The Ace Hardware site was the largest project ever undertaken by S J & L when the project was built between September 1999 and August of 2000. Consisting of a 771,000 square foot building and forty-five acres of parking, S J & L was responsible for the building foundation, earthwork and utilities. On this project, while performing the undercut, backfill and borrow placement, S J & L moved approximately 2,000,000 cubic yards of dirt. In addition to the earthwork and building foundation, our team also installed the sewer system, potable water and fire systems and the storm sewer. S J & L prepared the base coarse for the parking lot using soil cement to overcome challenges with the moisture sensitive materials in the paved areas.

Established in 1988, Austal began operations in Australia and leads the world in the design and construction of customized Aluminum Commercial and Defense Work. In 1999, Austal established their United States Company, Austal USA. Experiencing steady growth and following the award the several additional contracts, Austal realized the need to further expand their local operations. With the purchase of an additional 102 acre site across from their existing facility, Austal USA decided to construct a state of the art modular manufacturing facility, warehouse and new administration building. With the need to accelerate the project, Austal USA chose Gray Construction as the General Contractor on this design build project. Once the design was approximately eight (80%) percent complete, Gray elected to use S J & L for the site work. Work began in the middle of July 2008 and the first phase was completed in July of 2009. Due to the nature of the in-situ soils, it was determined that all of the building pads would have to be surcharged to an elevation of seven (7’) feet above finished floor elevation. S J & L moved over 625,000 CY of earthwork, installed over 10,000 LF of storm pipe, constructed over 120 storm structures, installed five Stormwater Treatment Systems, placed and compacted over 31,200 ton of aggregate based, paved over 96,600 SY of asphalt, installed over 14,000 feet of curb and gutter, and installed over 58,000 feet of conduits. At a final completed cost approaching $10,000,000 for our work, S J & L helped keep the Gray Construction ahead of schedule.

When H.G. Harder & Son, Inc., a marine contractor based out of Panama City, FL was constructing the improvements to the bulk-head between piers H and J at Atlantic Marine on Pinto Island in Mobile, they called on S J & L to construct the landside improvements due to the tight schedule. This shipbuilding and ship maintenance company had a major vessel coming into dry dock in two (2) weeks for which the new bulkhead was constructed. Over the course of two (2) weeks, S J & L installed approximately 500 CY of light weight fill, placed geogrid under an eight (8”) inch base and installed three (3”) inches of binder and one and one-half (1 ½”) inches of wearing surface. During this same time frame, S J & L also installed a six (6”) inch High Density Polyethylene line with steel casing from the newly installed oil / water separator to their on-site treatment facility. Even with a host of conflicts and weather delays, this project was completed and ready when the vessel pulled into dock.