Portal Bridge Construction has a New Chief of Construction Management

Larry Higgs | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

SEACAUCUS, N.J. – NJ Transit’s chief of construction management for the new Portal Bridge construction, Mohammed Nasim, was fired and replaced with Frank Corso.

In August of this year, RT&S reported on the Portal North Bridge Update. The project seeks to reduce traffic congestion and increase train speeds in order to alleviate a “major bottleneck along the NEC.”

Now, Northjersey.com reports that NJ Transit’s chief of construction management for the new Portal Bridge construction, Mohammed Nasim, was fired. Nasim was a “licensed engineer who has more than 30 years of experience delivering large projects,” and “he was given no reason for his firing, except that he was an ‘at will’ employee and was escorted out of the agency’s Newark headquarters by police.”

Nasim was overseeing the $2.3 billion Portal North Bridge. The project will replace the 113-year-old swing-span bridge with a two-track, fixed-span replacement. The bridge is currently still in operation and “requires a sledgehammer to whack it into place after it opens.” The Portal Bridge is part of the Gateway program’s first phase, and it “involves building replacement train tunnels under the Hudson River into Manhattan.”

Frank Corso, Chief of Construction Management, has been designated to lead the Portal North Bridge Replacement project for NJ Transit. Corso has civil and bridge work construction experience and a portfolio that includes billions of dollars of infrastructure projects built under his leadership.

The Portal Bridge Replacement is currently proceeding on schedule and on budget. According to the report, Nasim said “he warned the leadership teams at the FTA and Amtrak and those above him at Nj Transit that he had some concerns, including the need for support staff for the contractor and settlement issues from construction. The latter, he said, could affect the track alignment at the old Portal Bridge and the structures that support the overhead wires that power the trains, which have led to work stoppages on the new bridge.”

Rail tunnels under the Hudson and the old Portal Bridge are at the same sage, and “they are critical choke points along the Northeast Corridor that can cause significant delays in and out of New York’s Penn Station, the busiest transportation hub in North America.” The Gateway Development Commission proved to the FTA that it has the capability to manage the “size and scale of the program.” As of reporting, the Gateway Development Commission is “still working” to attain a $6.88 billion federal grant from the FTA for the tunnels program.