Landmark Construction Runs Trimble Earthworks on a Major US EV Plant

Moving 24 million cubic yards of material across a 1,600-acre site would challenge any earthworks contractor. Add more than 500,000 tons of stone, extensive underground infrastructure and a fleet exceeding 150 machines. At that point, accurate information matters as much as the machinery itself. Trimble Earthworks sat at the middle of how South Carolina-based Landmark Construction handled it.

The job was “Project Connect”, a major electric vehicle manufacturing development in Blythewood, South Carolina. It is described as one of the largest projects of its kind in the United States. Landmark had to deliver mass grading, erosion control, stormwater systems and stone for building pads, laydown areas and roads.

Around six million square feet of building space will go up across the site. The largest building measures roughly three-quarters of a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. In addition, the project includes several ponds covering more than 100 acres, complete with dams.

Keeping Everyone on the Same Information

For Landmark, the challenge was not simply shifting huge volumes of material. The contractor also had to keep surveyors, operators, project managers and office teams working from the same information as the site changed.

Mike Marshall, GPS superintendent at Landmark Construction, said the project depended on close coordination and precision. A connected flow of information between field and office supported that.

The terrain added another layer of difficulty. The deepest cut exceeded 70 ft, while the largest fill reached around 120 ft. Marshall described the work as “basically levelling the top of a mountain”. Reliable positioning data was needed across a site stretching more than two miles.

One Base Station Feeding Trimble Earthworks Site-Wide

Landmark established a network of reference stations using Trimble’s Internet Base Station Service. That included a Trimble R750 GNSS modular receiver. The system allowed a single base station to serve multiple work areas without conventional radios or repeaters.

According to Marshall, signals remained available in deep cuts and across the entire site. Consequently, the contractor cut communications infrastructure while keeping GNSS access and accuracy.

More than 150 pieces of equipment could work at any one time. That included 30 excavators, 30 dozers, two motor graders, a scraper fleet and more than 100 off-road dump trucks. Six rovers and two drones supported surveying and data collection.

Trimble Earthworks in the Cab

Landmark first invested in machine guidance technology more than a decade ago with support from SITECH Palmetto. Today all its dozers carry Trimble Earthworks grade control, along with many excavators and graders.

On Project Connect, Trimble Earthworks gave operators 3D design information linked to the surrounding site. Excavator operators also used the system’s automatic functionality. In this mode, the operator controls the stick while the grade control system manages the boom and bucket. As a result, the machine reaches grade consistently and accurately.

Connecting the Field to the Office

Trimble WorksManager connected the field with Landmark’s project management team. Meanwhile Trimble Business Center built and maintained the 3D models and designs.

As machines worked, they recorded information including position, progress and productivity. That data moved to the office, fed into the project models, and went back out to the fleet whenever designs were updated.

Landmark operated from one main master file for the entire project. When changes came through, revised information reached every connected machine simultaneously. This gave the team near real-time visibility of progress. Equally, it let them spot bottlenecks before those became larger problems.

Marshall said rapid revisions significantly reduced, and in some cases eliminated, costly rework. On its best days, Landmark moved between 60,000 and 70,000 cubic yards of material. Notably, the Trimble Earthworks workflow removed several stages from the traditional transfer of information between field and office.

Taking Trimble Earthworks Underground

Technology also went below ground. Project Connect required approximately 350 storm boxes, and Landmark has been expanding its use of building information modeling for utility structures.

In 2024 the company modeled an estimated 2,000 structures across all projects, representing around 4,000 labor hours. On Project Connect, 3D models created in SketchUp went to utility crews whose excavators run Trimble Earthworks and work straight from digital designs.

Landmark is now developing methods to automate pipe calculations and structure design. The aim is to model storm boxes and other buried infrastructure before sending information directly to machines and survey rovers.

Costs, Drones and Daily Progress

In the office, Trimble’s Viewpoint Vista platform manages accounting. It gives project managers access to cost projections, budgets and actual expenditure. Finance controller Jordan Adams said this helps teams make timely decisions and adjust operations where necessary.

Two drones flew daily to capture progress imagery. Their point-cloud data fed into Landmark’s 3D design platform alongside the Trimble Earthworks machine records. That let the survey team monitor drainage, measure material movement and compare changing site conditions.

Marshall said the drone data could be combined into a single surface and analyzed quickly. Information from aerial surveys and the machine fleet was assessed as soon as it reached Landmark’s servers. In turn, the contractor could adjust plans and workflows while work continued.

One Source of Information

Landmark remains on track to complete the project in 2026. For a job defined by exceptional quantities of earth, stone and machinery, the contractor’s biggest advantage has been simple. Every part of the operation stayed connected to one source of information, with Trimble Earthworks carrying that data into the cab.

Read more about Trimble Earthworks and connected construction.

For more equipment features and industry news, visit the Awesome Earthmovers News page.