Team Fishel Delivers Critical Fiber Project in Frederick County, Maryland

Every horizontal directional drilling contractor has a project they never forget.

Not because it was the biggest. Or the longest. But because it demanded something new at every turn. The kind of job where the original plan lasts only until the drill enters the ground, every unexpected condition forces another adjustment and every decision carries the weight of the schedule.

For Team Fishel, that project unfolded beneath Route 15 in Frederick County, Maryland, where the company was tasked with installing the final 14 miles of fiber needed to connect four major data centers.
Faced with relentless granite, a compressed schedule and narrow rights-of-way, Team Fishel relied on Ditch Witch equipment, dealer support and careful planning to play a winning hand on one of Maryland’s most demanding HDD projects.

“This is a project that normally takes two to three years. We had 10 months,” said Connor Bass, area manager for Team Fishel.

The odds were never in the team’s favor. Success wouldn’t come from the hand they were dealt. It would come from the decisions they made, the partnerships they trusted and their ability to adapt every time the ground revealed a new challenge.

Every foot of progress had to be earned. The cards were already on the table. All that remained was to play the hand.

The Stakes Couldn’t Be Higher

Most fiber builds allow for some flexibility. This one did not. The margin for error was razor thin. If the project slipped by more than 15 days, the financial penalties would wipe out a fifth of the contract’s value. At 30 days late, the entire job would lose money.

“We had to get very granular in scheduling,” Bass said. Four data centers were waiting on two fiber routes, and every day without connectivity meant millions of dollars in idle processing capacity.

On paper, the assignment looked like a strong opening hand. In the field, the cards told a different story.
Confined rights of way squeezed crews onto the shoulder of a busy highway. A compressed timeline left little room for delays. Then the ground showed its hand: a continuous vein of granite stretching nearly the length of the route.

What should have been a straightforward fiber installation quickly became a test of patience, planning and persistence.

A Tough Hand to Play

Planning began months before the first drill moved into position. Initial assessments anticipated varied soil conditions that would gradually improve along the northern route. However, that expectation quickly faded.

Instead, the ground dealt Team Fishel the same card time and time again: granite.

Crews encountered a continuous rock vein that shadowed nearly the entire route. Progress slowed to as little as 8 to 12 ft per day in many areas, which was made worse by the need to ream each bore multiple times to reach final diameters, compounding production delays.

At that pace, the schedule was a losing hand.

Team Fishel knew they needed a new approach if they were going to finish the job on time. They doubled the drill count, bringing in crews from across the country and rotating mechanics through night shifts to keep equipment ready. Even the tooling plan had to be rebuilt to handle nonstop granite. They weren’t folding. They were reshaping their strategy.

Those moves bought time, but the fundamental challenge remained: finding equipment capable of performing consistently and reliably in solid rock and within extremely limited jobsite space.

Playing the Right Card

Drill selection quickly became one of the most important cards on the table. The jobsite pressed tight against Route 15, a narrow highway with constant commuter traffic. Larger rigs simply could not fit, and many rock-drilling systems lacked the durability to successfully push through the continuous rock conditions.

The team needed a directional drill with two seemingly contradictory strengths: compact enough to operate within space-restricted rights of way, but powerful enough to pull heavy reamers through solid rock. A Ditch Witch AT32 directional drill proved to be exactly the right card.

The All-Terrain system was essential to maintaining progress, providing stable torque and control through challenging ground conditions. Conventional methods, including mud motors and air hammers, would have degraded rapidly under continuous rock loads.

By the time the ground revealed its true challenges, Team Fishel wasn’t just using one AT32. The team expanded its fleet of AT drills and upgraded tooling to accommodate nonstop granite. They worked closely with Ditch Witch’s ACE team to pre-stock pumps, motors, swivels and wear components, ensuring swift replacements and zero downtime.

The Ace in the Hole

Equipment alone wasn’t enough to maintain the pace needed to ensure the project stayed on schedule. When the stakes got high, Team Fishel had an ace in the hole: its partnership with Ditch Witch ACE.

ACE stationed a technician onsite almost every day to handle troubleshooting, monitor performance alerts through the Orange Intel telematics system, fine-tune mud mixes and coordinate replacement parts. Their proactive support prevented minor issues from escalating into days of downtime.

“Most issues were fixed before management ever heard about them. That level of field communication is rare,” Bass said.

To keep production steady, Ditch Witch stocked more than $1 million in critical parts specifically for this project. In several cases, Ditch Witch and Team Fishel worked together to adapt components for extreme wear conditions.

With more than 25 drills operating, that level of responsiveness and repair speed helped Team Fishel keep a winning hand on the table.

Keeping Their Poker Face

Route 15 presented Team Fishel with one of its most complex operating environments yet. The corridor serves as a key connection point between Virginia and Maryland, carrying significant daily traffic. Lane closures were not an option, which required all work to be completed from the shoulder within a narrow, active right of way.

At peak activity, 160 Team Fishel Teammates from 15 states operated along the corridor, supported by more than 80 trucks moving through the site each day. Managing that level of activity in a confined, high-traffic environment required precise coordination, careful planning and constant communication.

“Route 15 is an extremely difficult place to work, and the margin for error is zero,” Bass said.

Maintaining safe traffic flow while advancing the project added another layer of complexity. With more than 25 rigs operating simultaneously, maintenance and logistics required disciplined scheduling and execution. Every aspect of the operation had to be tightly coordinated to keep crews productive and the project on track.

When the Table Turned

For weeks, the rock dictated the pace. Then things began to shift.

Additional drills, upgraded tooling and close collaboration with the Ditch Witch team became the turning point. Crews who once spent days watching rods move inches at a time found a new rhythm.

They learned the patterns in the rock and the spots that slowed production. Reamer swaps became smoother. A bore completed ahead of schedule. Service cycles stayed on time.

The work was still grueling but Team Fishel was no longer anchored by the weight of the rock beneath them. Each incremental win built on the last, turning steady effort into measurable progress.

The granite no longer set the tempo, the team did. Through the fall, production accelerated week by week. On Oct. 31, the final segment was set. Fourteen miles of duct bank were finished.

A project that typically spans several years had been completed in just eight months, the result of a team that trusted the process and equipment that held up when it mattered most. Inch by inch. Foot by foot.

“I couldn’t be prouder of our team,” said Bass. “Dr. Joe C., the field PM and his team put in the work, trusted the plan and kept pushing. All the credit goes to them. The partnership with Ditch Witch and the reliability of those drills made a huge difference. The equipment held up, the support never stopped, and our crews delivered.”

A Winning Hand

The final bore marked more than the completion of another fiber installation. It marked the successful conclusion of a project many would have considered unwinnable under the same conditions.

Over eight months, Team Fishel navigated relentless granite, narrow rights-of-way and an unforgiving schedule. Every setback required another adjustment, from deploying additional drills and refining drilling strategies to leaning on dealer expertise when conditions became even more unforgiving.

“Anyone can build fiber in clean dirt,” Bass said. “We take the work others often walk away from.”

Jeff Davis is HDD product manager with Ditch Witch.

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