In April of 2018, Independence Excavating (IX) was awarded the Viper Data Center project in Sterling, Virginia. The project site was located on approximately 30 acres of undisturbed land, and was developed to accommodate a data center building, along with plots for future expansion.  The site work included dirt and rock cuts, and site fills. 

This site was directly adjacent to the Nexus data center property, where IX was also performing the sitework. The two sites shared a similar accelerated building pad schedule. Due to this schedule, IX chose to mobilize their Komatsu 1250 and John Deere 870 excavators, along with the Cat D9 and D10 dozers to rip the rock in lieu of blasting, a method of excavation that is uncommon for the Mid-Atlantic region. However, the pad turnover for the Viper building came with some challenging up-front work activities.

Prior to major earthwork activities beginning, IX would face the task of rerouting site drainage and sanitary in order to allow for clean building pad construction. IX installed RCP storm sewer to divert existing water flow away from the building pad, and rerouted the sanitary sewer. IX also removed the existing hazardous transite sanitary pipe that ran through the building pad. 

Despite the record-setting wet weather that occurred during the 2018 construction season, IX achieved the above work, along with a majority of the site cut to fills to beat the two month building pad turnover date by one week!