The wind down of the Clemson Perimeter Road project

Apart from final striping, the newly paved and widened section of Clemson’s Perimeter Road is complete.  From end to end, Perimeter Road is now four lanes, two lanes each way, and the speed limit remains 35 miles an hour.  Thrift Development’s Rush Thrift, explained in an interview with 101.7/WGOG NEWS, the greatest challenge was coordination and communication with the university, especially to allow access for the football and other athletic events that rely on Perimeter.  According to Thrift, credit goes to the university, to the construction manager company Archer Weston, and to the various subcontractors on the project.  Thrift details another project challenge this way: “….a cool engineering and constructability challenge was the handling of the water surges from Hunnicutt Creek. Constructed during a rainy season, our team was faced with handling of the water from this creek as we constructed a concrete headwall and pipe tie-in to the existing pipe culvert carrying water underneath Hunnicutt Creek.  Many people don’t realize how much water actually flows underneath Perimeter Road.  While on normal days, the creek is just a few inches in depth, on rainy days the creek can surge to several feet high.  The pipe carrying the water under the road is 60 inches in diameter, and the headwall we constructed to catch the water and direct it into the pipe is 25 feet tall and 75 feet wide.”