The carrier or carriers and the employee or employees involved in this dispute are respectively carrier and employee within the meaning of the Railway Labor Act, as approved June 21, 1934.

This Division of the Adjustment Board has jurisdiction over the dispute involved herein.

Parties to said dispute were given due notice of hearing thereon.

Under date of May 2, 1995, the Carrier presented the General Chairman with a notice of its intention to utilize an outside contractor to perform new construction work in Hobson Yard, Lincoln, Nebraska. Following a conference pursuant to the Note to Rule 55, the Parties agreed in a June 1, 1995 conference that BMWE-represented Carrier forces would be assigned to perform the work of laying the trackage, installing turnouts and a0 crossing work. When no agreement was reached concerning the Carrier's a=pressed need to assign an outside contractor to perform "earthwork, sub-ballast, road relocation, culvert e:tension work and the work of relocating and encasing utilities in the area," the Carrier proceeded to subcontract those parts of the project.

In this claim, the Organization maintains that the Carrier violated the Note to Rule 55 and Appendix Y by allowing the general contractor to subcontract the work of constructing a sanitary sewer line to service the new office building. According to the Organization's unrefuted description of the disputed work, Plumbers, Laborers and Machine Operators employed by the plumbing/pipeline subcontractor (Mechanical Specialties Incorporated) installed the PVC sewer pipe, set concrete manholes and installed sleeves for track and frost protection for the pipes. The Organization maintains that this is workcustomarily and traditionally performed by Agreement-covered employees while the Carrier not only disputes that assertion but also argues that it cannot be compelled to "piecemeal" the sanitary sewer line from the larger construction project.

Careful examination of the specific facts in this case and authoritative precedent in Awards 14, 22, 25 and 71 of Public Law Board No. 4768 support the proposition that "the Carrier need not `piecemeal' a contracted project where such would be impractical and/or inefficient." The fact that the Carrier in this case split the overall project between BMW& represented forces (laying the trackage, installing turnouts and all crossing work) and the general contractor (earthwork, sub-ballast, road relocation, culvert extension work and the work of relocating and encasing utilities in the area) does not bring the sanitary sewer work

claimed in this case within the exception to the "piecemeal" Rule set forth in Award 25 of Public Law Board No. 4768.

We are not persuaded on this record that the Carrier had any obligation under the authoritative precedent of Public Law Board No. 4768 to "piecemeal" the sanitary sewer line portion of that utility relocation and encasing work and assign it to BMWE-represented employees.

AWARD