Granite Rebuilding Three Segments of I-85

Contractor working on three projects totaling $190 million

By Debra Wood

As the low bidder on three North Carolina Department of Transportation contracts, Granite Construction of Watsonville, Calif., entered the state for the first time five years ago and has been busy reconstructing and widening 7 mi. of Interstate 85 through the city of Durham.

"These are three major, complex, urban interstate jobs," said Bill McGowan, project manager with Granite. "They have all of the exciting and challenging features of an urban interstate."

The existing four-lane highway was designed during the 1950s and now handles 85,000 vehicles daily. Volume will reach 138,000 vehicles per day in 2025.

"We needed more capacity to handle the traffic volume coming through the Durham corridor," said Aaron Earwood, resident engineer with NCDOT. "All of the interchanges were outdated with excessive access points. We have redesigned and reconfigured all of the interchanges to limit those and make them safer."

The new road will have at least four lanes in each direction, plus additional auxiliary lanes between interchanges. There also are collector-distributor lanes to allow traffic to enter, merge and exit more safely. The project includes 20 new bridges.

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NCDOT considered the size and complexity of the entire project too large to bid as a single contract and divided it into three segments. It awarded each to the low bidder.

"Fortunately the same contractor won all three projects, which has helped with continuity and tying in the jobs together," Earwood said. "[Granite] won the bid. Once you have the first project, you have an advantage bidding on the other two projects."

Granite began work on the first, $50 million interchange improvement project in August 1999. The job entails adding access points between I-85 and U.S. Highway 70. U.S. 70 will gain one lane in each direction. Cars will be able to exit westbound U.S. 70 to northbound I-85.

And from a 2,600-ft. flyover, they will be able to access eastbound U.S. 70 from southbound I-85. Westbound U.S. 70 will merge in a slow lane on southbound I-85. This interchange work should finish in spring 2005.

The second, $73 million contract began in April 2001. It includes construction of eight steel-girder bridges, which will be wider, longer and higher than the existing structures, and reconstruction of two major intersections. The first existing intersection had 11 exits and entrances.

"We're simplifying it, adding collector-distributor roads and reducing 11 ramps to four ramps," McGowan said.

The second intersection is near a mall. The new design has a separate exit for the shopping center and the neighboring surface road.

Work started on the third, $68 million contract in July 2003. Granite will replace three permanent bridges. Crews will build a flyover to replace the current fast-lane exit from southbound I-85 to U.S. Highway 15/501 with a slow-lane off-ramp.

Along most of the corridor, Granite will add thousands of square feet of brick noise-reduction walls. There are no noise-mediation walls on the first job.

The two widening and bridge-replacement projects - the second and third projects - should wrap up in 2006. The I-85 projects are behind schedule due to unexpected aerial utility delays.

"The schedule was extremely aggressive on this high-profile project," McGowan said. "It is considered some of the most complex interstate project going on [in the state]."

Yates Construction Co. of Stokesdale, N.C., is handling underground utility relocations. Some of the 200,000 lin. ft. of water lines the company moved dated back more than 100 years.

The project included 2 million cu. yds. of earth moving. Crews have built retaining walls and mechanically stabilized earth walls.

A stream runs along the southbound side of the highway through most of the project. After the utilities were moved, Mountain Creek Contractors LLC of Claremont, N.C., added box culverts and diverted the stream. The box culverts run under the ramps and interstate. Some tie into existing culverts.

"There is a lot of intricate blasting," McGowan said. All together, crews blasted more than 200,000 cu. yds. of rock located about 50 ft. from homes.

"You cannot just load them up full of dynamite and, boom, blow it up," he added. "You have to drill close patterns and keep the amount of charge to a minimum so you don't create a lot of vibration that causes the houses to fall down."

All three projects entail significant detour work. Granite is using six temporary, prefabricated bridges from Acrow Corp. of Carlstadt, N.J., and developed a complex staging plan. A narrow right-of-way left little room for shifting traffic to the outside.

"We committed to maintain two lanes in each direction except at night, so they've had to do extensive detour and traffic phasing," Earwood said.

On all of the sections, Granite builds a detour to the outside of the existing lanes. Crews subsequently remove the old lanes and construct the median portion of the highway.

"Then we take the traffic onto the median, take it off the outside detours and finish the outside of the new road," McGowan said. "We essentially have to build the interstate twice."

Nested in the third contract is a design-build component for off-site detour improvements through the city of Durham. Granite worked with Greenhorn & O'Mara of Raleigh, N.C., a civil engineering consulting firm, to increase capacity during the traffic rerouting.

Granite added a center turn lane to one of the roads and enhanced drainage, grading and signalization at the intersections. The upgrades will remain after the interstate work finishes.

"The design-build is something new we have tried," Earwood said. "It went really well."

As of July, the first project was 85 percent complete; the second, 65 percent complete; and the third project, 30 percent complete. Asphalt paving is on going on all three segments, and Portland cement concrete pavement work has begun on the first two jobs.

Granite is using the same crews and subcontractors on all three jobs. It has about 150 workers onsite and is self-performing the grading and structures. About 50 to 100 employees of subcontractors are also working on the project during the peak summer construction season.

"We're building a good crew of professional workers in Durham," McGowan said. "And we're establishing a professional and good relationship with the North Carolina Department of Transportation."

Useful Sources:

Granite Construction Inc.
http://www.graniteconstruction.com/investor-relations/release_detail.cfm?ReleaseID=111708