State Highway 161 Phase 4
Under the contract, AECOM is the lead design team for the project and sub-consultant to PLC, the contractor joint venture between Fluor and Balfour Beatty. AECOM is responsible for the design of the roadway; drainage structures; retaining walls; intelligent transport systems (ITS) and tolls; maintenance of traffic; design services during construction; and survey in support of design and utilities. The project involves a 6.5-mile-long, four-lane tolled roadway that runs between interstates 20 and 30. The project has 45 bridges and more than one-million-square-feet of retaining wall. The final design calls for construction of four additional lanes. The US$416-million project is the North Texas Tollway Authority’s first design-build project.
The project is currently under construction.
To complete the design, AECOM used Bentley’s ProjectWise solution to connect the entire design team, which has members located across the United States. In total, there were approximately 300 employees split between 22 different offices involved in the design of the project, of which eight were AECOM offices, and the other 14 were split between 12 sub-consultants.
“The use of ProjectWise was instrumental in ensuring that everyone using computer-aided design (CAD) on the project turned in a consistent deliverable to the client, meeting both the schedule demands as well as ensuring that users adhered to the client’s detailed CAD requirements,” said Jeffrey Bernard Jr., CAD manager and ProjectWise administrator for AECOM’s transportation practice, North America. “Without the use of ProjectWise, the CAD manager would have been overwhelmed with ensuring that CAD standards were met at near 100 percent for not only AECOM staff, but also for our sub-consultants as well.”
In addition, anyone who had access to the ProjectWise system had immediate access to the latest design files, design documentation, submittal documents and quality control (QC) review documents.
“The success of this project was directly attributable to the use of ProjectWise,” said Brian Dodson, project engineer and design manager for AECOM’s transportation practice, North America.
In total, ProjectWise saved the client approximately US$838,000 in travel, review cycles, CAD management and coordination costs.
A1 Dishforth to Leeming Improvement Scheme
AECOM, in a partnership with the Carillion/Morgan Sindall joint venture and on behalf of the U.K. Highways Agency, acted as lead designer for the program, responsible for feasibility, program and detailed design. The project involves upgrading approximately 14 miles of the existing A1 road in North Yorkshire to a dual three-lane motorway.
The A1 is a strategically important north-south inter-regional route linking London and the south of England with the North East and Scotland. The A1 is also a regionally significant link road connecting other strategic routes, including the M62 and A66 Trans Pennine routes. The current A1 carries 45,000-54,000 vehicles per day with approximately one-quarter being heavy goods vehicles. The existing A1 fails to meet present day standards for layout and alignment. Slow moving agricultural vehicles use the route to enter and exit farms and fields adjoining the A1. The scheme is aimed at improving safety, reducing congestion and improving journey time reliability.
Construction began in April 2009, and the road is scheduled to open in April 2012.
To complete the design, AECOM used Bentley’s geotechnical software gINT as the database for all geological and geotechnical information.
“One of the major obstacles at the start of this project, and one which affects many projects at AECOM, is the large amount of legacy data which needs to be processed and interpreted,” said Rob Addison, an information technologist for AECOM’s geotechnical practice, Europe. “The historical data…