The Post and Courier
By Katy Stech

Monday, January 3, 2011

Boeing Co. has run into countless obstacles in trying to build those 787 Dreamliner jets.

But one issue hasn’t seemed to cross its path: getting North Charleston building inspectors to approve construction at the $750 million plant at Charleston International Airport.

North Charleston building director Darbis Briggman said his staff of 10 inspectors are on call 24 hours a day for the project’s general contractor, BE&K/Turner Joint Venture. He estimates they visit the site every other day.

And that’s in addition to the inspections done by an outside engineering company: S&ME Inc.

Briggman said local building codes allow third-party specialists to inspect and sign off on parts of a structure that are beyond the city’s scope of knowledge.

The extra cost is assumed by the company, not the city.

Outside inspectors have had to examine about 75 percent of the building’s frame, such as some of the welding work and bolt patterns. City staffers have been called on to approve more basic construction work, such as the foundation and drywall.

Reach Katy Stech at 937-5549.

Overcoming challenges, making use of opportunities

In Tennessee, S&ME helped a grateful client and a grateful community bring to life a long dormant industrial park, overcoming numerous complex challenges.  Below are two sections of the entry’s project description.

Future Value to the Engineering Profession

This project provides examples to the profession of, 1) how multiple societal needs can be met by being open to unusual opportunities and 2) that applying innovative thinking to site selection and design issues can be significantly beneficial.

Rather than have a mine site (that must be reclaimed) and a separate industrial park site, we combined the two here.  The Spring City Plant/Mine provides an unusual opportunity for Spring City Industrial Park authorities to better market the park.   The mining activities will eventually leave a rough-graded site for future industries, rather than hilly land.  The city and county also gain a new employer and tax revenues much sooner than if they had waited for the site to sell on its own, including revenues from a clay royalty paid by General Shale.

The plant and mine sites represent an “industrial ecology” where raw materials are located near their point of use.  Production is the most energy-efficient available and located near appropriate transportation infrastructure. By-products of the production are beneficially reused nearby.

Meeting and Exceeding Owner/Client Needs

Construction of the mines would not have been possible without careful coordination of the future use, permitting, and design requirements of all stakeholders.  S&ME made sure the team understood the needs of General Shale as well as the local development and permitting authorities.  These were incorporated into our team’s design and permitting documents.

Our client has expressed satisfaction and appreciation for S&ME’s achievements in overcoming challenges to meet and exceed the project’s rigid needs and schedule.  We worked closely with client and owner representatives to complete tasks on schedule and within budget.    A General Shale manager, called S&ME “instrumental in the planning…,” with its work “wide-ranging and highly professional.”  He said we brought the project “added value,” and were “critical in bringing it to a successful conclusion.” –For more information, contact Ken Barry, PE, WRE, Knoxville.

Enterprise South Industrial Park is located at the former Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant (VAAP). S&ME was selected to serve as the ecological consultant to characterize surface waters, delineate wetlands, conduct protected species surveys, and obtain the appropriate federal and state permits because of our knowledge of the local conditions; our relationship with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (Division of Water Pollution Control), the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS); and our ability to work through the various permitting requirements.

S&ME conducted a study to the determine the crayfish population characteristics in Poe Branch, from its headwaters on the Enterprise South Site to its termination where it had its conjunction with Friar’s Branch, a distance of approximately two miles. Special attention was directed to the possible presence of the state-threatened Chickamauga crayfish, Cambarus depressicambarus extraneous, which was determined not to be present within Poe Branch.

Beginning in 2004, S&ME ecologists conducted a surface waters assessment and delineated wetlands on the project site. S&ME later evaluated surface waters and delineated wetlands on the remaining 4,000 acres of the industrial park. S&ME obtained the required state and federal permits for the impacts of 0.42 acre of wetlands and approximately 16,700 feet of stream in an expedited time frame. Our onsite mitigation plan included the creation of a mitigation wetland next to an existing high-quality wetland. Onsite stream impacts will be mitigated by the relocation and restoration of approximately 18,500 feet of stream channel along the eastern and western boundaries of the project site. Mitigation construction is currently underway. As a component of the permit, S&ME will be monitoring the construction of the mitigation wetland and streams.
The S&ME/Barge Waggoner Sumner and Cannon team received the Honor Award for Engineering and Environmental Design from ACEC for the work on this project.

QORE (now S&ME) provided geotechnical, ecological, permitting, and construction testing and monitoring services in association with the development of the Enterprise South Industrial Park. However, specific to the development of the site for Volkswagen, QORE has provided geotechnical, ecological, and construction engineering and testing services.

Our geotechnical services included drilling 47 borings for the relocation of about 3 ½ miles of stream, drilling 57 test borings and the excavation of dozens of test pits to develop site grading recommendations, and the drilling of over 300 test borings to provide foundation and site preparation recommendations to construct the Volkswagen Assembly Plant.

In addition to the drilling services, each of the above mentioned studies included a laboratory testing program. The testing program was developed to evaluate settlement of buildings and floor slabs, as well as the settlement of large fills. The testing program also provided data for the evaluation of the stability of slopes for both the stream channels and the site perimeter. Testing was also performed to develop subgrade strength parameters for pavement thickness design, and to evaluate lime stabilization of pavement and floor slab subgrades. To achieve the aggressive project schedule, QORE has staged the geotechnical services to allow for the development of recommendations as the project has progressed and to prevent a loss of construction time.

QORE provided construction testing and monitoring services for the preparation of about a 1,000 acre building pad. Three contractors are currently moving earth to prepare the pad, with over 100,000 yards of soil and rock being moved and compacted per day. To complicate the project, fat clay soils must be culled from the filling process and placed in non-structural areas along with rock. QORE set up an on-site laboratory to allow for the rapid evaluation of soil samples to maintain the contractors’ aggressive placement schedule.

This project won the 2007 Palmetto Award (top award) in the Engineering Excellence Awards competition held by the American Council of Engineering Companies, South Carolina.

S&ME performed comprehensive geotechnical field exploration and evaluations for Vought Aircraft Industry’s new facility in South Carolina. Two main buildings totaling 580,000-square feet were constructed in 2005-2006 and a taxiway to connect the facility is scheduled for completion in early 2007. The new facility will produce the fuselage sections for Boeing Aircraft’s new 787 Dreamliner. S&ME has been involved throughout the design and construction process from site explorations, including geotechnical as well as Phase I and Phase II environmental assessments, through construction quality assurance testing. S&ME was part of a team that included BRPH of Melbourne, Florida, and HGB&D of Charleston.

For our design services we drilled 5 standard penetration (SPT) test borings, 35 cone penetration test (CPT) soundings, 3 seismic cone penetration (SCPT) and 2 dilatometer test (DMT) soundings in our exploration for the site. Laboratory testing and a Site Specific Seismic Response Analysis were also performed. The project was particularly challenging from a foundation design and site improvement standpoint because the entire site is located in an area of abandoned phosphate mines from the early 20^th century. Many of the machine foundations had practically zero settlement tolerances. To meet these challenges, a variety of foundation and site improvement methods were utilized. This included wick drains, surcharging, pile foundations, and conventional remove-and-replace techniques that allowed for some shallow foundations. Pile capacities were confirmed using Pile Driving Analyzer (PDA) testing.For our construction testing services we monitored controlled fill and concrete placement, inspected reinforcing steel in footings and slabs, performed floor flatness/levelness testing, inspected structural steel and coatings and tested asphalt and concrete for compliance with project specifications.