URS Corporation - Projects

Projects

URS provides ongoing management and operation of the 4,200-acre Kennedy Space Center complex, including its 900 mission-specific facilities, 16,000 unique NASA systems & equipment, and 600 unique U.S. Air Force systems & equipment.

In the United Kingdom, a URS-led team is responsible for management and operation services at the Sellafield nuclear complex, including the commercial operations, waste management, support services, decontamination and decommissioning and new construction projects. Sellafield is one of the largest and most complex nuclear sites in the U.K., storing and treating nuclear waste from both the U.K.'s military and civil nuclear programs.

URS provided comprehensive project and construction management services for the reconstruction of the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center, the largest building project ever undertaken by the University of California.

URS was the contractor for the Port Washington Generating Station in Wisconsin, an 1100 MW combined-cycle power plant, which was recognized by Power Magazine as one of its top plants of 2008. URS also helped build the state-of-the-art Holcim cement manufacturing plant in Missouri, one of the world’s largest cement manufacturing facilities in the world.

The I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed in August 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145. In 2003, URS had been retained by the Minnesota Department of Transportation to conduct a fatigue evaluation and a redundancy analysis of the bridge. Lawsuits filed in 2008 and 2009 cite the company with negligence. In 2010 these lawsuits were settled out of court without the finding of negligence or wrongdoing on the part of URS.

In November 2008, The National Transportation Safety Board determined the probable cause of the collapse of the I-35W bridge was the "inadequate load capacity, due to a design error by Sverdrup & Parcel and Associates, Inc., of the gusset plates at the U10 nodes, which failed under a combination of (1) substantial increases in the weight of the bridge, which resulted from previous modifications, and (2) the traffic and concentrated construction loads on the bridge on the day of the accident." URS was not involved in the work being conducted on the bridge at the time of the collapse or in the design of the bridge.

For more details on this topic, see I-35W Mississippi River bridge#Collapse.

The Martin Olav Sabo Bridge over Hiawatha Avenue in Minneapolis experienced failure of two if its longest support cables on February 20, 2012. URS Corporation was the design consultant for the bridge that was completed in 2007. These failures resulted in closures of Hiawatha Avenue and the adjacent light rail between Mall of America and downtown Minneapolis for safety precautions while support structures were put in place. Rail service was restored after four days while Hiawatha Avenue road traffic remained closed for staging of construction equipment. This failure occurred less than 18 months after URS Corporation settled for $52.4 million in response to lawsuits brought by victims of the Minneapolis I-35W bridge collapse.

For more details on this topic, see Martin Olav Sabo Bridge.