NEWS
S&ME wins a pair of ACEC-NC Engineering Excellence Awards
03/15/07
Raleigh, NC- S&ME, Inc. won two Engineering Excellence Awards (EEA) in this year’s competition sponsored by the American Council of Engineering Companies of North Carolina (ACEC-NC).
According to ACEC-NC, the annual awards honor “engineering achievements which demonstrate the highest degree of merit and ingenuity.”
S&ME’s Raleigh Branch took home an Honor Award for its work on the American Tobacco Historic District restoration in Durham. The Charlotte Branch received a Grand Award for its work on the Duke Energy ash landfill at Belews Creek in Stokes County.
S&ME, an 800-member firm with 22 offices in seven Southeastern states has 60 EEA wins in the last dozen years from various state ACEC chapters.
AMERICAN TOBACCO
In Durham, a Maryland developer, Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse (SBER) sought consultation from S&ME in preparing to convert 120-year-old former American Tobacco manufacturing buildings into 200,000 square feet of office and retail space, plus 53 residential units.
S&ME found that beneath the surface lay soil and groundwater contamination while on the surface rested ruble from collapsed structures. Mixed in with this was asbestos and lead contamination, some structures open to weather for years, and a facility built using 19th century construction techniques needing a happy marriage with 21st century building technologies.
S&ME Project Manager Samuel Watts, a geologist, said S&ME “...put together a team from several of our service areas that could simultaneously tackle the problems to meet time-sensitive project needs.”
Watts noted this was SBER’s first North Carolina project, and one of S&ME’s first steps was introducing SBER to the unique benefits offered by the State’s Brownfields program. With more incentives than such programs offer in many states, the NC Brownfields regulations provided significant opportunities for SBER to use techniques to protect human health and the environment. The program provided the developer with vital tax incentives.
S&ME assessed the environmental and construction needs of the project, evaluating soil conditions beneath existing foundations and in areas of new construction. Meanwhile, soil and groundwater contaminated from various historical manufacturing activities was identified, and specifications for remediating asbestos and lead contamination in the old structures were designed. The resulting plan greatly aided SBER’s efforts to turn the dilapidated remains of the long-idle tobacco facility into a revitalization of significance to the economic, social and environmental needs of Durham’s downtown.
“Working in unusual conditions, sometimes planning how to work around demolition rubble, and with accelerated schedules, we helped SBER to assess risks and redevelop the site in a time and cost-effective way that met SBER’s needs,” Watts said. “We’re proud to be a part of this amazing downtown change.”
The Grand Award for the Charlotte branch was for helping Duke Energy design, permit and construct a state-of-the-art landfill that minimized environmental impacts to the adjacent Belews Creek and Belews Lake. The site is bordered on two sides with water, raising concerns that disposal operations could pose a harmful impact to the lake and groundwater. S&ME worked to demonstrate to regulatory agencies the project’s innovative engineering design elements to show that the sensitive ecology of the area would be protected.
Several original design elements distinguish the Belews Creek Ash Landfill, according to Chris Stahl, an engineer who was S&ME’s project manager. These included a complex system to collect and segregate infiltrating water and stormwater runoff during operational placement of waste materials.
Material selection for the landfill was also unique with extensive use of high density polyethylene, non-corrosive water-tight materials and stainless steel piping and valves. The design incorporated wide-ranging techniques to protect the water quality in the adjacent Belews Creek. Stahl noted that redundancies in safe guards included in the design provided for efficiency in operations and maintenance and also accommodated planned future expansion of the landfill.
S&ME also won two EEA awards in the 2007 ACEC competition in South Carolina.
For more information about these news items, contact:
Larry Hammerstein
Senior Editor
S&ME, Inc.
P.O. Box 58069
Raleigh, NC 27658
(919) 872-2660