The American Council of Engineering Companies of Illinois announced Engineering Excellence Awards for 2022, selecting Ciorba for the Edens Spur (I-94) Reconstruction, Plaza 24 to Edens Expressway for an Honor Award in Transportation. ACEC’s annual Engineering Excellence Awards competition recognizes engineering firms for projects that demonstrate an exceptional degree of innovation, complexity, achievement, and value.

Ciorba Group led the design for the widening and reconstruction of the Illinois Tollway Edens Spur (I-94) a three-mile stretch of expressway connecting the Tri-State Tollway (I-294) to the Edens Expressway (I-94/US 41) a main access to the City of Chicago managed by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

The design began in September 2017 with construction beginning in May 2018 on the first of four construction contracts. The remaining contracts were designed while construction was ongoing. The design and construction management teams coordinated their efforts throughout construction to deliver timely revisions to contract packages that accommodated the changing landscape of construction. The roadway was successfully reopened to traffic in October 2021. In just four years, the design and construction of three miles of roadway and fourteen bridges was complete.

The Edens Spur project was a $96 Million improvement that required an exceptional team of roadway, structural, water resources, and construction engineers from Thomas Engineering working together to provide the community with an expressway that increased capacity, improved safety, reduced environmental impacts, and aesthetically enhanced the corridor. The design and construction teams exceeded the Tollway’s expectations by completing the work on an accelerated schedule within the established budget.