Fayetteville Outer Loop Receives Top Regional Honor for Construction

The Interstate 295 Fayetteville Outer Loop project grabbed the top transportation award from the Southeast Design Build Institute of America on April 28. Balfour Beatty led a joint venture that won recognition in the projects exceeding $100 million category at the regional summit in Asheville.

The 6-mile segment runs from east of Camden Road in Hope Mills to I-95's Exit 38 in northern Robeson County. The team widened I-95 to eight lanes here, too. Balfour Beatty partnered with Branch Civil Inc. and STV Engineers Inc. on the Wilmington-based joint venture.

The design team proposed building a temporary conveyor-belt bridge over I-95 to build up ramps and bridges where the interchange would go. The conveyor belt moved nearly 4 million tons of dirt from a borrow pit on one side of the highway to the other side, all without impacting traffic flow.

The conveyor belt diverted what would've been about 140,000 dump trucks that otherwise would have traveled over public roads.

"Design-build gives us the flexibility to bring engineering and construction teams to the table early, which leads to more innovative and efficient solutions," said Jason Salisbury, NCDOT's Division 6 construction engineer for the Fayetteville area, according to the Robesonian. "These projects succeed because of the strong relationships we maintain with our contract partners who help us deliver a high-quality transportation network."

Adding this agreement to the original contract sped up the widening. Four miles of I-95 in this area got done faster, and the department saved millions in construction costs. Both the I-295 construction and the I-95 widening work wrapped up last year.