Guilford County New Detention Center

The $115 million Guilford County Detention Center opened in 2012. The eight-story concrete jail contains approximately 400,000 square feet of space.  The Detention Center faced several challenges to cost-effective  construction design. These included an underground tunnel and poor subsurface conditions associated with a former lake.  Normally, deep foundations would require construction prior to construction of the tunnel. S&ME recommended supporting the building on spread foundations after replacing unsuitable soils with granular fill.  This took advantage of tunnel construction excavations to remove unsuitable soils. This also allowed foundation construction to begin before until tunnel construction was complete.

Highlights

• Cost and time saving engineering techniques