Contact Us

Academy Boulevard Improvements

Transportation

Rebuilding 18 lane miles of a workhorse arterial.

South Academy Boulevard is one of Colorado Springs’ hardest-working arterials, and decades of heavy traffic had left its pavement, concrete, and drainage in poor condition. The City’s $62.5 million South Academy Boulevard Improvements Project, funded through the voter-approved Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority, is rebuilding 18 lane miles in two segments — Bijou Street to Airport Road, and East Fountain Boulevard to Jet Wing Drive. The work replaces worn pavement and base, rebuilds curb and gutter, adds a multi-use path, relocates Colorado Springs Utilities water and wastewater lines, and installs new inlets, manholes, and storm pipe to end chronic standing water.

Vivid Engineering leads quality assurance testing and is part of the inspection team for the project. Our technicians sample and test soils, aggregate base, concrete, and asphalt as each phase goes in, keeping results in the contractor’s hands so work can keep moving through a corridor that stays open to traffic throughout construction. Segment 1 wrapped up in 2024, with the southern segment scheduled for completion in 2026.

Project Details

  • Client

    City of Colorado Springs

  • Location

    South Academy Boulevard, Bijou Street to Airport Road – Colorado Springs, CO

  • Project Value

    $62.5 million

  • Timeline

    Segment 1: 2023 – 2024 | Segment 2: 2023 – 2026

  • Sector

    Transportation

  • Services

    Construction Inspection & Testing

  • Transportation

    Downtown Estes Loop Project

    Elkhorn Avenue, Moraine Avenue, and Riverside Drive, Estes Park, CO 80517

    Every year, millions of visitors funnel through downtown Estes Park on their way to Rocky Mountain National Park — and for decades, its two-way downtown streets could not keep up. The $42 million Downtown Estes Loop, administered by FHWA's Central Federal Lands Highway Division in partnership with CDOT and the Town of Estes Park, converted Elkhorn Avenue (US 36), Moraine Avenue, and Riverside Drive into a one-way couplet. The project built a new roundabout at Moraine and West Riverside, replaced the bridge over the Big Thompson River connecting East and West Riverside Drives, and delivered expanded stormwater infrastructure, floodplain mitigation, and new sidewalks and trails through the heart of downtown.<br /> <br /> Working for Flatiron, Vivid Engineering Group provided construction inspection plus field and laboratory materials testing of soils, aggregates, concrete, and asphalt across 21 months of construction, from January 2023 to October 2024. Building a federal-aid project through an operating tourist downtown meant compressed winter work windows and some of the toughest environmental restrictions on any Colorado project — with the Big Thompson River flowing directly through the work zone. Vivid's inspectors and technicians kept quality verification moving on the contractor's schedule, with samples run through our AASHTO-accredited Colorado laboratories, so that the Loop opened to traffic ahead of the next summer season.

  • Transportation

    SH 7 Permanent Repairs Project

    CO 7, South St. Vrain Canyon, Lyons to Raymond (MP 19 to 33), Boulder County, CO

    The September 2013 flood devastated Colorado Highway 7 through the South St. Vrain Canyon, severely damaging or completely washing away nine miles of roadway and cutting off canyon access for two and a half months. Temporary repairs reopened the road, but a permanent fix had to wait. The SH 7 Permanent Repairs Project — the final permanent infrastructure project of Colorado's $750 million 2013 Flood Recovery Program, funded through FHWA Emergency Relief — permanently rebuilt 14 miles of the canyon between Lyons and Raymond. The $60 million project replaced temporary post-flood asphalt with a fully reconstructed roadway, restored 11,500 linear feet of St. Vrain Creek to a resilient natural channel, rebuilt embankments and drainage, added rockfall ditches and a four-foot uphill bicycle shoulder, and revegetated 28 acres of disturbed canyon — all while meeting a net-zero construction waste goal.<br /> <br /> Vivid Engineering Group worked alongside Kiewit Infrastructure Co. and CDOT Region 4 from September 2021 through November 2022, providing field and laboratory materials testing of soils, aggregates, concrete, and asphalt to verify that every material placed met CDOT standards — including the 38,500 tons of asphalt that make up the new canyon roadway. In a narrow canyon with a single access road and an active creek restoration underway, Vivid's technicians kept sampling and testing on the contractor's schedule so the corridor could reopen as planned.

  • Transportation

    2C Road Improvement

    Citywide road program, Colorado Springs, CO

    In 2015, Colorado Springs voters approved the 2C sales tax to tackle a backlog of failing streets, and they renewed it in 2019 and again in 2024. Since the program began in 2016 it has repaved more than 1,900 lane miles, rebuilt roughly 400 miles of curb and gutter, and installed thousands of new and retrofitted pedestrian ramps across the city — one of the largest sustained paving efforts in Colorado, with about half of every dollar going to the concrete beside the road.<br /> <br /> Vivid Engineering serves as one of the lead quality assurance testing firms for the program's concrete and asphalt work. Our technicians test and document paving, sidewalks, curbs, gutters, and pedestrian ramps across each year's project list, verifying that every placement meets City specifications. That oversight protects the long-term durability of the investment and helps the City deliver smoother streets and better accessibility, year after year.

Have a project with conditions like these?

Talk with the engineers and inspectors who work on projects just like this every day.