Mid-Atlantic crews work through site challenges to keep MWAA Rail Yard and Maintenance Facility project moving forward

Independence Excavating (IX) is continuing to push through our MWAA Rail Yard and Maintenance Facility project in Dulles, Virginia. We have been working together with Hensel Phelps Construction to overcome issues that we have encountered with the on-site dirt and rock materials which are needed to complete our earthwork operations. Hensel Phelps has also been working with the owners, Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), in continuing to move the engineering design work to completion in this Design-Build project.

Over the course of the 2016, IX assisted our subcontractor, Beckley Drilling and Blasting, with the blasting of approximately 185,000 CY of very hard diabase rock that was required on the project in order to perform the cut/fill operations. Since then, our crushing division led by Ron Brocco, Scott Lamere, Scott Schroeder and the rest of their team have been on-site crushing the blasted rock into aggregates that will be incorporated into the project for use in our utility installations, pavement and railroad track subbases. The rock that has been found on the site of this project has turned out to be some of the hardest rock IX has ever encountered on a project reaching in some cases 45,000 psi and above. This has brought on a number of challenges that the crushing team has overcame and is now moving towards completion of their part in the project.

We have also been working throughout the year on our earthwork and utilities for the project. IX has turned over most of the building pads to Hensel Phelps in order for them to get started on the construction of the buildings, while working with a number of other companies and their projects in the Mid-Atlantic area for importing off-site dirt materials in order to complete our cut/fills for the project. We are very close to being able turn over the railyard areas so that the installation of railroad tracks can begin, which is scheduled for early 2017. We continue to work towards the completion of the storm, sanitary and waterline installations. The project has had a major redesign of a sanitary sewer lift station which will now require IX to perform an excavation nearly 28’ deep using a slide rail shoring system, which will begin in the very near future. We are awaiting the final approvals to be in place and precast structures to be completed by our supplier, Concrete Pipe & Precast and ready for IX to install.

Since the project began, IX has also been signed on by MCDean, who is the electrical subcontractor for the project. We will be excavating and backfilling 36,000 LF of underground electrical ductbank trenches. This is the first project which we have been working very closely with MCDean on and hope to be able to work with them on this type of work more in the future, since it ties so closely into the work we perform on most of our other projects.

There still remains a lot of work to be completed on the project and IX will be on-site full-time for a while. We have worked on a few projects with Hensel Phelps over the last few years, and have a good idea of the level of effort the types of projects they take on and IX is always up for the challenge in working with them to make these projects become a success.