For a man whose confidence in his construction company borders on braggadocio, C.C. Myers was noticeably nervous on the ninth night after he promised to rebuild the fire-damaged MacArthur Maze in just 25 days.

Moments earlier, he had brashly predicted that his company would reopen the Interstate 580 connector a week sooner than his original ambitious prognostication -- and in about one-third of the time forecast by Caltrans.

"Yeah, I'm getting antsy," he admitted when asked about a large steel girder that hadn't yet been put into place two hours after the lower Interstate 880 freeway had been closed. "We've got to set four of those tonight."

He picked up his cell phone and bellowed into it as he strode toward the construction crews. About 10 minutes later, crews started lifting the first girder into the gap created when the I-580 connector crumpled in the heat of a gasoline-tanker fire.

Twenty-six days later, I-580 opened at 8:40 p.m. Thursday -- in time for this morning's commute and in line with Myers' prediction.

Nobody had expected such a speedy recovery for the much-maligned maze, an often-congested interchange traveled by 280,000 vehicles every day.

Rebuilding the freeways was not just a highway construction project. With the Bay Area, the construction industry and others across the country watching, it became a race. Winning the race required an uncommon combination of pride, planning, timing and teamwork.

"I expected to get it done fast," Myers said before heading home to the Sacramento area the night the first girders were raised, "but not this fast."

So enthusiastic were some drivers about the reopening that they couldn't wait to use the new connector.

Douglas Spalding, 46, a teacher from Oakland, was on his way home Thursday night from Trader Joe's in Emeryville when he heard I-580 was about to reopen. He rushed to the Bay Bridge toll plaza parking lot and cut across to east I-80 so that he could be one of the first drivers across the new connector.

"I go back and forth to the city all the time, so for me it's very convenient," said Spalding, who was driving an older model Toyota Corolla wagon.

Well before dawn on April 29, a gasoline tanker truck had crashed on the freeway that connects westbound Interstate 80 to southbound I-880. It burst into flames, and the fireball generated such intense heat that it caused the steel frame supporting I-580 directly above to bend and collapse. It also scarred and damaged I-880.

Both freeway connectors were barricaded, detours were mapped out and marked, and transportation officials and nervous commuters speculated that it could take months to rebuild.

But Caltrans wasn't resigned to that fate. With the smell of smoke still in the air at the maze, design engineers early that Sunday rushed to work at the department's structure design offices in Sacramento and started pulling out old maze plans, viewing the damage on television and the Web and fielding calls from engineers at the site.

"They had a design roughed out within hours -- once they figured out where it happened and what it looked like," said Rick Land, Caltrans' chief engineer.

Nothing like the maze

Land, who lives in the Sierra foothills about an hour northeast of Sacramento, has worked 29 years at the state Department of Transportation, all but four of those years on structures -- bridges, overpasses, underpasses, tunnels and the like. California's highways have suffered many disasters, he said, but nothing similar to the maze collapse.

"I've never seen a failure like this," he said. "I've seen pictures of it in other states, but we've never had anything like it in California. We've had structures in forest fires or in truck crashes (and fires), but you don't see something like this very often -- at least not in California."

Less than two days after the I-580 connector collapsed, demolition crews removed the mangled section. A day later, Caltrans engineers clambered over the charred section of I-880, drilling concrete core samples, X-raying parts of the structure and dragging chains over the roadway -- all tests to determine the extent of repairs needed.

The results came back the next day -- the fourth day after the collapse. I-880 had suffered no serious structural damage to the concrete, Caltrans concluded. The freeway connector could be jacked up and supported with temporary braces while workers used a heat-straightening technique to repair warped steel girders underneath. Contractor ACC West completed the work quickly, and I-880 was reopened to traffic after being closed for just eight days.

Meanwhile, back at Caltrans headquarters in Sacramento, the state's top transportation officials were working on a plan to speed the reconstruction of I-580. The challenge, said Land, was: "How quickly could we get it done without compromising quality?"

"We had a lot of conversations about what could go wrong," he said. "Once you have that conversation, you can address the requirements and procedure to prevent that from happening."

$200,000 bonus offer

Caltrans officials worked to speed the process by preparing a list of potential contractors it knew could do the work quickly and by streamlining its process, clearing as much red tape as possible. Then they drew up a contract offering a $200,000 bonus -- with a limit of $5 million -- for each day the work was done in less than 50 days and levying a $200,000 penalty for each day after that deadline.

On May 7, an unseasonably warm day in Sacramento, Caltrans employees, contractors and reporters gathered in the dingy basement of Caltrans headquarters for the opening of the seven bids received. Dale Bonner, the recently appointed secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing, announced the Caltrans estimate of $5.2 million, then commenced opening bids.

When he opened the first bid -- $1.1 million -- from California Engineering Contractors, the crowd of about 30 quieted. It turned silent when the fifth bid, from C.C. Myers Inc., came in at $867,075. No one could beat that.

At about 3:30 p.m., Caltrans awarded the contract to C.C. Myers. Myers and Caltrans Director Will Kempton signed the contract, and then Myers turned to several television cameras and promised to complete the job in 25 days -- half of Caltrans' estimate and just in time to collect the full $5 million bonus.

The race to rebuild the maze was on.

Within hours -- some say it was closer to 15 minutes -- Myers had workers on the site of the maze collapse.

Meanwhile, in Lathrop (San Joaquin County), concrete fabrication firm ConFab started building what is essentially a big, rectangular concrete block. The block, filled with steel reinforcement bars and cables, is what's known to road builders as a bent cap -- a 243,750-pound beam that sits atop two columns and supports the frame of the elevated roadway.

While the beam was being built, steel was being rushed from Pennsylvania and Texas to Stinger Welding, a steel fabrication firm in Arizona. Carl Douglas, president of Stinger, found in Pennsylvania the nation's only supply of the 2-inch steel plate needed to make the bottom flange of the steel girders. He found the half-inch and 1-inch steel needed for the rest of the girders in Texas. It was loaded onto trucks with two drivers in each rig so they could make the trips with fewer stops.

Once the steel reached Arizona, Stinger crews began working two 10-hour shifts daily to get the girders built. Caltrans sent inspectors and engineers -- all authorized to make on-the-spot decisions -- to answer questions and ensure the quality of the fabrication, Land said. Caltrans and Stinger agreed to use a more expensive, but faster, style of producing steel girders with the required strength.

"Caltrans came in and put good people in our shop," Douglas said. "If there were any problems, we could go to them and get immediate answers. Usually (done by phone, fax or e-mail), it takes weeks. It was a breath of fresh air to have a government agency come in and perform like that."

The first two girders were done on May 14 -- just four days after Stinger started working and seven days into C.C. Myers' contract -- and around noon they were put on trucks bound for the Bay Area.

Workers wrote a message on the side of the girders in chalk: "To the people of Oakland, California, from Stinger Welding, Coolidge, Arizona," and the trucks rolled off, again with two drivers in each rig.

"They're stopping only for fuel and potty breaks," Douglas said.

Stinger finished the girders in nine days -- a job that would normally have taken about 45, he said.

The first two girders arrived early on May 15 at ABC Painting, an industrial paint shop on the old Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo. Crews blasted the girders with steel grit to rough them up enough to hold a good coat of paint. Then they applied a zinc primer in "Caltrans gray," a sort of greenish gray.

The zinc, explained Eric Jeffress, president of ABC, is a cathodic primer that sacrifices itself to the elements before they can get to the steel. Caltrans usually requires primers to dry for three days, he said, but on this job allowed a one-day drying time.

As the girders were painted, the massive concrete bent cap began making its way from Lathrop on an 18-axle truck. The load was so heavy that the truck wasn't permitted on I-580 over the Altamont Pass and had to use rural roads to get to the Tri-Valley. Still, the bent cap arrived about 15 minutes before Caltrans' scheduled 8 p.m. closure May 15 of the I-880 connector for the installation, and had to wait on the side of Interstate 80 in Berkeley.

Shortly after 8 p.m., the rig pulled onto the closed 880 connector and parked at an angle beneath the two I-580 columns that survived the collapse and needed only minor repairs. After the beam was untied and hooked to lifting cables, a pair of cranes raised it at 8:50 p.m. and had it in place by 9 p.m. Crane operators then dropped large steel "pins" into holes in the bent cap and injected grout to secure the connection.

Crowd watched big event

Dozens of people watched the pivotal event, including a media village that established itself in the dust beneath the maze. Closer to the action, at least 20 engineers, construction workers and Caltrans officials stood and watched.

There was a feeling in the cool night air that if this pivotal part of the job could be done so quickly and seemingly easily, C.C. Myers really could complete the job in 25 days.

"I haven't encountered anything like this," said Chris Snyder, a business representative with Operating Engineers Union Local 3, which represents heavy equipment operators and other construction workers. "The whole world is watching to see how fast (C.C. Myers) can do it."

After the first four girders were lifted into place, two more arrived each subsequent night, and they were put in place without difficulty. As soon as each pair was secured, workers swarmed the steel beams and started installing the wooden forms and steel-reinforcement bar for the concrete roadway. On a typical job, the contractor would wait until the girders were all installed before preparing for the concrete pour, Land said.

"C.C. Myers was very good at coordinating things. They eliminated the transitions, the waiting time," he said, mentioning the importance of flexibility on the job.

In another example, instead of requiring the contactor to wait for detailed construction drawings to be approved, Caltrans agreed to let the work start while they were being reviewed. It was a risk for both the contractor and Caltrans, Land said, but was a relatively safe bet "because the work was so straightforward." It ended up saving about five days.

When Caltrans mentioned a willingness to be flexible when it awarded the job, some critics feared it would mean lower standards and inferior quality. In fact, UC Berkeley civil engineering professor Abolhassan Astaneh said Thursday he was not convinced that four concrete columns supporting 580 or 880 could withstand a major earthquake. Instead, they should have been demolished and replaced, he said.

But Land and Peter Strykers, Caltrans senior engineer, said multiple tests were performed on both the surviving structures and the new construction, and they are confident of its safety.

"We didn't cut any corners at all," Strykers said.

In addition to taking core samples of the columns and roadways that survived the inferno and testing them days after the collapse, Caltrans engineers took samples of the concrete from each pour of the deck and walls. Those samples were subjected to crushing tests at the department's Sacramento laboratory to determine their strength.

After curing for 48 hours, the concrete poured on Sunday had already attained the required strength -- 3,500 pounds per square inch -- for the road deck, Land said. But Caltrans wanted it to cure -- beneath burlap and plastic blankets to keep it damp -- for at least 96 hours. The extra time, Strykers said, will prevent cracking.

"Some people think we could have gotten it done a little sooner," he said, standing atop the new 580 connector Wednesday evening. "But we want it to be a quality job that will have no maintenance problems for years to come."

C.C. Myers will collect $5 million in bonus money. The job is estimated to have cost the firm $2.5 million.

But Myers has said this job was not about making a ton of money; it was about pride and reputation. Land agreed.

"It's not about making a huge profit," he said. "It's about getting the job done quick and pointing out that you're one of the best contractors in the industry."

Quick work

26

Days I-580 was closed

17

Days it took C.C. Myers to rebuild I-580

96

Hours of curing time for concrete road deck

200

Cubic yards of concrete in road deck

35

Cubic yards of concrete in railing walls

12

Number of steel girders supporting I-580 connector