The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) awarded GeoEngineers and our project partners, Jacobs and SDA, a national Honor Award for engineering excellence for our work on the reconstruction of Washington State Route (SR) 530 after the Oso Landslide. The project received one of just 16 honor awards out of 170 entries representing some of the largest and most complex engineering projects in the country. GeoEngineers’ representatives were on hand to accept the award April 21 at ACEC’s 2015 Engineering Excellence Awards Gala in Washington, D.C.—the “Academy Awards” of the engineering industry.
The catastrophic landslide on March 22, 2014, near Oso, Washington, flowed thousands of feet across the Stillaguamish River valley, obliterating dozens of homes and spreading 10 million cubic yards of mud, trees and debris over a half-mile area. The slide buried approximately one mile of SR 530—a critical highway that connects a string of rural communities—with up to 20 feet of debris, closing it for four months.
It was against this backdrop that GeoEngineers, as part of Atkinson Construction’s SR 530 Emergency Roadway Reconstruction design-build team, began working with the Washington State Department of Transportation and local stakeholders to rebuild the roadway and deliver much-needed resources and hope to the area. GeoEngineers and the design-build team helped the agency manage some of the most difficult conditions it had ever faced while also saving more than $5 million over its projected cost. The new roadway reopened exactly six months to the day of the slide—one of the fastest design-build deliveries in state history. Read more about the project
