Test shafts 165 feet deep are shaping the foundations of Cape Cod's $2.5 billion Sagamore Bridge

East Coast Slurry, a Stoughton, Mass., subsidiary of AA Will Corp., started the drilled shaft program in May, according to ENR. A Nippon Sharyo rotator advanced the steel casing, with each 40-foot section welded to the next through the full wall thickness. Soil inside each shaft came out with a mechanical grab hung from a lattice boom crane. Each casing took about a month, project manager Angelo Colasante told ENR.

Each shaft ends in an 11-foot rock socket. East Coast Slurry cut them with a Liebherr LB36 hydraulic rig in rock that Colasante put above 30,000 psi, and each socket took about three weeks. Above the rock the ground is almost all fine sand, with boulders sitting just over bedrock, which made the long casings hard to keep vertical. The shafts finished within 1% of plumb, against a 2% limit in the specifications.

Next comes a third 5-foot test pile, to be driven with a vibratory hammer on the Cape side. Colasante hopes to finish testing before year end. MassDOT also drove test piles up to 90 feet deep in May, ENR reported earlier, citing local media.

MassDOT released the request for proposals in September and shortlisted three teams: Cape Cod Constructors JV (Halmar International, D.W. White Construction and SPS New England), the Skanska Traylor Sagamore Joint Venture, and Walsh Construction Company II. ENR reported that proposals are due in May 2027 and that bids will be opened publicly in July 2027. The contract carries a project labor agreement. MassDOT plans to build the main spans off site, float them in on the canal and open the eastbound span in 2033.