Ben C. Gerwick, Jr – Builder, Teacher, Creative Innovator, and Pioneer in the Fields of Prestressed Concrete, Deep Foundations and Marine Construction

Born: February 22, 1919 – Died: December 25, 2006

Professor of Civil Engineering, Emeritus
University of California at Berkeley

Honorary Chairman of the Board
Ben C. Gerwick, Inc./ Member of the COWI Group

Contributions to the Construction Industry by Ben C. Gerwick, Jr., include:

• Pioneered development of prestressed concrete piling for long driven piles in deep foundations, marine structures and bridge piers (1955).  Continuous improvement in their design and in the installation methods used to ensure high quality and driveability in severe environments, subjected to complex loadings including seismic.  Extended these overseas to Mideast (1959) and Southeast Asia (1962)
• Pioneered developments of pretensioned concrete railroad ties for U.S.
• Conceptual design of match-cast segmental prestressed precast concrete method for bridge girders for San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge renovation (1963) and for Columbia River Bridge I-205, (1973), now widely employed in the U.S. and overseas.
• Involvement in development of precast concrete tunnel lines, e.g. Channel Tunnel, South Bay Outfall Tunnel.
• Author of numerous technical papers on prestressed concrete and book “Construction of Prestressed Concrete Structures”.

B. Deep Foundations

• Initiated development of the special slurry wall construction system incorporating soldier beams, known by the acronym SPTC wall, used in the deep foundations for the SF-BARTD system, the San Francisco Muni-Turnaround, and many hi-rise buildings.
• Participated in advancing the concept of large-diameter steel tubular piles to major overwater bridges, such as the Jamuna River Bridge in Bangladesh, the seismic retrofit of San Francisco Bay bridges and the design of the new East Bay Replacement Bridge of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
• Participated in design and construction of deep cofferdams for bridge piers such as 2nd Delaware Memorial Bridge and Bisan Seto Bridge Anchorage, Japan.  Author of Chapters on “Cofferdams” and “Caissons” in Handbooks on Heavy Construction and Temporary Construction.

C. Concrete Offshore and Marine Structures

• Involved in the initial offshore concrete platforms constructed in the North Sea; Ekofisk, Beryl, Statfjord and Ninian.
• Participated in design and/or construction of the concrete offshore platforms in the Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean); Tarsiut, CIDS, and Amauligak. Conceptual design of iceberg-resistant offshore platform Hibernia.
• Author of “Construction of Marine and Offshore Structures”, currently in its 3rd edition.

D. Underwater Structural Concrete (Tremie concrete)

• Participated in the development of high quality tremie concrete for construction of underwater structures, including mix design and placement procedures to attain homogeneous high quality subaqueous structures.
• Applied this tremie concrete to bridge piers, river navigation structures, and belled footings of offshore platforms at depths up to 800 feet, for the North Rankin ‘A’.
• Participated in development of bridge piers constructed of prefabricated concrete shells and tremie concrete, including: the Richmond-San Rafael and the San Mateo-Hayward Bridges in California, the Columbia River Bridge in Oregon, and the Great Belt Link in Denmark.
• Participated in the extension of this offsite prefabrication concept to river navigation structures for the Corps of Engineers on the Ohio River (Olmsted Navigable Pass Dam), Monongahela River (Braddock Dam) and the Chicago Lock at Lake Michigan.

E. Floating Concrete Structures

• Participated in investigation of disasters and problems of existing floating concrete bridges in Washington (Hood Canal, I-90, Evergreen Point) determination of causes and, as applicable, solutions for retrofit and/or replacement.
• Participation in concept development for very large floating concrete structures for offshore production and storage of LPG and LNG.