 10th Avenue Bridge, which runs alongside the new bridge and connects the West Bank to the Marcy Holmes neighborhood. Attended by a couple dozen people up to crowds of 450, the weekly tours gave bystanders a chance to learn more about the bridge, ask questions, or voice their fears.
On one August tour, about 70 people accompanied Chiglo while another 50 or so went with a representative from Flatiron-Manson. Chiglo says that early on, people on the tours commonly expressed fears about driving over a bridge built so quickly, but on this day, with the bridge nearly completed, retired engineers and curious citizens ask mostly technical questions about its construction.
The $234 million bridge is 1,230 feet long, he tells a man with a little girl on his shoulders. There are 10 traffic lanes on the bridge and it was built to accommodate light rail transit between the north- and south-bound lanes. Its foundation consists of eight 95-foot-deep shafts with 1,000 miles of post-tensioning steel holding the concrete segments of the bridge together. The main span over the river is 504 feet long. More than 17 million pounds of steel and 48,000 cubic yards of concrete were used to build the structure, which is really two parallel bridges. As the bridge ages, sensors will allow engineers to test for stress and provide information about temperature and the effects of salt. At a minimum, the structure should last 100 years.
As is often the case, the group had one wise guy. But Chiglo showed no sign of frustration handling his relentless antics and flippant questions. Chiglo later admits that he’s not completely unflappable but that for the most part he’s learned to stay even-tempered in even the most stressful situations. “I wear my emotions on my sleeve,” he says. “But as a manager, you’ve got to lead by example, so you have to do your best to manage your emotions no matter how you’re feeling.”
That’s a tall order when your job involves almost constant interaction with people. “I’ve seen him in public meetings,” says Sahebjam, “and people get emotional and maybe even rude but Jon is patient. He’s kind of a big guy, but he’s really a kind teddy bear, I think.”
As MnDOT’s public face for the bridge project, Chiglo estimates he met with more than 30,000 people over the course of the year, including in neighborhood associations, fraternal organizations, and other civic groups. Add to that the 150 media requests Chiglo’s office received in July alone and it becomes immediately apparent why he was chosen for the job. “Talking to so many people added a lot of hours onto the work day,” Chiglo says. “But [MnDOT’s] new commissioner has made a commitment to rebuild public trust and confidence. We’re not going to restore it fully with this one job, but I think it’s important that we take this first step.”
Crossing the next bridge
The new 35W bridge opened to traffic just minutes after 5 a.m. on September 18. In two processions, one from the north and the other from the south, hundreds of motorists slowly crossed the bridge, cheering, waving, and honking as MnDOT’s maintenance trucks brought up the rear. Some people had queued up all night on nearby streets just to be part of the moment. For Chiglo, who had been on the scene since 3 a.m., the expressions on people’s faces made everyone’s hard work worth it. “People were honking and waving flags and yelling ‘thank you.’ It was extremely rewarding,” he says.
Now that he has had some time off to relax, including a trip to Disney World with Sherri (“because the kid inside” him said to go, he admits), Chiglo says he’s ready to move on to the next project. MnDOT’s Sahebjam figures Chiglo will likely receive offers from all over the United States. But Chiglo gives most of the credit for a job well done to his crew.
Besides, Chiglo says, even if his phone does ring, he’s happy at MnDOT and plans to stay, though he doesn’t know yet what he’ll be working on next. For now, he’s looking forward to incorporating some of the efficiencies and innovations his crew learned from Flatiron-Manson over the past year into future MnDOT construction projects.
It will be strange, Chiglo admits, to go back to business as usual after working for so long on a high-stress project that stayed in the limelight from start to finish. He hopes the department will hand him something challenging, but he’ll do whatever they need him to do. “I don’t do this by myself,” he says. “I’ve got good people all around me. They’re the ones who’ve helped me succeed.”
Meleah Maynard (B.A. ’91), is a Minneapolis-based freelance writer.
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