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Rocky Forge project faces stiff headwinds

Eight years after it was first proposed, Virginia’s first onshore farm remains grounded behind regulatory, legal and political obstacles.

Charlottesville-based Apex Clean first announced plans for its wind farm in 2015. Apex aimed to have blades spinning by 2017 on 25, 550-foot-tall wind turbines on North Mountain, in a remote section of Botetourt County.

At first, the project seemed on track. County supervisors granted a permit in 2016, and a year later the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality granted final approval. But then Apex ran into issues finding a buyer for the proposed wind farm’s energy.

Years passed before Dominion Energy struck a deal to purchase the and resell it to Virginia state government to help meet its goal of sourcing at least 30% of for state agencies from sources. More obstacles developed, and the contract expired and wasn’t renewed.

Wind technology also evolved, prompting Apex to reformulate its proposal, reducing the number of turbines from 25 to 13, but increasing the size of each to 643 feet high.

Additionally, a group of landowners in Botetourt and Rockbridge counties organized against Rocky Forge, joined by grassroots group Virginians for Responsible Energy. In 2020, 13 landowners filed a lawsuit challenging the DEQ’s approval. A circuit court upheld the permit, but the decision was appealed to the Virginia Court of Appeals. The group also has challenged the county’s extension of a site plan deadline and its approval of a temporary concrete-making facility near the Rocky Forge site.

Botetourt County spokesperson Tiffany Bradbury says county staff are still reviewing the newest plans for Rocky Forge. The county is allowing tree cutting and forestry at the site, “but we have issued no approvals for ,” writes Bradbury.

projects require willing private landowners and proximity to transmission lines that can move the power to where it’s needed, says Dan Crawford, of onshore wind promotion for environmental group the Sierra Club’s Roanoke chapter, which supports the project.

“Some tell me, ‘We don’t need turbines on our mountains; we’re going to have offshore wind,’” Crawford says. “We need everything we can get. We need offshore, especially for big consumption near the shore, and we need onshore. It’s competitive in terms of price, and it works. People just don’t want to see it.”  

Scout Space founder has out-of-this-world goals

Eric Ingram wanted two things as a kid: blue hair and to travel to space.

As CEO of -based , Ingram found the freedom to establish his now-trademark electric-blue hair. And it might provide the boost to reach that other goal.

Ingram co-founded Scout Space in 2019 while he was furloughed from his job as an aerospace engineer for the Federal Aviation Administration during the federal government’s shutdown in late 2018 and early 2019.

Scout Space manufactures and develops sensor-based systems to enable satellites to safely navigate space while collecting data about what’s going on in orbit. As the race to dominate space continues, orbital space is becoming crowded. Safe and sustainable navigation is becoming increasingly important. Without controls in place, space could be a minefield.

“If you get a fender bender on the highway, you do not ruin the highway for the next 25 years,” says Ingram, a 2013 graduate of Old Dominion University. “If you get into a fender bender in space going 17,000 miles an hour, that debris cloud could potentially disrupt that entire orbital slot for 25 years.”

Scout Space landed early success in 2021 when it piggy-backed onto a demonstration mission with Colorado-based startup Orbit Fab, which is developing space-based fueling stations, on the SpaceX Falcon 9. Orbit Fab needed a system that could help it practice for “rendezvous and docking guidance algorithms,” says founder and CEO Daniel Faber. The company didn’t have money for cameras, so Faber reached out to Ingram and Scout Space co-founder and Chief Officer Officer Sergio Gallucci, both of whom he met when they interned for a previous company Faber ran.

That set off a frantic race to build a payload in six months, and the result allowed Scout Space to prove itself. In June, Scout Space, which has reached about $9 million in total revenue to date, closed a seed round for an undisclosed amount, with Reston-based federal contractor Noblis as majority investor. Scout Space is using the funding to establish an office and lab in Reston and plans to double its technical team to about 20 employees by the end of 2024.

Scout Space has three missions planned in the next nine months and a large product announcement set within the year, Ingram says.

“Everything I’m doing,” he says, “is [with] the end goal of me hopefully going to space at some point.”

The next frontier

You come down with coldlike symptoms. Flu season is here, and a new COVID subvariant is circulating. As the illness lingers, you question whether you should see a doctor.

Imagine putting your symptoms into a chatbot connected to your doctor’s office or health system that can retrieve your medical records, evaluate your information and recommend next steps.

“It could make recommendations on … should you be seen by one of our providers in the emergency room? Should you have a virtual visit with a provider? Should you have just a conversation with a triage nurse? Or do you need to schedule an appointment with a provider?” says Dr. Steve Morgan, senior vice president and chief medical information officer at Roanoke-based health system .

Such a scenario isn’t science fiction — it exists now, through -powered tools like Microsoft’s Azure Health Bot. 

“Although we don’t have it now, we’re building the infrastructure to be able to employ that type of technology,” Morgan says. Carilion has already embraced other AI software, like a dictation system for medical notes.

One year after ChatGPT came on the scene, redefining expectations for AI capabilities, industries have already begun adopting AI chatbots in varying forms, including creating their own models. In this Wild West of rapidly developing tech, companies’ workforce training methods range widely, from encouraging employee exploration to structuring rollouts.

tools like ChatGPT — AI platforms used to synthesize new data, rather than just analyze data as AI has been traditionally designed to do — are built on large language models (LLMs) that are essentially “glorified sentence completion tools,” says Naren Ramakrishnan, the Virginia Tech Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering and director of Tech’s Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics.

“They sound so realistic and so compelling because they have been trained or learning on a ridiculous amount of data,” enabling the AI engines to learn which words make sense in context, he explains.

‘s ChatGPT became a household word shortly after OpenAI released a demo of the conversational AI platform on Nov. 30, 2022. ChatGPT is capable of performing many of the same tasks as human knowledge workers — ranging from drafting emails, business letters, reports and marketing materials to performing paralegal duties, writing computer code, putting data into spreadsheets and analyzing large amounts of data — and it can produce finished work in as little as one second to a few minutes, depending on length and complexity. In March, OpenAI released an updated model, ChatGPT-4, available to subscribers. GPT-4 scored better than 90% of human test-takers on the Uniform Bar Exam, the standardized bar exam for U.S. attorneys.

Generative AI has garnered huge investments. Microsoft has reportedly invested $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019, and Amazon announced in September that it would invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, an OpenAI rival that has also received $300 million in funding from Google.

In a survey of 1,325 CEOs released in early October by KPMG, 72% of U.S. CEOs deemed generative AI as “a top investment priority,” and 62% expect to see a return on their investment in the tech within three to five years.

Generative AI is developing at a blistering pace. On Sept. 25, OpenAI released a version of ChatGPT that can listen and speak aloud. It’s also able to respond to images.

AI is already changing the work landscape, says Sharon Nelson, president of Fairfax-based cybersecurity and IT firm Sensei Enterprises. “It’s a bolt of lightning. … We’re seeing it go at the speed of light, and I can only imagine that it will go faster still.”

is providing training on AI basics, ethical use and prompt engineering, says Peter Geovanes, the firm’s chief innovation and AI officer. Photo courtesy McGuireWoods/AI background illustration by Virginia Business staff

players

As the tech has quickly progressed, large Virginia companies have formally adopted AI tools and are creating standard AI training policies and processes for their employees.

Reston-based Fortune 500 tech contractor Leidos is providing varying levels of training for employees based on their needs, ranging from those who need to build awareness of AI to subject matter experts. Leidos builds curricula with a mix of external courses from suppliers like Coursera and in-house content, says deputy chief technology officer, Doug Jones.

Like many companies, Leidos is creating an internal AI chatbot, although the company also plans to offer it to customers. The chatbot will focus on IT and software questions, allowing workers to search for answers specific to the firm.

Businesses with troves of documents can easily adapt an LLM to be specific to their documents and processes, Ramakrishnan says: “I’m noticing everybody wants to create their own LLM that’s specific to them that they can control. Because they certainly do not want to send their data out to OpenAI.” Because ChatGPT learns from its interactions with humans, information entered into the tool could be shared with another user.

Businesses are also taking advantage of generative AI tools built specifically for their industries.

Virginia’s largest law firm, Richmond-based McGuireWoods, is beginning to use CoCounsel, an AI tool designed for attorneys and built on GPT-4 that should allow attorneys to enter client data securely in the near future. Thomson Reuters acquired CoCounsel’s developer, Casetext, in April for $650 million in cash.

CoCounsel has a range of uses, like drafting a discovery response or helping an attorney brainstorm questions for a specific deposition. An attorney preparing to depose an expert witness could feed the tool the expert’s published papers and ask it to summarize them or ask it whether the expert has ever taken a position on a particular subject in them, explains McGuireWoods Managing Partner Tracy Walker.

A widening reach

ChatGPT isn’t always a reliable source, as it sometimes can fabricate detailed answers, a phenomenon referred to as “hallucinations.” One attention-grabbing misuse of ChatGPT that demonstrated this problem occurred when lawyers representing a client in a personal injury case against Avianca Airlines cited six fabricated cases as legal precedent, based on research using ChatGPT. A federal judge fined the firm — Levidow, Levidow & Oberman — and two lawyers $5,000 apiece.

Walker stresses that responsible attorneys will look up and read cases cited by an AI chatbot, but CoCounsel also provides a safeguard, says Peter Geovanes, McGuireWoods’ chief innovation and AI officer: It’s been instructed not to provide an answer if it does not know it.

McGuireWoods is taking a two-phased approach to CoCounsel’s rollout. The first phase, which started in September and is running through the end of the year, is a pilot program with about 40 attorneys. While Casetext completes its security review of CoCounsel, McGuireWoods’ pilot group is using only public data to test hypothetical uses of the tool. Starting in early 2024, McGuireWoods’ phase two testing will likely expand to about 100 attorneys.

In the meantime, Geovanes is leading foundational training about generative AI. The firm’s first brown bag webinar session was set for Oct. 17. Although the curriculum is designed for attorneys, recordings will be available for any interested employee. McGuireWoods also plans to offer outside courses about the responsible and ethical use of generative AI.

For attorneys selected for the pilot program, the firm will also offer specialized training from Casetext on “prompt engineering” — how to phrase questions to the chatbot to get the desired responses.

In Roanoke and the New River Valley, Carilion is preparing to pilot a new layer of an existing AI-powered transcription tool built for clinicians. The system has used Nuance’s Dragon Medical One, which transcribes clinicians’ notes as they speak, for “a number of years,” Morgan says.

Microsoft purchased Nuance for $19.7 billion in March 2022. In March 2023, Nuance launched Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Express (now DAX Copilot), which is based on GPT-4. It listens to a clinician-patient conversation and drafts clinical notes seconds after the appointment. Morgan hopes to begin piloting DAX in the first quarter of 2024. Because they’ve used Dragon, practitioners likely won’t need much training to adjust to DAX, he says.

Additionally, Carilion is participating in a pilot test of an AI component in the MyChart patient portal offered by Carilion’s electronic medical records vendor, Epic. The AI tool is designed to draft responses to patient questions sent through the portal, taking into account a patient’s medications and medical history. Six Carilion practitioners are participating in the pilot, which started in September, receiving on-the-fly training from Epic and providing feedback.

Examining new terrain

Smaller Virginia companies with fewer resources seem to have taken a more cowboy approach to the new AI frontier, setting ground rules before encouraging employees to explore generative AI tools on their own.

Will Melton, president and CEO of Richmond-based digital marketing agency Xponent21, is also leading a regional work group focused on preparing Richmond’s workforce for AI. Xponent21 initially used Jasper, an AI software tool for writing and marketing, but the firm now uses ChatGPT for tasks like information analysis and developing initial copy, which then goes through human editors.

“I think that the biggest thing that these tools give us is freeing up time that is … spent on monotonous activities that don’t have a lot of value,” like helping employees spend less time writing social media posts or blogs and more time speaking with clients, he says.

Ben Madden, president for the Northern Virginia Society for Human Resource Management, has begun using ChatGPT in his HR consulting work, asking the AI tool to draft job descriptions and synthesize information for presentations and policy documents.

“Having it be able to do tasks that may take longer without having the support of supercomputers behind it is where I continue to probably see it being used and being able to make my life easier as either a business owner or even for my clients,” says Madden, whose one-person consultancy, HR Action, is based in Arlington County.

Another Richmond-based business beginning to adopt AI is accounting firm WellsColeman, which updated its internet acceptable use policy to include guardrails for AI and ChatGPT usage, like prohibiting employees from entering client data into the platform.

Nevertheless, the firm has encouraged its employees to get familiar with ChatGPT, says Managing Partner George Forsythe. In full firm , will sometimes demonstrate how they’ve recently used ChatGPT, and staff can ask questions or discuss possible uses.

“We’re using [ChatGPT] as an initial step in gaining familiarity with areas that are not part of our everyday expertise. It’s an easy way to get a broad brush on any topic area,” says Forsythe. After verifying the information given, staff can use it as a starting point for their research.

Forsythe has consulted ChatGPT with general management questions like how to communicate with an employee having leadership challenges and has also used it as a marketing aid.

“When it comes to selling our services, I’ve asked it to put together a proposal and make it intriguing and have a hook,” Forsythe says, and he’s been pleased with the results.

Similarly, Winchester-based accounting firm YHB is using generative AI tools for marketing questions that aren’t firm-specific.

“Our team uses [ChatGPT] a ton to help understand and interpret tax laws and information like that,” says Jeremy Shen, YHB’s chief marketing officer. They’ll also ask the chatbot if a website post will have a high search engine optimization score.

The firm is working on selecting an AI tool to formally implement, whether ChatGPT Enterprise, Microsoft’s Copilot or another. For now, “we just kind of said, ‘We know you’re using it. We know are using it. Here’s some guardrails … but discover and let us know if you come up with something useful,’” Shen says.

Carilion Clinic is participating in a pilot for an AI feature being tested by the health system’s electronic medical records vendor, says Dr. Steve Morgan, Carilion’s senior vice president and chief medical information officer. Photo by Don Petersen/AI background illustration by Virginia Business staff

The new steam engine?

Out of 31,000 people surveyed across 31 countries, 49% are worried that AI will replace their jobs, according to a Microsoft survey released in May. That same month, a CNBC/SurveyMonkey poll found that 24% of almost 9,000 U.S. workers surveyed are worried that AI will make their jobs obsolete.

It’s not an unfounded fear. In 10 years, AI automation could replace about 300 million full-time jobs, according to a March report from Goldman Sachs researchers, but it could also raise the global GDP by 7%, or nearly $7 trillion. In May, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said AI could replace up to 7,800 jobs — 30% of the company’s back-office workers — over five years.

A refrain commonly heard among AI’s proponents is, “AI won’t take your job, but someone who knows how to use AI will.” It’s paraphrased from a statement made by economist Richard Baldwin, a professor at the International Institute for Management Development, during the 2023 World Economic Forum’s Growth Summit.

“I see some paralegals perhaps being replaced by AI, and only some, because there are some paralegals that have other advanced skills as well,” says Nelson with Sensei Enterprises, who is also an attorney and former president of the Virginia State Bar. Lawyers who do simpler tasks like drafting wills or divorce contracts might be vulnerable to being supplanted by AI, too, she says.

Comparisons to prior technological advances abound. “When the world switched from horse-drawn transport to motor vehicles, jobs for stablehands disappeared, but jobs for auto mechanics took their place,” Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa D. Cook said in a September speech at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference. Workers’ adaptability will depend on their “portfolio of skills,” she said.

Supporters say AI will make employees more productive, which can help industries weather labor shortages and let workers put aside rote tasks to focus on higher-level work, which could increase their job satisfaction.

In the world of government contracting, the constraints on some workers, like getting security clearances and working in-person in a classified environment, can make hiring difficult, says Leidos’ Jones.

“We actually find sometimes we can take some of the tasks that are not as engaging for our own employees [like data entry] … off their plate, and they can spend more time doing the things that are really powerful and unique to humans,” he says.

Forsythe also sees AI as an aid to staff: “Right now, the war is for talent. … If we can’t find more people, one of the things we can do is try to change their roles … and support them in manners that make their jobs easier, not so that way they’ll do more work, but so that way they remain part of the firm and don’t feel overburdened,” he says.

Or it could just improve workers’ quality of life. In an early October interview with Bloomberg Television, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon predicted that time savings from AI could result in a universal 3.5-day workweek — though he also said that he anticipates that AI will result in lost jobs.

While AI will eliminate jobs, it will also create them, experts say. The Washington, D.C., region had almost 1,800 listings for AI-related jobs at the end of August, according to Jones Lang LaSalle. Leidos and Boeing were among the companies with the most openings for AI positions.

New roles are emerging, like “prompt engineers” who develop and refine prompts or queries for AI tools to get the most valuable and appropriate responses. At the end of September, OpenAI rival Anthropic was seeking a “prompt engineer and librarian” hybrid position in San Francisco with a salary range of $250,000 to $375,000.

“The people who study the future of work, they say that certain jobs will go away,” Ramakrishnan says, “… but then there will probably be new jobs created that we don’t know yet.

HEARD AROUND VIRGINIA November 2023

Richmond-based Absurd Snacks is now selling its products in 14 Whole Foods Market stores throughout Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, as well as via Amazon.com. Co-founders Grace Mittl and Eli Bank, who serve as CEO and chief operating officer respectively, began fostering a relationship with Whole Foods in 2021 while taking an entrepreneurial pilot course at the University of Richmond, out of which Absurd Snacks was born. The company produces sweet and savory allergen-free trail mixes. (Richmond Inno; VirginiaBusiness.com)

Blue Heron Capital, a Richmond growth equity firm focused on health care and enterprise , exited its investment in Starc Systems after the company was purchased by Oak Brook, Illinois-based private equity firm North Branch Capital. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. Brunswick, Maine’s Starc Systems manufactures reusable temporary containment walls to protect occupied areas from disruption during renovations. Blue Heron led a $3.5 million Series A investment in the company in 2017. Blue Heron has several active investments in Virginia companies, including Richmond autism telehealth  AnswersNow, McLean health care staffing startup ShiftMed and McLean identity tech startup Verato. (Richmond Inno)

Ballston-based cybersecurity company Fend has a new piece of technology to protect large systems and small devices alike from offenses launched by alleged thieves, cybercriminals and nation state actors. The company in August received a patent for a microchip that allows Fend to protect a wider variety of goods. Any manufacturer can embed the chip into small-scale products such as medical devices and delivery drones to keep them secure. Like its first product — a “data diode” that looks like an internet modem — the new chip dictates how devices talk to the internet, such that hackers cannot find a way to wrest control. Fend is in the midst of fundraising, with the goal of . (ARL Now)

Arlington startup Predict Health has raised $4 million in seed funding to improve the Medicare open enrollment experience using . founded Predict Health in 2019, inspired by his father Sailesh’s less-than-pleasant experience signing up for a Medicare insurer. First Trust Capital Partners, a Wheaton, Illinois-based venture capital firm, led the round that closed on Sept 8. Predict Health is applying retail tools and data to help insurers understand the buying and exiting behaviors of Medicare and Medicaid recipients. With that data, health plans can create tailor-made programs to keep their customers. Predict Health has 17 employees. It plans to use the $4 million to accelerate product development and grow the team by 50%. (DC Inno)

Richmond’s Startup Virginia, a nonprofit high-growth business incubator and hub, received the Gold Award for Entrepreneurship for populations between 200,000 and 500,000 from the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) during the organization’s annual conference in Texas in September. Virginia Beach’s The Hive business resource center took a bronze award in the category, and Activation Capital, the brand name of the Virginia Biotechnology Research Partnership Authority — which promotes the growth of life sciences and advanced technology in the Richmond region — won a gold award for innovation programs and initiatives. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

PEOPLE

Virginia Innovation Partnership Corp. President and CEO Robert “Bob” Stolle left his role in September after 13 years with the not-for-profit state corporation and its predecessor. Stolle became CEO of VIPC’s predecessor, the Center for Innovative Technology, in 2020. Before that, he was the economic development organization’s senior vice president for operations. Joseph Benevento, Virginia’s deputy secretary of commerce and trade, became VIPC’s interim CEO in September. A not-for-profit corporation created in 1985, VIPC provides strategic commercialization and funding support to Virginia-based tech . (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Light at the end of the tunnel

Off and on since the 1980s, John Rivera has commuted from his home in Hampton to Naval Station Norfolk.

He’s seen Interstate 64 grow from two to four lanes in the region, but these days, Rivera, a ship maintenance manager for the U.S. Navy, mainly sees lots of traffic jams caused by the $3.9 billion () project, for which began in November 2020.

To avoid the worst of the congestion, Rivera hustles to reach the HRBT before 6 a.m., and he negotiated a hybrid work plan with his manager so that he can leave each day in time to get back to the tunnel before 2 p.m.

While expansion construction has made his commute trickier, Rivera allows that his day-to-day existence will be improved if the expansion decreases congestion on the HRBT. “Traffic affects our work-life balance,” he says.

The hope is that the expansion will improve quality of life for millions of living in and traveling through the Hampton Roads region. During the summer tourism season, as many as 100,000 vehicles per day traverse the HRBT, according to the Virginia Department of .

In addition to reducing traffic congestion, the expansion will create more lanes for hurricane evacuation and is expected to improve access to the Port of Virginia’s marine terminals and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval station.

Getting it done, however, is a massive endeavor.

It includes the construction of twin, two-lane tunnels, expanding the HRBT to eight lanes underwater. The project also includes widening about a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 64.

Often, the biggest construction projects in the United States are broken into multiple smaller projects, points out Ryan Banas, project director for the expansion.

“One of the things that makes us truly unique is that we are a single $3.9 billion construction project,” says Banas. “So, looking at it from that perspective, we are one of the largest [construction projects] in the country. We are the largest project that has ever performed and the largest transportation project that the commonwealth has ever had.”

Banas is an associate vice president for HNTB, which is providing engineering services and project management for the expansion. The construction contractor for the project is Hampton Roads Connector Partners, a joint venture led by Dragados USA that includes Vinci Construction, Flatiron Construction and Dodin Campenon Bernard.

VDOT still lists November 2025 as the contracted completion date for the expansion, but Banas allows that work has taken longer than planned. “We’re running a little bit more than a year behind schedule,” he says, chalking the delay up to “the complexity of a project of this magnitude.”

HRBT project workers excavated a 65-foot-deep receiving pit on North Island where tunnel boring machine Mary will make a 180-degree U-turn after completing the first tunnel. Photo courtesy Virginia Department of Transportation

In September, VDOT staff asked the Commonwealth Transportation for a 600-day extension on the project, and the board voted in favor of allowing the state highway commissioner to change the project agreement.

Progress on the HRBT expansion is an ever-popular topic for Hampton Roads residents and leaders, says Bryan Stephens, president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce.

“There’s a great deal of interest in the project and its timeline and its completion because I think they understand the importance of it to our economy here,” Stephens says.

Reducing congestion on the HRBT is key to the region’s economic health, says Doug Smith, president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Alliance, a regional economic development organization. “That connection between the south side of the peninsula is critically important for cargo, is critically important for tourism, [and] it is critically important for commuters,” he says. “And so, to be able to solve that congestion … for the coming decades is a really important project for the growth of the region.”

Hampton Roads’ economy, Stephens points out, is supported by three pillars: the Department of Defense, the Port of Virginia and tourism. The HRBT expansion, he says, is badly needed for all three pillars to remain healthy.

“All three of those rely on an effective and efficient multimodal transportation system,” Stephens says.

Mary’s big dig

The HRBT expansion work that’s most noticeable to drivers revolves around the widening of I-64.

“On the Mallory Street Bridge, crews finished girder erection and will soon begin constructing the deck spans on the southern half of this new bridge,” says Brooke Grow, VDOT communications manager for the HRBT expansion project. “Motorists may have also noticed many drainage improvements and widening activities occurring in the median of I-64 East/West that will begin to accommodate two additional travel lanes in each direction over the coming months.”

Workers also continue to check off project milestones.

As early as winter 2024, VDOT anticipates traffic on I-64 east from Hampton may switch from a temporary marine bridge constructed for the expansion to the new permanent marine bridge, according to Grow.

The biggest bit of progress on the expansion in recent months came in late April when a $70 million, custom-built tunnel boring machine (TBM) launched from South Island, one of two artificial islands created for the HRBT prior to its 1957 opening.

The TBM will dig an 8,000-foot-long tunnel to North Island, the other man-made island that’s located closer to Hampton, before turning around and digging another tunnel back to South Island.

“I will tell you, the day Mary breaks through, that’ll be a huge celebration for the project team,” Banas says.

In 2021, VDOT announced students from St. Gregory the Great Catholic School in Virginia Beach had suggested the winning entry in a contest to name the TBM. The students picked the name Mary after Mary Winston Jackson, the late Hampton-born, Black mathematician and engineer at NASA, who was a subject of the Academy Award-nominated 2016 film “Hidden Figures.”

German TBM manufacturer Herrenknecht AG built Mary over 14 months. At 46 feet in diameter and 430 feet long, it’s the second largest TBM ever used in North America and the largest TBM of its type, according to Banas. “It’s very easy to get awestruck looking at it,” he says.

It took four months and three vessels to transport Mary to Virginia, according to VDOT. Once here, workers reassembled the TBM in a specially designed pit on South Island, an endeavor that took another six months.

On April 24, Mary went to work. Its 46-foot cutterhead relies on 198 scrapers and 26 disc cutters to scoop soil, according to VDOT.

When finished, the HRBT project will create eight lanes of traffic spanning across and under the harbor from Norfolk to Hampton. Photo courtesy Virginia Department of Transportation

Mary also has another job: installing the tunnel’s lining.

Workers for -based Technopref Industries build 15-foot-wide segments out of precast concrete at a facility in Cape Charles. It takes nine segments to connect into one ring, which make up the tunnel’s lining, according to VDOT. More than 21,000 segments will be needed to complete the two tunnels.

From Cape Charles, the segments are transported via barge down the Chesapeake Bay to South Island. A crane transports the segments to the TBM, which has a vacuum erector capable of precisely fitting the segmented rings into place.

As of late September, Mary had installed 244 rings and had mined nearly 1,700 feet beneath Hampton Roads harbor, according to Grow. “The entire machine is underground,” Banas says. “You can see the tunnel liner taking shape behind it.”

Mary couldn’t do its work without Katherine, the slurry treatment plant, which is named for the late Katherine Johnson, another mathematician at NASA who was played by Taraji P. Henson in “Hidden Figures.”

Slurry, a mixture of bentonite clay and water, provides a counterpressure that allows Mary to dig, according to VDOT. Slurry and debris produced by Mary’s tunnel digs are transported through 22-inch pipes to Katherine. Once the excavated material reaches Katherine, technicians monitor the process to check for anomalies.

In early September, three TBM operators were running Mary five days a week, 24 hours a day, according to Banas. Each TBM operator hails from outside North America — “just because that experience doesn’t reside here in the U.S. yet,” he says.

During their shifts, Banas explains, the operators sit in a 6-by-12-foot room with “an array of monitors and sensors in front of them that allow them to control the machine directly from their station.”

They also have plenty of folks looking over their shoulders.

“We have 100% ability to remotely monitor anything that’s going on in the machine,” Banas says. “Our contractor can … have other experts look at the data in real time and also have recordings to go back and understand how the machine is behaving.”

VDOT can do the same thing.

“We have experts that VDOT has brought in that … ensure that these machines are operating in a manner that ensures their longevity throughout their journey,” Banas explains.

Turnaround time

Workers have completed excavating a 65-foot-deep receiving pit on the North Island, according to Grow. This will be Mary’s resting spot after the TBM completes the first tunnel.

As of late September, workers were hand-tying steel rebar that will later support a 5,400-cubic-yard concrete base slab for Mary. Pouring the concrete for the slab, which was scheduled to take place in mid-October, was estimated to take about 36 continuous hours, requiring 600 concrete trucks.

“As far as we’ve been able to determine, it is the largest concrete pour in VDOT’s history and we well believe it may be one of the largest pours in the commonwealth’s history,” Banas says.

If work continues to progress at the current pace, Banas expects that they’ll begin the process of turning Mary around to dig the second tunnel by fall 2024.

“It’s going to take us between about four and five months to do that full rotation,” he says. “Because during that time … Mary will be completely out of the ground. It gives us a great opportunity to go in and inspect all of her surfaces, cutter tools, all the equipment associated with her that we can’t see when she’s actively mining.”

Banas estimates Mary will return to South Island by summer 2025. At that point, he says, Mary will be put out to pasture. The TBM was designed, Banas adds, for the conditions at the HRBT. “We have very unique geology here,” he says.

Some parts of Mary may be sold back to Herrenknecht, but mostly, the TBM will be scrapped. “We are Mary’s one and only engagement,” Banas says.

Like its namesake, Banas says, Mary can take pride in the important role it played in Virginia’s history.

In 100 years, he says, the tunnels Mary is currently digging will likely still be serving their intended purpose. “It’s pretty special,” says Banas. 

U.Va. biz school receives $50M donation from alum

A alumnus and his wife, also a graduate, have added $50 million to an earlier of $44 million for the business school, which adds up to the largest donation in Darden’s 68-year history.

Philanthropists David and Kathleen LaCross made a $44 million donation in October 2022, at the time the school’s third largest donation, and that gift spurred $6 million in matching funds from the university. With last week’s $50 million addition, the gift is more than $107 million with matching funds from the university and is now the largest in the school’s 68 years, placing the LaCross family among the top five contributors to U.Va.’s $5 billion “Honor the Future” capital campaign, U.Va. said in a news release.

David LaCross, who founded a small California tech company that he sold in 1997, earned his MBA from Darden in 1978, and his wife, Kathleen LaCross, graduated in 1976 from U.Va.’s College of Arts and Sciences. Their gift to Darden will help pay for new programming and a residential college at Darden. According to U.Va., the 2022 gift launched the Artificial Intelligence Initiative at Darden, and with the $50 million addition, the work will expand to the school’s Institute for Business in Society and the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics.

“Dave and Kathy LaCross have once again demonstrated extraordinary generosity and vision with their investments and confidence in Darden and in U.Va.,” U.Va. President James Ryan said in a statement. “They have my deepest admiration and gratitude.”

LaCross worked for 10 years at Bank of America and then founded Berkeley, California-based financial tech company Risk Management Technologies, which he sold in 1997 to Fair, Isaac and Co., now known as FICO. In 2014, he and his son, Michael, cofounded Morgan Territory Brewing, a craft beer brewer in California’s Central Valley.

The gift will fund research and instruction in , including its ethical implications for management, as well as challenges and opportunities it presents for business and society. The school launched an initiative in artificial intelligence with the couple’s 2022 gift and this latest donation comes as it kicks off “Faculty Forward,” the second milestone under the school’s “Powered by Purpose” campaign, which raised its $400 million goal two years before it concludes in 2025. The second milestone included a priority for Darden and U.Va. to become leaders in research, teaching and deployment of AI and other innovative technologies in business.

“Students need to be exposed to AI in meaningful ways, and there is no business school better positioned to teach managers how to work with AI in ethical and responsible ways than Darden,” LaCross said during the gift’s announcement, which followed a dedication of the newly-named LaCross Botanical Gardens behind The Forum Hotel, a Kimpton property that opened in April on Darden’s grounds.

Thalhimer hires exec to lead multifamily biz

Drew Harbrecht has joined as senior vice president and will lead Thalhimer , the firm’s residential property services division.

He joins from Charleston, South Carolina-based Greystar Worldwide, where he led a management portfolio of nearly 10,000 units in Central Virginia and the Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia corridor. He will be based in Thalhimer’s corporate office in . A Radford University graduate who holds a bachelor’s degree in management and marketing, he previously worked in Richmond.

Harbrecht has more than 17 years of management experience and is active in the Urban Land Institute and has multiple industry accreditations, including with the Institute of Management and the National Apartment Association.

“We are thrilled to welcome Drew Harbrecht as the new leader of Thalhimer Multifamily and as a member of the firm’s executive team,” Lee Warfield, president and CEO of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer said in a statement. “Drew brings an impressive depth of experience in the multifamily asset services and management world. From institutional-quality apartment communities to value-add assets, he knows what it takes to provide best-in-class service for clients, owners and residents. Under Drew’s leadership, Thalhimer is focused on expanding its multifamily portfolio and enhancing the visibility of our business capabilities. Drew’s leadership style supports a positive culture and a level of engagement that will inspire his entire team to perform at the highest level.”

Thalhimer Multifamily is a fully integrated property management firm handling acquisitions, dispositions, troubled asset turnaround, property operations and other related services. Its management portfolio includes more than 10,000 units in Virginia and North Carolina.

Capital Square moves Glen Allen HQ

Glen Allen-based company has relocated to a new, expanded corporate in ‘s Innsbrook area, not far from its original headquarters.

Capital Square has subleased the space at 4851 Lake Brook Drive in the Innsbrook Corporate Center until March 2028. The new office, which is 44,867 square feet, is more than double the size of its previous office, at 10900 Nuckols Road, also in Innsbrook.

The new office has multiple conference room configurations with a glass wall and garden views, an onsite classroom for training, updated , a full-service cafe, a fitness center with locker rooms, parking and other amenities.

“This workplace of the future for real estate professionals provides a sense of home, where team members can gather and brainstorm, with a positive impact on their careers and relationship with the firm. The new headquarters creates an upward spiral of success for all stakeholders,” Louis Rogers, founder and co-CEO of Capital Square, said in a statement.

Both Capital Square’s expanded development and in-house property management divisions will be housed in the space.

Since Rogers founded Capital Square in 2012, the firm has completed more than $7.5 billion in transaction volume.

Capital Square is a developer of properties and has been the largest developer of multifamily housing in Richmond’s Scott’s Addition neighborhood.

Northrop Grumman CEO to chair Greater Washington Partnership

Northrop Grumman , CEO and president Kathy Warden is adding a new title to her résumé.

On Jan. 1, 2024, Warden will officially take over as chair of the . She will be the first woman, first nonfounder and first CEO of a global company to lead the for the partnership, a nonprofit alliance that promotes economic growth for a D.C.-centered region spanning from Baltimore south to Richmond.

Warden was named chair-elect of the 37-member board in November 2022. She will replace Peter Scher, a co-founder of the organization and vice chair of JP Morgan Chase & Co. Board members for the partnership include leaders of some of the region’s most recognizable companies and institutions, including Bruce Caswell, president and CEO of McLean-based Maximus, and Timothy Sands, president of Virginia Tech.

“As , Peter guided us through unprecedented challenges and helped the Greater Washington Partnership achieve big wins and catalyze inclusive economic growth. We are thankful for his to ensure our region thrives at its maximum potential,” Greater Washington Partnership CEO Kathy Hollinger said in a statement.
The Greater Washington Partnership reported $6.9 million in revenue in 2022 and is estimated to reach $7 million in 2023. The organization has 24 full-time employees.
Warden was elected vice chair in February 2021.
“Kathy brings tremendous expertise to the table as a thought leader, convener and problem solver for regional, national and global issues,” Hollinger said. “Her tech sector experience and passionate advocacy for our skills and talent work will be invaluable as we continue to build our region into a tech powerhouse. Kathy signals the next phase of the partnership’s growth and position as a leading voice for our region from Baltimore to Richmond.”
In June 2022, the Greater Washington Partnership unveiled its $4.7 billion Regional Blueprint for Inclusive Growth, a 10-year plan to increase equity and create a more inclusive economy throughout the region it spans.