Construction team nails major milestone

SAN JOSE - Moving a 6,000-pound brass statue 90 feet isn't as simple as it sounds.

In fact, it can require a Company-wide effort in some cases.

The Construction Division, with assistance from other areas of Graniterock, successfully relocated the infamous Thomas Fallon statue from Pellier Park in downtown San Jose as part of a major street widening and realignment project.

The successful statue move in mid-May marked a major milestone in the $4.5 million North San Pedro project with Barry Swenson Builder and the city of San Jose. Estimator John Torres won the project for Graniterock.

“It goes to show all the planning and strategic thinking paid off,” Project Manager Sergio Rubio said. “It took numerous, countless hours by the team to figure out how we were going to do this in one move instead of two.

“The critical issue for us was that the bolt patterns had to be replicated exactly the same. We got them within 1/16th of an inch, which I thought was a home run.”

The statue of one of San Jose’s first mayors raising the U.S. flag had to be removed from its spot on St. James Street to turn Julian Street into a two-way street.

The project also includes recycling the old sidewalks on site and putting it back as class 2 base rock as the Construction team rebuilds the city streets and sidewalks.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this a success.

Steve Bascue, Elden Davis, Todd Wilson, John Garcia, Joe Salamida, Tim Carilli, Olon Hicks, Steve Lanning, Sergio Ledesma, Dan Enachioaie, Michael Vaz, Jason Smyth, Kevin Jones, Alec Ching, Joey Spears, Pablo Romo, Pio Romo, Francisco Gomez, Gabe Flores, Zack Booth, Katha Redmon, Matt Dorsa, John Torres, Paul Cianciarulo, Tina Brown, Victoria Alarcon-Carrillo and Dave Hernandez.