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Team's drive to finish now yields to rest

By ERNEST HOOPER
Published July 21, 2006

For a moment, just a few seconds really, Ralph Mervine's confidence slipped a notch.

As he stood at the entrance to the elevated lanes of the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway minutes before its opening, one question gnawed at his conscience: Where are all the cars?

"For a minute, I wondered: Did we do the right thing building this project?" said Mervine, interim executive director of the expressway authority.

Mervine's uncertainty quickly passed as a parade of drivers finally began to move onto the road shortly after 6 a.m.

Mervine's otherwise unwavering confidence helped complete the highway after a series of setbacks. The project was crippled when a support column sank into the ground and collapsed the elevated road in April 2004, and the state eventually threatened to disband the authority.

The authority's board fired executive director Pat McCue amid the furor and was on bended knee in search of a replacement.

Into the job steps Mervine, who has the uncanny ability to believe every project can succeed, regardless of setbacks. His 30-year civil engineering career largely has been built on rescuing struggling efforts, and he expects everyone involved in a project to embrace his positive vision.

Consider the "I Believe" meeting Mervine had when overseeing a challenging project in 1996.

Mervine was working for the Florida Department of Transportation when his bosses gave him the job of reconstructing an Interstate 75 bridge that had been destroyed by a tanker truck explosion.

The accident closed the highway.

Mervine didn't flinch. Engineers had said it would take three to four months to repair the bridge, but Mervine set the schedule at a stunning 28 days.

"There were people who were saying you can't do this, can't do that," Mervine said. "We actually sat in the middle of the room and I got everyone around in a circle and I said, 'We're going to complete this project and have this thing open in 28 days.'

"I said, 'I know there's some of you who don't agree with that, so all of you who don't agree, hit the road right now because those who believe stand right here.' "

Two workers walked away, but those who believed even outdid Mervine's prediction, completing the bridge in 14 days. Mervine laughs about how he persuaded the team to work through Valentine's Day, allowing wives and girlfriends to briefly visit workers at the site that night.

With the Crosstown, he took the same aggressive scheduling approach, saying the elevated portion would be finished in 18 months - by August 2006 - while many predicted it would take 30 months.

He went out of his way to engender the same kind of loyalty with projects throughout his career, from the Trans-Alaska pipeline to buildings and plants in the Middle East. Mervine visited crews early in the morning and late at night, always offering words of encouragement.

"If there ever are times when maybe things aren't going well, you can't get excited," Mervine said. "You have to be level-headed and keep at it doggedly and be totally committed to the schedule and completing the project."

Even after he took over the Crosstown project, Mervine faced challenges. Most of the workforce had moved on and the contractor had to find new workers. Another factor was the $120-million suit the authority had filed against URS Corp., the original engineering contractor.

But on Tuesday, it was time to celebrate.

The night before the elevated highway opened, Mervine had dinner at Barnacle's, the Brandon restaurant and sports bar near the entrance. At some point, he looked up and saw his face on nearly all of the bar's 400-plus televisions.

He says it was a little unnerving because so many people deserve credit.

"This morning was as important for our construction team as it was for the public," said Mervine, who lives in Mulberry, east of Brandon.

"People are always finishing one project and moving to another project, but when you have a project that's been through so much, like this one has, people are glad to be able to finish it.

"And quite frankly, they're tired."

That's all I'm saying.

Ernest Hooper is a columnist for the Times' Tampa & State section. He can be reached at hooper@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3406.

[Last modified July 20, 2006, 13:28:33]