US Fish and Wildlife Commanche Dam

Commanche Dam was a project to help protect a US Nature Preserve. The project was to add additional protections to an aging dam originally installed in the 40’s as a means of providing drinking water for wildlife in the Wichita Mountain wildlife Refuge.

Selling Point

This project incorporated construction means and methods meant to minimize impacts to extremely sensitive, sparsely visited wildlife areas in central Oklahoma.

Major Achievements

This project was in remote areas located 8 miles off any standard roadway more than 20 miles from the nearest town of any kind. Planning was critical, communication from the site was non-existent. Access was created to minimize disturbance to the natural terrain, deliveries of all materials were coordinated as to not require oversizing of the road. The project consisted of clearing the downhill toe of the dam and creating a new buttress and front face of the dam with RCC. SEMA utilized a offsite batch plant to produce the RCC for the project. The owner experienced delays in awarding the project which was supposed to be completed prior to the heat of Oklahoma Summer. SEMA received full Award and NTP in April and was asked to come up with means to meet the extremely tight temperature tolerances of the project. Thru creative scheduling and innovation SEMA was able to produce the material to meet the 90 degree temperature specifications in the heat of the summer to complete the project ahead of schedule with no additional cost to the owner.

Savings

SEMA worked with the owner to come up with savings on the project that amounted to $200,000.