Fugro recently completed a year-long geotechnical investigation for infrastructure solutions firm HNTB to support the safe design of a new light rail transit tunnel in downtown Austin, Texas.

The tunnel is a key part of HNTB’s work for the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority (CapMetro), Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) and the City of Austin on the larger Blue Line Corridor project, which aims to ease traffic congestion and support sustainable population and economic growth in the city.

To understand and mitigate potential ground risk in the tunnel design, Fugro characterised the site’s soil structure using a variety of geotechnical and geophysical methods. These included acquiring, sampling, imaging and testing geotechnical borings; installing groundwater monitoring wells; and performing specialised laboratory testing on selected rock samples. All work was managed through Fugro’s cloud-hosted, web-based Geo-data engagement platform, Gaia.Hub. With the ability to provide near real-time deliverables to HNTB, Gaia.Hub increased collaboration and facilitated earlier decision-making, enabling the team to overcome challenges associated with conducting fieldwork in a busy metropolitan area.

Dr. Amal Dutta, Principal Geotechnical Engineer for Fugro stated: “As a company, we are dedicated to providing high-quality, integrated Geo-data solutions to support the design, construction and maintenance of sustainable infrastructure. We are very pleased to have contributed to the safe engineering of HNTB’s Blue Line Transit Tunnel Project and look forward to more opportunities to partner with the firm on projects requiring ground risk management in the near future.”