Project Highlights

Enterprise South is a 3,000+ acre industrial park located on the former Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant (VAAP) in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Volkswagen has selected about a 1,300 acre portion of the Enterprise South site for the construction of their new automotive assembly plant. Volkswagen’s primary site selection concern relative to the Enterprise South site was karst conditions underlying the site. QORE Property Sciences (now S&ME), through the State of Tennessee, provided the necessary geotechnical services to alleviate Volkswagen’s concerns allowing the selection of the Enterprise South site.

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.