Brice Cos. takes on remote projects in Alaska.

Geographic location alone sets Brice Cos. apart from other civil contractors, it says. The Fairbanks, Alaska-based company is geared toward logistically challenging projects in remote locations that can be reached only by helicopter or boat. “

We know how to work this state from one corner to the other,” President Sam Robert Brice asserts. That is quite a change, given that the family owned company’s roots began in Florida more than four decades ago.

Founded in 1961 as a lumber business, Brice’s first generation of owners wanted to look for similar opportunities in interior Alaska but ended up getting involved in the land clearing industry. In 1973, it was awarded a landmark project to clear a section of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which encompassed nearly 300 miles and took the company two years to complete.
Now on its third generation, Brice has evolved into four companies:

• Brice Construction, the longest-established division, performs civil construction
• Brice Marine, the company’s equipment arm that maintains its own tugs and barges
• Brice Environmental, which cleans shooting ranges and military radar sites, and performs soil remediation services across the country
• Browns Hill Quarry, the only commercial basalt rock source in Alaska, which the company uses to process and produce road sand chips, landscape boulders and rip-rap

“One of the scourges of Alaska construction is that it’s very seasonal,” Brice admits. “Unless you’re fortunate to have oil work or jobs that require building ice bridges, a lot of times you don’t have winter work. That’s the reason why we set up the other companies; it gives us a fighting chance to stay ahead of the competition.”

‘A Rapid response’
In 1989, The Mount Redoubt Volcano in Cook Inlet erupted, flooding the Drift River and onshore oil storage facilities used by offshore drilling rigs. Brice used its marine and construction resources to construct 8,300 lineal feet of elevated concrete-armored dike around the facility to protect it from glacial melting and flooding.

In January 1991, the project was named by the National Society of Professional Engineers as one of nine Outstanding Engineering Achievements in the United States during 1990.

The Koyukuk River flooded its banks in 1994 and Brice was selected as the civil contractor to perform emergency repairs on the three villages affected. “We provided a rapid response through the use of our marine division’s equipment,” Brice says. “There hadn’t been a barge up to the villages in 20 years.”

After initial emergency repairs had been completed, Brice continued with the restoration of the villages until the end of 1995.

In 2001, the company was selected to clean up drilling mud pits on Amchitka Island. “We did the civil and environmental cleanup of the mud pits in a remote island 1,500 miles out of the Aleutian chain where the government did a lot of nuclear testing,” Brice explains. “We used a lot of innovative equipment and processing technology to complete the work on the project, which is why we were chosen – even though we weren’t the lowest bidder.”

For its efforts, the company was named the 2002 Regional Subcontractor of the Year for the U.S. Small Business Administration Region X.

Through its environmental division, Brice has performed numerous contaminated soil remediation projects throughout the nation. “We took mining technology and adapted it for remediation purposes, and since then have enhanced that technology and developed it over time to get somewhat of a mobile system that we customize to the type of soil we’re treating,” Vice President Alba Brice explains.

Local Manpower
Because many of Brice’s projects are in remote locations near native villages, the company often hires local residents. “A lot of times there is not much employment in those communities, so our strength is to train these folks and give them the opportunity to work at home on good-paid projects,” Sam Robert Brice says.

“We are a union contractor, so once they’ve been trained, they are eligible to work for us and for other contractors around the state and they can keep their retirement and benefits. We often find talented employees from the villages that end up working with Brice for years.” The company also prefers renting local facilities and hiring chefs in the village to cook for the crew.

‘What Makes Alaska Tick’
“Everybody in Alaska is nervous about what’s going on in our political climate,” Sam Robert Brice notes. “It’s a big state with a lot of needs and a lot of people don’t understand that in the contiguous United States.    

“They hear about the money in Alaska, but they don’t understand that we don’t have many roads and we’re supporting [native] villages throughout the state,” he adds. “Also, the cost of doing business in these remote sites is unimaginable to most folks.”

“What people in the lower 48 tend to forget is that they’ve had a huge head start on their infrastructure,” Alba Brice adds. “Alaska doesn’t have infrastructure and when we try to install some, costs are exponentially higher because of the logistics requirements. That’s created a lot of animosity throughout the political world.”

They say the proposed Alaska gas line could support the state in numerous ways, such as in job creation.

“It was predicted that the Alaska oil pipeline had a 10-year future,” Sam Robert Brice says. “Well, that was 1977 when the first barrel of oil flowed. Now, it’s 30 years later and we’re still pumping oil, but the volume is decreasing each year and that’s what makes Alaska tick.”

“The construction of a gas line is fairly critical as an economic tool for the future of the state,” Alba Brice says. “If the congressional [delegation] is diminished, combined with the dwindling oil flow in the oil pipeline, then the future will be very unclear here for the long term. If indeed a gas line comes along, there will be ample opportunity either directly on the line or because of its construction. But there are no such things as guarantees around here; never have been.”