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It’s a Jungle Out There
Rudolph and Sletten goes wild in San Diego with new animal-adventure excursion project
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| Construction crews at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego battled more than just a tight schedule to complete work on a new excursion roadway and supporting infrastructure in time for the summer tourist season. |
On some of the crazier days, you may think your jobsite is a zoo, but you’ve got nothing on Rudolph and Sletten.
The San Diego-based firm recently completed build-out of “Journey Into Africa,” a new tour at San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park. Rudolph and Sletten was construction manager for the $28.8-million project.
Started in September 2005, Journey Into Africa replaces the Wgasa Bush Line, a safari-like railway that has carried visitors through the park for decades. The new tour, which uses biodiesel-powered trams on paved roadways in place of the railway, offers “a more integrated and realistic experience with the large animals,” park officials say.
The project included grading and excavating of more than 500,000 cu yd of dirt and more than two miles of new concrete road-bed and related landscaping. Construction also called for new fencing and predator/exhibit animal barriers surrounding the large animal exhibits, a building for maintenance of the trams and a new queuing station for docking, loading and offloading visitors from the park trams.
But the scope of the project wasn’t what made it tough.
“For the lion’s share of the project, we were working right out in the open with the animals,” says Bob Boyles, Rudolph and Sletten superintendent. “Of all the projects in my career, this one was the most fun and challenging. It’s not every project where you are charged by rhinos and white-lipped deer. It really taught me how to think like an animal.”
Construction crews had “mammal watch” teams patrolling in park vehicles to keep the animals at bay while they worked. “I did learn how to stare down a rhinoceros,” Boyles says. “You just get in your vehicle and pull it within a couple feet of them and then they’ll go away.”
The Journey Into Africa project includes seven separate build-outs. Of those, three are complete, including a temporary monorail link to allow part of the existing Wgasa Bush Line Tour to remain in service during construction; a new animal containment building, and a large, camouflaged barrier between the African and Asian enclosures.
Rudolph and Sletten starts working on a new exhibit, Elephant Odyssey, this fall. “The elephants are next. Wonder what they’ve got in mind for us?” asks Boyles.
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