Due to the rapidly increasing population of the Research Triangle in North Carolina, the area inside and around Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, Interstate 85 through Durham was becoming a bottleneck. It was frequently crowded and causing delays increasingly each year, so it needed to be improved and widened. Large-scale projects of this nature require management from an experienced and professional consultant. HJI Group assisted the client in overall construction management. This project was a $150-million investment for reconstruction of a key section of I-85 highway at U.S. 70. HJI Group oversaw the widening of I-85 from an existing four-lane freeway to an eight-lane freeway with auxiliary lanes from Broad Street to west of Camden Avenue in Durham County. HJI Group’s consulting team performed construction, engineering, and construction supervision for the project. The team had reviewed and inspected several sets of technical specifications, detailed drawings, and completed the construction supervision for part of the section of the highway in structure and pavement.

The main components of the project included eight bridges, ten culverts, and one retaining wall in addition to the construction items. The construction involved widening, grading, drainage, concrete and asphalt pavement, resurfacing, lighting, signing, signals, striping, pavement markers, bridges, culverts, water lines, soil fabric retaining walls, concrete barriers, planters with irrigation systems, and noise barrier walls.

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