Geotechnical Engineering

This multi-use project consists of an approximately 37,000 square foot Urban Meijer store and several smaller retail stores on the first level with three additional levels of apartments and condominiums.  This challenging site is in downtown Lansing and has been subject to construction for almost 200 years.  Portions of the site were covered with deep fill deposits and areas of contamination.

Wolverine provided recommendations for a combination of shallow and deep foundations instead of a blanket deep foundation design that resulted in a significant cost and time savings to the project.

This $130 million biofuel project consists of the construction of several biofuel processing and storage facilities, large grain bins and tanks, rail spur, scales, associated loading docks, and parking.  This project required deep foundations and a large amount of site balancing of wet on-site soils with fill sections exceeding 10 feet in areas.

Wolverine developed several foundation alternatives for this project including conventional shallow foundations, mat foundations, auger cast piles, and rammed aggregate piers.  Wolverine also developed a chemical stabilization plan for project which allowed the reuse of the poor soils instead of importing engineered fill.   The lime stabilization saved the project several weeks in the construction schedule and thousands of dollars in soil removal and replacement costs.

This multi-use project consists of an approximately 70,000 square foot project includes basement level parking, a first level microbrewery and retail with three additional levels of apartments and condominiums.  This site is located on the riverfront and Garland Street in downtown Traverse City. The entire site was covered with contaminated fill  and construction debris with shallow groundwater.  Wolverine provided recommendations for rammed aggregate piers that allowed for most of the contaminated soils to remain in place.

Sunoco Logistics planned a massive $2 Billion project to install an approximately 180-mile petroleum pipeline from Tiffin, Ohio to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania through open cut and horizontal directional drilling methods across terrain that ranged from agricultural flat lands to mountainous.

Permitting for the crossing roads, highways, railroads, wetlands, certain private properties, and steep terrain required an extensive geotechnical investigation consisting of several hundred borings and rock cores extending to depths up to 250 feet. To further complicate the investigation,  Wolverine had an extremely tight deadline of a month and a half from authorization to report delivery in freezing winter conditions.  The schedule required the use of up to 8 ATV and Truck-mounted drill rigs and several other field personnel hauling water, supplies, and traffic control.  Wolverine completed the project on time and under budget.