Underground Utilities

Domestic and fire water lines installed to line and grade from the approved civil plans — trench excavation, bedding, pipe placement, thrust restraint at bends and tees, and appurtenances including valves, hydrants, and service connections. Installation follows the project's specified materials and joint systems, with depth of cover and utility separation held to the plans and the governing utility's standards. Lines are prepared for the hydrostatic pressure testing and disinfection regime the specifications call for before tie-in.

Gravity sewer is the least forgiving system on a civil site, because its grade cannot be pumped back into tolerance after the fact. We install mains, laterals, manholes, and cleanouts with continuous grade control in the trench, holding the slope the hydraulic design depends on. Bedding and haunching support the pipe barrel so deflection stays within limits, and installations are prepared for the low-pressure air, vacuum, and mandrel testing the acceptance process requires.

Reinforced concrete and HDPE storm mains, inlets, junction boxes, and headwalls installed in coordination with site grading so surface flow and pipe flow arrive at the same design. Inverts, slopes, and outfall elevations are built to plan so the system performs at design flow — in Texas that matters, because flash-drainage storms load a storm system to capacity in minutes. Where buried storm scope meets surface controls, we coordinate directly with our erosion and drainage control work.

Trench excavation with the protective systems that depth and soil conditions require, bedding placed and shaped to support the pipe zone, and backfill returned in controlled lifts compacted to the density the specifications set. This is where utility quality is actually decided: the bedding zone protects the pipe, and the backfill column above it becomes subgrade for pavement and flatwork. We compact for the surface that will be built on top, not just for the trench itself.

Electrical and communications conduit runs, duct banks, and pull structures for commercial sites, substations, and data center campuses — trenched, spaced, and encased per the electrical site design. Duct bank work demands the same discipline as wet utilities: alignment and spacing held with spacers, concrete encasement placed where the design requires it, and stub-ups located precisely so equipment pads and building penetrations land where the electrical contractor expects them.

If the civil plans show water, sewer, storm, or dry utility scope — and nearly every commercial and energy project's do — someone has to install it, and how the scope is split matters. When utilities and grading are held by different contractors, the seams between them become the project's risk: who owns trench compaction under future pavement, who repairs grade after tie-ins, whose schedule gives when the two collide. If your grading is already contracted, TerraTek can take utilities as a standalone package and work to the grading contractor's benchmarks. If the civil package has not been bought out yet, putting grading and utilities under one contractor removes the seam — and the arguments — entirely.

Four things, all set before we mobilize: the pipe material and its stiffness, the depth of bury and the loading above the line, the native soil in the trench walls, and what will eventually be built on the surface. Flexible pipe depends on the bedding and haunch zone for much of its structural performance; rigid pipe is more forgiving in the haunch but still demands uniform support. Under pavements and pads, backfill is placed in controlled lifts of select or approved native material compacted to a specified density and verified by the project's testing lab. The project specifications and geotechnical report govern — our job is to build the trench exactly the way those documents describe it, every joint, every lift.

The project's engineers design the systems, select materials, and write the testing requirements. Field verification belongs to independent parties: density and materials testing is typically performed by the owner's third-party lab, and completed systems are inspected and accepted by the owner, the municipality, or the utility that will operate them — pressure tests, air and mandrel tests, televised inspection, whatever the acceptance regime requires. TerraTek's role is execution: we build to the approved plans, coordinate the tests, and deliver installations ready to pass them. That separation — engineer designs, independent parties verify, contractor builds — protects everyone on a commercial project, and our bids are structured around it.

Both. We price standalone utility packages for general contractors who have split the civil scope, and we carry utilities inside larger earthwork and sitework contracts where the owner wants one contractor holding the sequence. The practical difference is coordination cost: as a standalone utility contractor we work to your grading contractor's benchmarks and schedule; inside a bundled package, trench depths, backfill, and pad schedules are coordinated within our own crews, which is where the schedule risk between scopes disappears. For the full version of that approach — clearing through build-ready pads under one contract — see turnkey site development.

The utility sheets, the project specifications, and the geotechnical report if you have it — plans at any stage are workable, though pricing tightens as the design does. Send them through our contact page with the project location and target schedule. What comes back is a scope response written in plain terms: what is included, what is excluded, where the coordination points with grading and paving sit, and the assumptions behind the number. If the package raises questions that should be answered before pricing — utility conflicts, rock risk, phasing — we ask them up front rather than pricing around them.