WGI Inc. Wins Prestigious Awards for Geospatial Engineering on the Brightline High-Speed Rail Project
West Palm Beach, FL (April 16, 2024)—WGI Inc. is proud to announce that it has been honored with three prestigious engineering excellence awards for its work on the Brightline High-Speed Rail project in Florida. WGI served as the sole geospatial consultant for phase four of the Brightline project, which extended from West Palm Beach to Cocoa, collecting and analyzing essential survey data for the project’s entire construction team. For their work, and the innovation WGI demonstrated in completing that work, the firm was awarded the following:
- American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) National Recognition Award
- Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors (MAPPs) Geospatial Excellence Award
- ACEC-Florida Engineering Excellence Award
“We are proud to have been recognized with these prestigious awards,” said Stephen Clancy, Vice President, Geospatial at WGI. “WGI is one of the premier geospatial firms in the United States, and our work on Brightline was vital to the project’s success. It demonstrates the extraordinary impact that a dedicated team and innovative solutions can have on successful project delivery through each phase of design and construction.”
WGI created and implemented several innovations that provided more accurate, timely, and safer measurements for the entire construction team. Altogether, the innovations introduced by WGI’s geospatial team reduced construction times and costs. By leveraging their custom work order tracking system, WGI managed work assignments for as many as seven concurrent field crews working seven days a week along the 130-mile corridor. The software tool balanced the scheduling of crews with track accessibility and critical path schedule elements.
“Our team applied technology and custom applications to streamline tasks that were often labor intensive and impacted construction crews,” said Clancy. “In particular, our deployment of autonomous monitoring stations provided around the clock, real-time measurements ensuring construction activities did not impact adjacent bridge structures, including the active freight rail corridor.”
Brightline is the first privately owned high-speed rail project in the United States, and the first private rail project of any type in over a century. The rail line provides service from Miami to Orlando, with an additional section extending service to Tampa under development. The landmark project has had an extraordinary impact on both the economy and the environment, and it is expected to inject $6.4 billion into Florida’s economy by the end of the decade. Brightline will also remove 3 million vehicles from local highways and roadways each year as commuters turn to high-speed rail transportation rather than driving their personal vehicles. This will translate to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 13,800,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide every year.
About WGI Inc.
As a multidisciplinary solutions-providing consulting firm, WGI has 25 offices in eight states, serving an active client base in over 40 states, specializing in the following disciplines: geospatial and land surveying, subsurface utility engineering, land development/municipal engineering, mobility planning, traffic and transportation engineering, parking solutions, restoration and structural engineering, landscape architecture, environmental sciences and water resources, architecture, land planning, and MEP engineering. In 2023, ENR ranked WGI #171 on its list of the Top 500 Design Firms in the United States. It also named WGI #31 on its list of top Southeast Design Firms and #65 on its list of top Texas/Louisiana firms. For more information, please visit www.wginc.com.
