Walmart’s new corporate campus in Bentonville, AR consists of 12 new office buildings, 12 parking garages, and many other amenity buildings on a brand-new campus with more than 2.4 million square feet of office space on roughly 350 acres of land. Prior to redevelopment, Walmart operated in warehouse spaces and office buildings on this land for quite some time.

The soil conditions beneath existing grades generally consist of up to 5 feet thick stiff to very stiff lean clay to medium dense clayey gravel fill, followed by interbedded layers of stiff to very stiff native clay and medium dense clayey sand extending up to 14 feet below existing grade, overlying bedrock to the maximum explored depth.

PCI and Geopier® delivered a design-build ground improvement system that included nearly 12,000 Rammed Aggregate Pier® (RAP) elements for foundation support. For the majority of the project, PCI was able to quickly move from one structure to the next to avoid any construction delays. Ground improvement work first started in early 2021 and all phases completed by end of 2022.

Several full-scale modulus load tests were performed throughout the duration of this work to successfully confirm that production elements will perform as designed.