VOUGHT/GLOBAL AERONAUTICAL - CHARLESTON, SC
An Engineering Excellence Award-Winning Project

S&ME won the Palmetto Award (South Carolina’s highest) from ACEC-SC for a project for joint-venture client Vought/Global Aeronautical. The site appeared ideally located adjacent to Charleston International Airport. Fuselage sections of Boeing Aircraft’s revolutionary 787 Dreamliner passenger jet would be built there in almost 700,000 square-foot facilities. Sections would be flown by a modified 747 to Boeing’s main facility near Seattle.

While ideal in many ways, the site particularly challenged foundation design and site-development because of long-abandoned phosphate mines there. The mining left a layer of weak, compressible upper soils that seriously conflicted with foundations requiring near-zero tolerances for exceptionally sensitive aircraft manufacturing equipment. Further, high demand for the 787 generated a much accelerated schedule.

S&ME addressed this complexity by designing an innovative application of foundation and site-improvement technologies, including wick drains and surcharging to speed soil consolidations, pile foundations for very heavily loaded foundations and conventional remove-replace methods for shallow spread footing foundations. The facilities were substantially completed and occupied only 16 months after site clearing began. S&ME’s strategies successfully met the owner’s structural requirements, schedule and budget.