Northeast Geotechnical, Inc. teamed with TransDevelopment, TRANSFLO (CSX Transportation’s affiliate), Beals and Thomas, Inc. and Borggaard Construction in the design and development of a modern rail bulk transfer facility. The facility is located at a former auto terminal in Westborough, Massachusetts abutting the Great Cedar Swamp.
Site design required up to six foot raises in grade to incorporate state-of-the-art storm water management systems. Subsurface conditions consisted of granular fill soils overlying areas of compressible organics as well as natural granular soils.
Northeast Geotechnical identified an area at a critical rail juncture where we predicted post-construction settlement caused by the proposed grading to be beyond tolerable limits. The site required an import of structural fill and the start of earthwork construction was scheduled to commence a few months following completion of design to allow for permitting. We therefore recommended to the project team that a surcharge program would be feasible to pre-consolidate the organics during the time required to complete the permitting process and begin actual construction.
Northeast Geotechnical developed and designed a surcharge program to limit post-construction settlement to tolerable levels including instrumentation and monitoring criteria. The surcharge program included installation of wick drains to expedite consolidation of the organic deposits within the available permitting time prior to the start of construction. We worked with the team to secure an advance earthwork permit from the Town of Westborough to allow surcharge construction to occur in advance of the full permits for the project.
Beals and Thomas, Inc. provided settlement platform surveying and Northeast Geotechnical monitored the time rate and magnitude of settlement. The program was successful and allowed the surcharge removal to occur early in the earthwork schedule providing material to accomplish other site raises in grade.
Additionally, Northeast Geotechnical developed recommendations to improve the fill and organic soils beneath a maintenance garage to allow construction using shallow spread footing foundations and a slab-on-grade. Northeast Geotechnical provided full-time construction observation and materials testing services during earthwork, concrete construction and paving activities complying with the Town’s reporting requirements.
