I-64 Segment II Widening

DMY served as the geotechnical design lead for this VDOT design-build project. The project, known as I-64 widening, segment 2, involved widening 7 miles of roadway in both directions along Interstate 64 in Newport News, York and James City Counties, Virginia, from four lanes to six lanes. The project also included nine bridges, a number of large culverts and drainage pipes, retaining walls, noise barrier walls, gantries, and numerous stormwater management facilities.

DMY provided geotechnical services including pavement coring, SPT borings, CPT and DMT soundings, test pits, monitoring wells, traffic control, laboratory testing, and geotechnical engineering analyses and recommendations for slopes, embankments, pavements, bridges and other structures. Multiple Geotechnical Engineering Reports (GERs) in accordance with VDOT Manual of Instructions were prepared and submitted to VDOT for various project elements.

DMY provided all quality control services during the construction phase of the project.

DMY worked closely with the design-build and VDOT management team to ensure the most appropriate designs were provided to meet the project’s quality, cost, and schedule requirements.

Project Challenges and Solutions

This design-build project had a tight project schedule. DMY faced various challenges, such as project design changes, maintenance of traffic control restrictions, unexpected bad weather, and permitting. DMY’s experience working on VDOT projects and well-established internal standard operation procedures helped us streamline the process and proactively manage the schedule, scope, and budget of projects and resources. Through hiring qualified, experienced staff and internal mentoring and cross-training staff, DMY cultivated additional available staffing resources when needed to meet clients’ project requirements (schedule, scope, and budget).

Since geotechnical projects have their own unique schedule sequence (e.g. permit and utility clearance must be completed prior to field work), DMY sequenced projects to let the field crew work on field work while the office staff worked on permitting and utility clearance. DMY deployed multiple drill rigs and drilling crews to shorten the duration of field work duration and expedite the project schedule. DMY staged lab testing and engineering design parallel to field work: once we retrieved samples in the field, DMY assigned lab testing while field crews worked on the remaining borings. DMY also tabled longer-term assignments to free up staffing resources and cross-train staff across disciplines to ensure that additional staff was available.

DMY possesses a large pool of resources and provided up to six geotechnical engineers, four drilling crews and drill rigs, and two AASHTO-accredited laboratories under this project.