| OTIA III State Bridge Delivery Program |
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| Web Brief (Jan 04) |
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Jeanne Staton has built her career on tearing things down.
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She walks softly, but carries a big wrecking ball
Don’t let Jeanne Staton’s gentle, soft-spoken persona fool you. She makes her living demolishing old highway bridges.
She is president of Staton Companies which during the past two decades has carved out a niche as one of Oregon’s leading bridge demolition contractors. Today her company has contracts to dismantle sections of 28 aging bridges—on Oregon 212, U.S. 26, and U.S 97 between Mt Hood and Chemult, and on U. S. 20 in central Oregon—as other contractors repair or replace the spans.
The work on these bridges—worth about $1.46 million to Staton—is part of the Oregon Department of Transportation’s $3 billion Oregon Transportation Investment Act (OTIA) program. The OTIA program includes $1.3 billion for ODOT to repair or replace aging bridges on the state highway system.
A key legislative mandate for the OTIA III State Bridge Delivery Program is to stimulate Oregon’s economic recovery by sustaining jobs and contracting opportunities—from project development through final bridge construction. ODOT is working with minority-owned, women-owned and disadvantaged business contractors to create new jobs and economic opportunities.
For Staton, one of the vital parts of the OTIA bridge program is its longevity.
“Seldom do we get presented the possibility of jobs that are going to last five to seven years and possibly longer,” said Staton. “We don’t expect that we’re going to get every single job, but we certainly have an opportunity. It gives you the nerve to go out and buy expensive equipment and to hire more employees.”
Gearing up for the bridge projects, Staton bought two more Link-Belt excavators—at $300,000 apiece—from Triad Machinery in Coburg. She also hired four additional full-time employees, bringing the Eugene company’s workforce to 35. Twenty-two work in the field on bridges. Five work in two shifts at Staton’s maintenance shop or in the field on service calls, to keep an arsenal of eight excavators and 15 hydraulic tools known as “munchers and crunchers” in top operating condition.
In addition to her payroll and investing in the tools of her trade, Staton also is spreading ODOT’s bridge repair dollars around the state by renting special equipment needed on projects. She contracts with trucking companies to help haul away bridge materials, hires concrete cutters on an as-needed basis, and leases barges required to work beneath bridges that span waterways.
“ODOT is stimulating Oregon’s economy through the kind of ripple effect we see with Staton’s purchases as well as directly through construction job growth,” said Heather Catron, manager of ODOT’s Bridge Delivery Unit. “About 18 family-wage jobs are sustained for every $1 million spent on transportation construction in Oregon. Each year of the OTIA program construction projects will sustain about 5,000 family wage jobs.”
Staton’s company extends the economic impact of the bridge work by recycling much of the material from dismantled bridges. “Recycling is a big deal for us,” Staton said. “It’s the name of the game to some extent. We do everything we can to avoid landfills—and bridges are totally recyclable.”
The firm removes steel rebar from concrete bridge beams and carts it off to scrap dealers such as Portland’s Schnitzer Steel and other recyclers. When the price that aggregate will fetch on the market is favorable, Staton rents rock crushing machines to crunch up the concrete for recycling.
Staton started her company with her former husband in 1971 when the city of Eugene was engaged in a major urban renewal program. The new company did much of the demolition work. In 2003, Staton became the first woman president in the 82-year history of the Associated General Contractors’ 1,200-member Oregon-Columbia chapter.
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