The largest building project in the University of Notre Dame’s history, the $400 million Notre Dame Campus Crossroads included construction of more than 750,000 square feet of classroom, research, student facility, digital media, performance, meeting, event, and hospitality space. The three new buildings are attached to the west, east, and south sides of the University’s football stadium.

SME was selected by the project’s general contractor, Barton Malow, to serve as lead geotechnical and specialty earth designer for the Notre Dame Campus Crossroads addition of three new 6- to 9-story buildings. We also served as the condition assessment and building rehabilitation consultant, construction administration agent, and material testing firm for the project. 

Our team provided design-bid-build services for building monitoring, analyzing the integrity of existing pre-cast concrete, specialty foundation underpinning and overpinning, shotcreting, soil grouting, and earth retention. Approximately 3,500 lineal feet of earth retention was required. Some of this earth retention doubled as building underpinning for the existing football stadium so that the new basement space and foundations could be constructed up to 25 feet below the adjacent stadium. Other improvements included cutting a portion of existing footings with deep foundation elements to accommodate new construction. 

SME’s Construction Materials Services (CMS) team provided the following services during construction:

• Pile observation
• Foundation subgrade testing
• Concrete and structural steel testing
• Soil density testing
• Vibration monitoring
• Reinforcing steel observation
• Underpinning observation 
• Materials verification
• Observations of placement and compaction procedures for engineered fills