In fall 2003, No-DigTec tackled an unusually challenging job: replacing 200 feet of a collapsed 6-inch sewer line running underneath the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas.

The main challenge was accessibility; the hospital’s central outdoor courtyard offered the best access to the collapsed line, but its tight, narrow confines made it impossible to bring in conventional heavy equipment — except by helicopter, which wasn’t an option because of the intense noise it would generate.

Fortunately, crews were able to hand-carry No-DigTec’s lightweight, collapsible and portable equipment into the courtyard.

But the project took on added drama because in one month (Oct. 12, to be exact), craniofacial surgeons at the hospital were scheduled to separate conjoined 2-year-old Egyptian twins Ahmed and Mohamed Ibrahim. The high-profile operation was attracting worldwide attention, and a press conference to update a large media contingent was going to be held in the same courtyard where the work was occurring.

The short timeline required No-DigTec crews to work around the clock for weeks.

Crews first removed the courtyard landscaping, then hand-dug two 20-foot-deep pits in heavily compacted soil because there was no way to bring in excavation equipment. Furthermore, the pits required shoring, which took even more time. And because there was no room for an excavator, workers had to instead build a gantry to hold a 1-ton electric lift that removed soil from the pit as workers dug deeper and deeper.

“It was a very labor-intensive process,” says John Newell, the owner of the Dallas-based company. “On a stress scale from one to 10, this job was every bit an eight or a nine. There was nothing easy about it. But we got it done.”

No-DigTec used a static pipe bursting system that was lowered into the pit via the electric lift. The static system was used because it can punch a length of interconnected metal rods through collapsed lines. Then those rods get connected to an expander head on the other end of the project. The rig then uses the rods to pull the expander head — with the new pipe connected to it — back through the space vacated by the fractured host pipe.

The project took three weeks to complete, and workers finished about one week before the 34-hour-long surgery took place, Newell says. Both operations were a complete success.

To learn more about No-DigTec and how it has retooled to focus on the growing pipe bursting market, check out the profile in this month's Cleaner magazine, "Pipe Bursting Provides New Path in Texas."