HEFT Widening

William Garcia speaks about BCC’s recently-completed HEFT Widening from SW 72nd Street to Bird Road.

BCC was the prime CEI consultant on this project for the Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise and I served as the Senior Project Engineer. The project involved the widening of over 2 miles of the Mainline HEFT to a 10-lane divided limited access facility and included the widening of the on- and off-ramps at the Bird Road interchange. A new mainline tolling point was added just south of SW 60th Street and featured a 211’ steel accessible toll equipment gantry and pre-cast concrete toll equipment building.  

A new two-lane NB off ramp to Bird Road was constructed to improve operations over the old off-ramp and featured a 240’ flat slab bridge over the Snapper Creek Canal.  The structural highlights of the project included 8 existing bridge widenings; micro pile, driven pile, and large drilled shaft foundations; 13 overhead and cantilevered sign structures; a 660’ MSE wall; and a 400’ pre-cast sound wall.   

This project also widened and reconstructed approximately 1 mile of SW 117th Ave to receive the new off-ramp traffic and approx. 0.5 mile of Bird Road to improve operations within the interchange. Other project highlights include the demolition of the existing NB Bird Road Admin Building, the reconstruction of the SB Bird Road Admin building; watermain and forcemain installations for MDWASD; extensive ITS improvements; and the reconstruction of the main entrance from Bird Road into the Kendall Regional Medical Center. This $55 million design-build project was final accepted in early February 2021.