Gold Rock I-95 Interchange
Extensive night work, a convoluted ramp system, heavy traffic and a tornado whipping by a short mile from the job site couldn’t stop this team. With a date of availability in July of 2021, Barnhill Contracting Company (“Barnhill”) promptly began construction in August of that year for the I-95 Interchange at Gold Rock in Battleboro, North Carolina. Work consisted of removing four bridges and replacing three of them with the help of superb bridge experts, Sanford Contractors. The old bridges over Interstate 95 were in total disrepair and removed. One was rebuilt and had an intricate ramp system which was replaced with two roundabouts and two ramps on each side at the NC 4 Interchange. It was built to be wider and taller to meet future widening standards. Two more were demolished and rebuilt at NC 33 and Watson Seed Farm Road. The other was completely eliminated, and the road was rerouted to go through the roundabouts. Replacing these bridges not only improved the public’s ease of travel but also significantly enhanced safety. The three sections of work spanned across six miles and included 22,000 tons of asphalt and 3,000 linear feet of storm drain.
The completed project streamlined traffic into the new CSX hub, providing a direct route from I-95. The roundabouts also helped alleviate traffic congestion in the area. Located next to the site, the Wake Stone Quarry benefited from improved traffic flow for their dump trucks entering and exiting. During this project, Wake Stone Quarry became a partner of Barnhill’s, supplying 200,000 cubic yards of borrow material, which helped them remove their overburden.
Throughout the three years of construction, project management held a monthly safety lunch with crews if they were accident free during that month. Fortunately, these lunches occurred consecutively with no lost time accidents reported. Safety is a huge priority at Barnhill and celebrating employees and partners returning home safely at the end of each day is crucial. It’s the ongoing encouragement that keeps safety protocols top of mind. “Don’t learn safety by accident,” is the Barnhill safety slogan and this is taken seriously.
Barnhill also worked tightly with the NCDOT to address any project issues or concerns in a timely manner. This helped to prevent any incidents from occurring and kept the project on track. An effective management achievement to note was something noticed just prior to shoulder construction. The typical section of shoulders planned to be built was 27 inches thick and required to be completed at night and opened back up every day. Barnhill and the NCDOT cored the existing shoulders and determined they were already thick enough to meet the design standard. This simple pre-evaluation eliminated that extra amount of work and the inconvenience to the traveling public at night, saving money and time. The NCDOT also worked with Barnhill on joint layout and the concrete roundabout construction, working through submittals and issues that came about. Both parties met onsite several times to discuss and plan.
Prior to building the bridge at NC 4, 12,000 linear feet of wick drains were installed to help manage the ground water where the embankments would be built. This is not something typically done this far west, and a specialized subcontractor had to be used. This type of install requires careful design and planning and accelerates the consolidation of soft, compressible soils. Wick drains were implemented on this job to combat the weight of the structure causing significant settlement over time.
Intermediate Completion Times (ICTs) were a bit of a challenge to overcome on this job. There were seven ramps that had to be shut down for work and reopened within various timeframes ranging from ten days to two weeks and were all finished on time. This required extensive coordination and prior planning with subcontractors, working seven days a week, days and nights. This would have been even more difficult without the fluid communication between all parties involved.
Another challenge, yet unique aspect, was the concrete paving and the mix that this required. Crews would typically use concrete in only the center of a roundabout with asphalt paving around it. The two roundabouts Barnhill created on this job were built with all concrete paving, as well as in between the bridges. This created a challenge to get everything poured and completed in a timely manner. Certified Concrete was on top of things and helped make this process run smoothly. The type of concrete used was ready-mix, which is pre-mixed according to specific proportions and then delivered to the site in a ready-to-use state, which is different than a regular concrete mix. To get this accurate, there was a lot of hashing out of the specs and getting approvals from the NCDOT engineering staff. This job was one of the early complete concrete roundabouts in North Carolina.
Because construction was in close proximity to one of the hotels in the area, crews also had to build a temporary wire wall to accommodate one of the detour routes so it wouldn’t take parking from that local hotel. Outside of the original scope of work, another issue that came about was on another one of the detour routes. When crews transitioned traffic onto Archibell Road, it became evident that the road was deteriorating. Crews had to go in and completely rebuild the entire road and repave it during the midst of the I-95 construction. This required extra machines, manpower and minutes that the team had not planned for. Crews kicked it in high gear and knocked that out so that they could continue with the original scope.
Weather is almost always a cause for concern on any construction project, but not always a tornado barreling through homes and businesses just a short distance from the job site. Barnhill was fortunate that the natural disaster was far enough away to not damage the job, but it did cause the team to have to re-route deliveries and move equipment around due to multiple damaged roads and closures.
Traffic was probably the biggest concern of all throughout this project. If the crews were working over I-95, it had to be done overnight until they could get traffic protection in, which meant tons of nightshifts and weekends. This team truly stuck together and tackled everything by focusing on solutions to problems. Project management completed a good amount of training with the new and seasoned employees to ensure they were ready for anything and everything. Everyone was willing to do whatever they needed to get the job done. This was evident by the exemplary work completed and its positive effect on the surrounding community and area travelers.