Port of Neah Bay Commercial Dock Replacement

The Makah Tribe has fished in and around Neah Bay, Washington, for over 4,000 years. In early 2013, the Tribe recognized that deterioration of their aging timber fishing dock posed a large threat to the economy of this remote community at the northwestern-most point of the state and continental United States and selected a design team to replace the facility using the traditional design/bid/build method of procurement. In August 2013 during conceptual design, a portion of the decking collapsed, and the dock was closed because of the resulting unsafe conditions. As a result of a concentrated team effort by the Makah Tribe and their consultant team, all federal, state, and local permits for the work were obtained within 88 days of application submittal, and in-water construction began in late December 2013, four months after the collapse. By pre-ordering the piles and using a precast concrete deck system to minimize cast-in-place concrete, the dock structure was completed in three months and the facility, consisting of an access trestle, dock, fish-buying station, storage warehouse, and ice production plant, was operational by October 2014. This paper will provide an overview of the project and describe the challenges and solutions developed by the team that allowed the project to be completed only 10 months after the collapse.