Arkansas River Gravel Pit Soil-Bentonite Barrier Wall

Challenges

DeWind One-Pass Trenching (DeWind) was retained by an aggregate miner to construct a soil-bentonite barrier wall around the perimeter of a gravel pit along the Arkansas River near Lamar, Colorado.  DeWind claimed they encountered unanticipated bedrock conditions that imposed significant financial hardship to complete the work. DeWind was pursuing litigation to receive full compensation from the aggregate miner for their work.

Solution

RJH was retained by Benjamin, Bain, Howard, & Cohen, LLC, a law firm representing DeWind, to develop a professional engineering opinion regarding the performance of DeWind’s soil-bentonite barrier wall and to assess the effect of differing subsurface conditions on DeWind’s ability to complete the work under the contract terms.

RJH performed a detailed review of construction documents, subcontract documents, construction reports, laboratory test data, and post-construction boring logs. Based on this review, RJH concluded that the Owner’s site investigation was inadequate, the test-section conditions were not representative of most of the subsurface conditions alongthe alignment, and that DeWind should have received additional compensation for changed subsurface conditions. RJH also concluded that DeWind’s installed soil-bentonite barrier wall met project objectives and industry standards for quality.

RJH prepared an Expert Report to document the engineering opinion.  This report supported DeWind in obtaining full compensation for their work.