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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

October 2008

David Tannehill Special Employee Award:
Meet Deanna Vilcheck, an Engineer Who Can Juggle

MTC Special Employee Award winner Deanna Vilcheck dons her hard hat and a smile as she stands atop her domain of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge West Approach.
(Photo: Noah Berger)

As Caltrans’ primary engineer for the reconstruction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge’s West Approach, a one-mile elevated stretch of Interstate 80 coursing through San Francisco’s densely developed South of Market residential and commercial area, Deanna Vilcheck has become an expert juggler and ringmaster. She has directed the long-running $400 million-plus production that has involved hundreds of construction workers; scores of engineers, architects, traffic operations staff, and budget and finance professionals; dozens of contractors; myriad local agencies and other stakeholders; thousands of residents and businesses; and some 280,000 vehicles traveling through the West Approach corridor each day.

The feat has earned Vilcheck the 2008 David Tannehill Special Employee Award.

“The project was exceptionally complex in terms of construction staging and from the community relations perspective,” said Tony Anziano, Caltrans’ toll bridge program manager. “It required incredible amounts of coordination and collaboration, and Deanna was the focal point for bringing the team
together. She does her work quietly, but she is unbelievably effective.”

The five-year effort involved completely removing and replacing the freeway in its original footprint as well as replacing all on- and off-ramps, sometimes within feet and inches of adjacent buildings, while causing minimal impact on the traveling public and the local community. The seismically outdated double-deck structure is now gone, and in its place is a side-by-side roadway where each deck has its own independent support system. Where the decks stack to join the bridge, those supports will prevent the structure from collapsing like Oakland’s Interstate 880 Cypress Street double-deck viaduct did during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Caltrans Director Will Kempton compared the West Approach seismic project to “changing a tire on a car that’s moving at 65 miles per hour.” As the senior resident engineer, Vilcheck has been responsible for many of the nitty-gritty details of that tire change — making sure that all the plans are followed, coordinating and monitoring contractors’ progress, implementing any change orders, and keeping the work on schedule.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger presided over a milestone event — the opening of the new permanent structure carrying eastbound traffic to the span — in April of 2008. The project is due for completion, months ahead of schedule, this winter.

According to Caltrans Project Manager Ken Terpstra, “Deanna has a strong construction background, but on a project like the West Approach it is about more than construction. The resident engineer needed a very particular skill set to pull that project off, and you knew Deanna had it.”

“I’ve really learned a lot about multitasking and delegating,” said Vilcheck, who recently was promoted to construction manager for the West Approach and other projects. “I throw 45 balls in the air, and start with the five that are closest to the ground.”

Since the start of construction on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge’s West Approach replacement in 2003, Vilcheck has demonstrated her multitasking capabilities beyond the project, finding the time not only to get married, but also to give birth to two children.

— Karin Betts

See VIDEO: Deanna Vilcheck

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