Contractors hammer out plans to tackle city building bonanza.

The city's developers and contractors began forming a detailed plan of action to ensure an unprecedented billions of dollars worth of projects in the pipeline get done with the minimum possible confusion, at a seminar organized by the Greater New York Construction User Council heard this week.

With projects virtually bumping up against each other--from the Javits Center expansion to the Hudson River and Ground Zero redevelopment--the GNYCCU hosted the seminar at the Sheraton New York Tower to focus on just how it was all going to get done.

Already, project managers are finding themselves competing for depleting labor pools, materials, heavy equipment and staging areas on congested city blocks.

At the same time, developers used to handling budgets in the millions are now handling budgets in the billions.

"We are using the numbers we used to use to talk about the federal government, to talk about construction projects in New York City," said Robert Harvey, director of capital planning and construction for the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center.

The foundation already in place in the city is not adequate to support all this new work. "The infrastructure of New York is really in the process of breaking down. That is because it is old," said Michael Patralia, president of the Javits Development Corporation.

Yet that is precisely the reason the industry must strike while the iron is hot--taking advantage of the boom to help fortify the city for the current residents and millions of people the industry has pre Contractors on schedule for 2008 opening as work progresses on new Highline park dicted will be drawn here over the next decade, developers said.

Additional projects include the Second Avenue Subway, the number Seven train, the rail line connection from John F. Kennedy airport, new tunnels underneath the Hudson River and the East River, the development of Moynihan Station, the Jacob Javits Convention Center expansion, the expansion of Columbia University, and, of course, Ground Zero where the bulk of new projects is concentrated.

"We will have $20-30 billion dollars worth of projects in one square mile. That is a recipe for projects bumping up against each other," Harvey said. Builders are confident they can surmount the challenges if everything is painstakingly planned and executed.

To this end, LMCC has plotted material usage and demand for the next decade or so. Developers will know exactly how much lead time they need to prepare materials for say, September 2009, when there will be a demand for 30,000 cubic yards of concrete in Lower Manhattan which will require 200 trucks per day to travel carrying a material with a mere shelf life of 90 minutes.

Some of the work has already begun to set precedents. Initial phases of construction of the South Ferry terminal are well underway. All the bedrock has been removed and 40% of the concrete has already been pored. A great number of trucks have been rolling through and, so far, there have not been any problems, said Shawn Kildare of the Metropolitan Transit Authority Capital Construction Company.

Rather than be oppressed by the global economy, developers are finding new ways to tap into it. The MTA is using new Tunnel Boring Machines procured from abroad.

They are finding ways to compensate potentially skyrocketing material prices that may deter subcontractors from bidding on jobs, Kildare said, explaining that developers must be willing to adopt new methods to encourage contractors to bid on their projects, and determine who should bear the brunt of the risk fronting money for materials.

The public needs to be made aware that, despite the bureaucratic paperwork and procedures the city is renowned for being compounded by the sheer number of projects, progress at the sites may not always be visible, Patralia said.

"So much of the process is invisible, and is taking place through the planning and coordination, so the public perception is that nothing is getting done. They must be made to understand that things are happening and this process is something we have to do and that it is very important," Patralia said.