May 1, 2006
Tunnel vision | A Lisbon Falls contractor lays pipes and cables in places where digging trenches is impractical — or impossible
By Jonathan Swartz
Last November, a crew from Lisbon Falls-based Enterprise Trenchless Technologies Inc. was using a guided drill to burrow a sewer line 1,100 feet through the earth beneath Ogunquit. The coastal town's growth had strained sewer capacity in the summertime, and ETTI was hired to lay a new pipe alongside the old one ˆ no simple job, due to the roads and buildings above.
Digging a trench for the new pipe was impossible, so ETTI tunneled: A heavy hydraulic driller connected length after length of steel drill rod that disappeared into a small hole at the shoulder of River Road. A technician above ground tracked signals emitted from a navigating beacon inside the bit. It bore smoothly under the road, past a motel, and continued on a precise track, avoiding two water mains and other buried utilities. Then, three hours and 400 feet in, it abruptly ground to a halt at what turned out to be a thick ledge of Maine granite.
It's frustrating moments like these, says ETTI president Scott Kelly, that make Maine a challenging place to employ the technique known as horizontal directional drilling. Developed in the 1970s as an offshoot of the oil-well drilling industry, directional drilling was growing rapidly in the United States by the 1990s. Advocates saw it as a breakthrough way to lay pipe and cable without digging trenches.
Still, the technology was relatively untested in rocky New England when ETTI took on its first projects in 1995. "People were skeptical that these bores would work with the soils we have in New England," Kelly said. "Ledges pop up where they want to."
But in Ogunquit, as at the company's other drill sites in New England and New York, ETTI found a way to finish the job. The team tried twice more along the shoreline ˆ each time moving the bit slightly ˆ but continued to strike ledge. So the company conducted additional soil testing over the winter, and in March bored a 1,080-foot line through softer soils under a nearby tidal inlet.
In the end, that job won ETTI this year's Associated Constructors of Maine Build Maine Award for utilities placement, presented April 19 at the Augusta Civic Center. The honor is the latest recognition for the company that has grown from a modest father-and-son operation into a regional competitor in little more than a decade.
Water and sewer line installation is ETTI's bread and butter, accounting for about half the company's business, said Kelly. Much of that work is performed for excavation contractors, like RJ Grondin & Sons of Gorham and Shaw Bros. Inc., also of Gorham, which hire ETTI to cross obstacles like rivers, wetlands and roads where traditional trench digging is expensive or impossible. "We'll basically go with directional drilling if we calculate that it'll cost less money than digging it ourselves," said Mark Barnes, project manager for Shaw Bros., who said he has worked with ETTI about a half-dozen times.
For example, the companies this winter collaborated to install a four-and-a-half mile line from a water source to the Poland Spring bottling facility in Fryeburg. ETTI drilled nine separate sections under roads and streams while Shaw Bros. handled the open ground. (A final half-mile section is still pending local regulatory approval.)
ETTI works on a wide range of other projects including installing fiber optic, natural gas, and electric lines; irrigation systems for golf courses; and more. The company partners with municipalities, telecommunications companies like Verizon, utility companies such as Central Maine Power Co., as well as developers and private homeowners.
Through such projects, ETTI is among a handful of companies that helped tame New England's reputation as a rough place to drill and are now poised to enjoy growth after an industry slump a few years ago. "I've had people say, 'Oh, you're going up to New England ˆ you better watch out,'" said Raymond Sterling, a professor of engineering at the Louisiana Tech University Trenchless Technology Center. But those days are largely over with the successful adaptation of a technology developed around the Southern oil industry.
Rocky soils and a rocky market
ETTI got its start in 1995 when James Kelly, who owned Enterprise Electric, bought a small drill rig after reading about the relatively new field of directional drilling. James Kelly soon turned his focus back to his original company, leaving his son, Scott ˆ then in his mid-twenties ˆ to handle the new venture. Initially ETTI cut its drilling teeth on a variety of modest projects, such as running 100 feet of four-inch pipe under a road, but steadily added heavier-duty equipment and personnel over the years.
Gaining experience in New England soils meant not only encounters with granite but with the challenges of soft and mixed conditions. A 2000 stint subcontracting on a section of the 650-mile Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline won ETTI a national award from Trenchless Technologies Magazine, in part because the soil under a river near Bangor was so soft the drill bit could not change direction unaided. Other projects were sensitive in different ways: In 1998, ETTI ran a gas line to Boston's historic Bunker Hill Monument "very carefully," Kelly said, in order to avoid damaging the landmark.
That diversification ˆ along with ETTI's relatively early entry into the Northeast market ˆ has helped the company weather the ups and downs of the national directional drilling market. The late 90s were a boom time for drilling contractors, as telecommunications companies launched huge projects to connect urban hubs with fiber-optic lines, said Sterling.
Directional drilling companies installed about 12% of those fiber-optic cables, attracting an influx of new contractors. But most of that work was completed by 2001 ˆ at about the same time the economy dipped ˆ resulting in increased competition and lower profits for contractors. Some companies folded while others took work at below-market rates to make payments on their expensive machines. "It was a real bust," Sterling said.
The bust affected companies in the Northeast, especially fiber-optic installers, said Kelly. ETTI, however ˆ which performs about 65% of its work in Maine ˆ continued to grow at about 10% percent during those years, Kelly said. "We just weren't chasing those fiber-optic jobs," he said. "We were chasing water and sewer."
Today, ETTI has only nine employees, but lays 60,000-80,000 feet of pipe each year with some of the latest equipment on the market. Its newest purchase, a $660,000 Ditch Witch JT 8020 drill, was the first of its kind in New England, Kelly said. The machine can muster 80,000 pounds of torque ˆ enough to rotate more than a half-mile of drill rod. The machine will increase ETTI's access to long-bore projects, especially through rock or involving larger pipes, Kelly said.
Improving industry technology also has helped the company tackle jobs more efficiently. The mean-looking assortment of carbide drill bits on the market are harder and more specialized than before, allowing for bores through solid rock and other difficult conditions ˆ as well as longer life for the bits themselves, which can cost up to $22,000. The beacons or "sondes" inside the bits, which measure and communicate the drill's progress to the surface, also have become dramatically more accurate, said Sterling, allowing measurements to the fraction of an inch at depths up to 65 feet.
The sondes also send up temperature readings and the pitch at which the bit is moving, which can be vital when installing sewer systems that rely on gravity. And greater automation also enables fewer workers to lay more pipe: Machines now connect drill rods automatically and offer more sophisticated controls.
The results can be eye opening, say contractors. "What's impressive is how they can get that product in the earth and have it pop out 1,000 feet away within two inches of a certain place from a certain depth and at a certain grade," said Mark Barnes of Shaw Bros. "It's a really specialized kind of work."
Maintaining a smooth surface
Others in the state have seen directional drilling's potential, including Ogunquit sewer district superintendent Phil Pickering. "I would say in the last five years people have put a lot more faith in it," he said. "It was basically a matter of seeing it work around here."
Pickering hired ETTI for a bore under Route One in 2002, and has the company lined up again to add another 4,000 feet to the sewer system this fall. The sewer project in March illustrated many of the chief advantages of the technique, he said: The drill was fast compared to many open trench projects, taking only two days of heavy work on the successful attempt. Surface disruption was limited to a small hole on the shoulder of the road, and did not interfere with traffic.
The latter consideration can be especially important when working in high traffic areas, Barnes said. "Every time we dig something up people start screaming at us," he said. "The more urban it is the more likely we'll do directional drilling."
Non-urban areas can be equally sensitive, though. In 2004, ETTI won its first ACM Build Maine Award for a major pipe installation at the International Paper facility in Bucksport. Crews installed 16-inch pipe beneath five sets of active railroad tracks and Route 15 without disrupting traffic, according to the award literature.
Reduced impact on traffic and pavement has also given trenchless companies a boost from regulators in some areas. New Hampshire, for instance, bans digging up pavement on major roads laid within five years except in an emergency, Kelly said. A Portland ordinance requires pavement be replaced above trenches each night, even in the middle of projects, making directional drilling more attractive.
In some cases, directional drilling can be cheaper, too. Pickering estimates that ETTI's $120,000 sewer job in Ogunquit saved the town 25% to 30% percent over the cost of older methods like pipe jacking (forcing pipe into an existing tunnel) and excavation.
Kelly refused to discuss pricing, saying that bidding is too competitive and prices too dependent on the variables of each project. But Sterling at the Trenchless Technology Center said installation can range anywhere from $20 a foot for small pipes to over $1,000 a foot for large ones. Overall, the price has declined in recent years along with improved efficiency for the contractors, he said.
Concerns about damaging other buried utilities are an issue in the industry, particularly when new contractors jumped in during the boom years, according to a 2005 survey by Underground Construction. So Kelly, in an effort to boost education as well as recognition for directional drilling, founded the Northeast Trenchless Association in 2002, which counts about 15 drilling contractors among its members.
Ensuring a well-trained field of direction drillers may be more important now, as the market is again on the upswing, most sources agree. Big telecom companies are now investing heavily in fiber-optic connections at the local level, while aging sewers and other infrastructure are also expected to provide work in the years ahead.
And even with a decade of experience, Kelly knows that working underground means that each job can throw the company entirely new, unforeseen challenges. In Ogunquit this spring, for example, even moving the boring line to softer soils didn't mean the end of the company's obstacles. Although the ledge dropped away, ETTI had to weld through a steel retaining wall and avoid a 75-year-old clay pipe near the drill's new path before it could pull 8,000 pounds of plastic piping through the hole to connect back to the sewer system. "It's always challenging ˆ 10 years into it and we're still learning," Kelly said. "With the variety of soils we have here, no two jobs are alike."
Digging a trench for the new pipe was impossible, so ETTI tunneled: A heavy hydraulic driller connected length after length of steel drill rod that disappeared into a small hole at the shoulder of River Road. A technician above ground tracked signals emitted from a navigating beacon inside the bit. It bore smoothly under the road, past a motel, and continued on a precise track, avoiding two water mains and other buried utilities. Then, three hours and 400 feet in, it abruptly ground to a halt at what turned out to be a thick ledge of Maine granite.
It's frustrating moments like these, says ETTI president Scott Kelly, that make Maine a challenging place to employ the technique known as horizontal directional drilling. Developed in the 1970s as an offshoot of the oil-well drilling industry, directional drilling was growing rapidly in the United States by the 1990s. Advocates saw it as a breakthrough way to lay pipe and cable without digging trenches.
Still, the technology was relatively untested in rocky New England when ETTI took on its first projects in 1995. "People were skeptical that these bores would work with the soils we have in New England," Kelly said. "Ledges pop up where they want to."
But in Ogunquit, as at the company's other drill sites in New England and New York, ETTI found a way to finish the job. The team tried twice more along the shoreline ˆ each time moving the bit slightly ˆ but continued to strike ledge. So the company conducted additional soil testing over the winter, and in March bored a 1,080-foot line through softer soils under a nearby tidal inlet.
In the end, that job won ETTI this year's Associated Constructors of Maine Build Maine Award for utilities placement, presented April 19 at the Augusta Civic Center. The honor is the latest recognition for the company that has grown from a modest father-and-son operation into a regional competitor in little more than a decade.
Water and sewer line installation is ETTI's bread and butter, accounting for about half the company's business, said Kelly. Much of that work is performed for excavation contractors, like RJ Grondin & Sons of Gorham and Shaw Bros. Inc., also of Gorham, which hire ETTI to cross obstacles like rivers, wetlands and roads where traditional trench digging is expensive or impossible. "We'll basically go with directional drilling if we calculate that it'll cost less money than digging it ourselves," said Mark Barnes, project manager for Shaw Bros., who said he has worked with ETTI about a half-dozen times.
For example, the companies this winter collaborated to install a four-and-a-half mile line from a water source to the Poland Spring bottling facility in Fryeburg. ETTI drilled nine separate sections under roads and streams while Shaw Bros. handled the open ground. (A final half-mile section is still pending local regulatory approval.)
ETTI works on a wide range of other projects including installing fiber optic, natural gas, and electric lines; irrigation systems for golf courses; and more. The company partners with municipalities, telecommunications companies like Verizon, utility companies such as Central Maine Power Co., as well as developers and private homeowners.
Through such projects, ETTI is among a handful of companies that helped tame New England's reputation as a rough place to drill and are now poised to enjoy growth after an industry slump a few years ago. "I've had people say, 'Oh, you're going up to New England ˆ you better watch out,'" said Raymond Sterling, a professor of engineering at the Louisiana Tech University Trenchless Technology Center. But those days are largely over with the successful adaptation of a technology developed around the Southern oil industry.
Rocky soils and a rocky market
ETTI got its start in 1995 when James Kelly, who owned Enterprise Electric, bought a small drill rig after reading about the relatively new field of directional drilling. James Kelly soon turned his focus back to his original company, leaving his son, Scott ˆ then in his mid-twenties ˆ to handle the new venture. Initially ETTI cut its drilling teeth on a variety of modest projects, such as running 100 feet of four-inch pipe under a road, but steadily added heavier-duty equipment and personnel over the years.
Gaining experience in New England soils meant not only encounters with granite but with the challenges of soft and mixed conditions. A 2000 stint subcontracting on a section of the 650-mile Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline won ETTI a national award from Trenchless Technologies Magazine, in part because the soil under a river near Bangor was so soft the drill bit could not change direction unaided. Other projects were sensitive in different ways: In 1998, ETTI ran a gas line to Boston's historic Bunker Hill Monument "very carefully," Kelly said, in order to avoid damaging the landmark.
That diversification ˆ along with ETTI's relatively early entry into the Northeast market ˆ has helped the company weather the ups and downs of the national directional drilling market. The late 90s were a boom time for drilling contractors, as telecommunications companies launched huge projects to connect urban hubs with fiber-optic lines, said Sterling.
Directional drilling companies installed about 12% of those fiber-optic cables, attracting an influx of new contractors. But most of that work was completed by 2001 ˆ at about the same time the economy dipped ˆ resulting in increased competition and lower profits for contractors. Some companies folded while others took work at below-market rates to make payments on their expensive machines. "It was a real bust," Sterling said.
The bust affected companies in the Northeast, especially fiber-optic installers, said Kelly. ETTI, however ˆ which performs about 65% of its work in Maine ˆ continued to grow at about 10% percent during those years, Kelly said. "We just weren't chasing those fiber-optic jobs," he said. "We were chasing water and sewer."
Today, ETTI has only nine employees, but lays 60,000-80,000 feet of pipe each year with some of the latest equipment on the market. Its newest purchase, a $660,000 Ditch Witch JT 8020 drill, was the first of its kind in New England, Kelly said. The machine can muster 80,000 pounds of torque ˆ enough to rotate more than a half-mile of drill rod. The machine will increase ETTI's access to long-bore projects, especially through rock or involving larger pipes, Kelly said.
Improving industry technology also has helped the company tackle jobs more efficiently. The mean-looking assortment of carbide drill bits on the market are harder and more specialized than before, allowing for bores through solid rock and other difficult conditions ˆ as well as longer life for the bits themselves, which can cost up to $22,000. The beacons or "sondes" inside the bits, which measure and communicate the drill's progress to the surface, also have become dramatically more accurate, said Sterling, allowing measurements to the fraction of an inch at depths up to 65 feet.
The sondes also send up temperature readings and the pitch at which the bit is moving, which can be vital when installing sewer systems that rely on gravity. And greater automation also enables fewer workers to lay more pipe: Machines now connect drill rods automatically and offer more sophisticated controls.
The results can be eye opening, say contractors. "What's impressive is how they can get that product in the earth and have it pop out 1,000 feet away within two inches of a certain place from a certain depth and at a certain grade," said Mark Barnes of Shaw Bros. "It's a really specialized kind of work."
Maintaining a smooth surface
Others in the state have seen directional drilling's potential, including Ogunquit sewer district superintendent Phil Pickering. "I would say in the last five years people have put a lot more faith in it," he said. "It was basically a matter of seeing it work around here."
Pickering hired ETTI for a bore under Route One in 2002, and has the company lined up again to add another 4,000 feet to the sewer system this fall. The sewer project in March illustrated many of the chief advantages of the technique, he said: The drill was fast compared to many open trench projects, taking only two days of heavy work on the successful attempt. Surface disruption was limited to a small hole on the shoulder of the road, and did not interfere with traffic.
The latter consideration can be especially important when working in high traffic areas, Barnes said. "Every time we dig something up people start screaming at us," he said. "The more urban it is the more likely we'll do directional drilling."
Non-urban areas can be equally sensitive, though. In 2004, ETTI won its first ACM Build Maine Award for a major pipe installation at the International Paper facility in Bucksport. Crews installed 16-inch pipe beneath five sets of active railroad tracks and Route 15 without disrupting traffic, according to the award literature.
Reduced impact on traffic and pavement has also given trenchless companies a boost from regulators in some areas. New Hampshire, for instance, bans digging up pavement on major roads laid within five years except in an emergency, Kelly said. A Portland ordinance requires pavement be replaced above trenches each night, even in the middle of projects, making directional drilling more attractive.
In some cases, directional drilling can be cheaper, too. Pickering estimates that ETTI's $120,000 sewer job in Ogunquit saved the town 25% to 30% percent over the cost of older methods like pipe jacking (forcing pipe into an existing tunnel) and excavation.
Kelly refused to discuss pricing, saying that bidding is too competitive and prices too dependent on the variables of each project. But Sterling at the Trenchless Technology Center said installation can range anywhere from $20 a foot for small pipes to over $1,000 a foot for large ones. Overall, the price has declined in recent years along with improved efficiency for the contractors, he said.
Concerns about damaging other buried utilities are an issue in the industry, particularly when new contractors jumped in during the boom years, according to a 2005 survey by Underground Construction. So Kelly, in an effort to boost education as well as recognition for directional drilling, founded the Northeast Trenchless Association in 2002, which counts about 15 drilling contractors among its members.
Ensuring a well-trained field of direction drillers may be more important now, as the market is again on the upswing, most sources agree. Big telecom companies are now investing heavily in fiber-optic connections at the local level, while aging sewers and other infrastructure are also expected to provide work in the years ahead.
And even with a decade of experience, Kelly knows that working underground means that each job can throw the company entirely new, unforeseen challenges. In Ogunquit this spring, for example, even moving the boring line to softer soils didn't mean the end of the company's obstacles. Although the ledge dropped away, ETTI had to weld through a steel retaining wall and avoid a 75-year-old clay pipe near the drill's new path before it could pull 8,000 pounds of plastic piping through the hole to connect back to the sewer system. "It's always challenging ˆ 10 years into it and we're still learning," Kelly said. "With the variety of soils we have here, no two jobs are alike."
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