News
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ECI Acquires Newest Ditch Witch Trencher/Plow
ECI recently acquired a Ditch Witch RT115 Quad Trencher/Plow. Instead of tires, this newest trencher/plow tractor has four rubber track drives for greater traction. It has proven very effective with a good balance of power, traction, and weight distribution. Carl Lockerby, our ace trencher operator reported that it is a sweet machine with improved operator comforts.
This new tractor supplements our aging Ditch Witch R100s from the late 1970s. In their heyday, the R100s were the workhorses of the fleet in a time when ECI was extensively involved in cable plowing. Today, cable plowing is a smaller part of our business while still an important part of our wire/fiber infrastructure services that include:
- Directional Drilling
- Cable Plowing
- Trenching with a Chain Trencher
- Rock Trenching with our Tesmec 900
- Rail Plowing
- Traditional Trenching Methods (by excavator/backhoes)
- Cable Pulling and Blowing
- Equipment Pad Installation
Ken Pidgeon Presents Technical Paper at RETC 2011
Ken Pidgeon Present Technical Paper at RETC 2011 Conference in San Francisco
Ken, along with Marco Boscardin, presented a technical paper entitled: “Burlington Tunnel Emergency Repairs: A Case History” at the Rapid Excavation & Tunneling Conference on June 24th in San Francisco. Marco is a long-time friend and former colleague of Ken’s. The third author is Bill Riehl of Rail America who did not attend the conference.
The technical paper described an emergency stability condition that occurred when the tunnel was being rehabilitated in 2008. ECI was subsequently hired by Rail America (owner of New England Central Railroad) to design and construct the emergency repairs. ECI’s work included investigation, design, permanent stability improvements, construction of a new “rigid” track structure, grouting, track approach work, and tunnel portal improvements.
- The technical paper provides extensive details on the project – Pidgeon et al.
- The power point presentation can be viewed by clicking the following link: Burlington Tunnel Emergency Repairs – RETC Presentation
- The project is also profiled on our website – ECI Project – Burlington Tunnel
ECI Adds Trimble Machine Automation to JD700 Dozer
ECI recently acquired a Trimble GCS900 Dual GPS machine automation system for our John Deere JD700J LGP track dozer. It is currently in service at the Vermont Air National Guard Renewable Energy project and has recently worked on the Eastview Project.
“Look Dad, No Hands” – The system allows efficient and accurate grading without field layout and automatically controls the dozer blade using GPS technology. The dual GPS receivers allow the best available control and accuracy. The system uses a 3-D topographical model of the site and automatically computes the required slope and grade at the GPS locations of each end of the dozer blade. The on-board computer and electric-over-hydraulic valves control the blade movement according the 3-D model. An on-site base station allows for accuracy up to about 1 inch vertically and even better horizontally.
The Trimble GCS900 was purchased from Keystone Precision in April and the JD700J was purchased from Nortrax Equipment last year.
ECI Purchases New Tandem Dump Truck
ECI recently purchased a new Frieghtliner M2 14 cubic yard tandem-axle dump truck from RR Charlebois. The truck is powered by a 450 hp Mercedes-Benz engine with a Fuller/Eaton 8LL transmission. The truck has a smaller foot-print and better turning radius than the rest of our heavy dump truck fleet, which makes it more effective on small sites.
ECI Rolls out New Website
Welcome:
Welcome to ECI’s new website. Our previous website was mostly as a marketing tool to show the world who we are and what we can do. The new website is more interactive with blogs so we can reach out to our employees, customers, vendors, and friends. The blogs may contain announcements of ECI’s achievements and project news.
New Features:
There are several features that we would like to point out:
- The site has been totally revised.
- We now are in complete control of content, unlike the previous site. This means we can make changes anytime and anywhere, without hiring a website designer.
- We have an Employee Portal and a Vendor Portal.
- The Employee Portal has documents for downloading, news, the safety manual, calendar, and personal photos on the Employee Wall.
- The Vendor Portal will have similar documents, safety & quality standards, and a calendar.
We hope everyone takes advantages of these features.
Ken & Scott Pidgeon
ECI Purchases JD350 Excavator
ECI has purchased the JD350 Excavator that we have rented for the past several months. The tilting bucket makes the excavator a useful addition to our site projects. That feature allows the operator to custom shape an excavation to suit the dimensions of the building foundation which minimizes the volume of excavated soil and backfill. The excavator is currently working a the Eastview Project in Middlebury.