East Lyme – Explosives engineer Mike Rodriguez was in a bright orange sweatshirt and a hard hat as he led a group of 14 aspiring engineers through the blasting site on the northbound side of Interstate 95 that has eroded 800 feet of ledge over the past three months.

The site is part of a four-and-a-half year highway reconstruction project being pitched Wednesday to the East Lyme High School engineering class as a $148 million project generating more than $30 million annually. It’s overseen by Plainville-based general contractor Manafort Brothers of Plainville and engineering firm GM2 of Glastonbury.

“Look well ahead,” Rodriguez said. “Watch where you’re stepping. Keep your heads on a swivel, guys. Always be aware of your surroundings.”

At the blasting site near the Exit 74 on-ramp, tires from heavy equipment had etched grooves into the mud where construction workers were hauling away dislodged rock and preparing the site for more detonations.

Resident Engineer Robert Obey, of GM2, said as many as 60 contractors and subcontractors work daily in multiple areas across the 1.3-mile project span from Exit 73 to just south of Exit 75. Inspection staff account for another 15 jobs.

Obey said the initial blasting project, estimated at six-to-eight weeks when it began on Aug. 1, took down a looming wall of ledge to make room for a wider highway. Now, he anticipates at least five more weeks of blasting so crews can attack an underground expanse of ledge getting in the way of plans to level the highway.

Described by project officials as the biggest safety improvement in the project, crews will raise the highway on the south side of the Route 161 overpass by 14 feet while lowering it on the north side by 10 feet.

During a presentation inside the project headquarters at Latimer Brook Commons, Obey cited a diverse array of civil engineering specialties involved in the project, including traffic, highway design, soil, bridge, geotechnical, hydraulic, and environmental engineering.

The project is bringing more well-paying jobs to a region already bolstered by the manufacturing industry, according to Obey.

“In southeast Connecticut, we have a lot of engineering communities that need people. Whether you’re building a submarine or whether you’re building this, it takes a ton of engineers to do,” he said.

Rodriguez, the one who typically presses the button to set off the blast, passed the igniter to high school senior Alicia Haynes on Wednesday. The device was attached to a thin, yellow lead line traveling a safe distance to the blasting area covered with multiple 12,000-pound blasting mats to contain the debris.

“Before this presentation, I had no idea what this project was,” she said. “And now, being here and being able to see it and press the button to make things go boom, is so exciting.”

Haynes credited her parents with her interest in engineering honed from a young age. She said she’d watch her father, a fire protection engineer, build projects at home before she was old enough to work on her own kits.

She recalled a hydraulic lift she built when she was 7 years old that was similar to the one she made in her engineering class this year.

Haynes, whose mother works at Pfizer with a background in chemical and bioengineering, acknowledged a current push to increase the number of women in science, technology, engineering and math.

The high school senior cited clubs focused on women in engineering that she learned about when she visited Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. She has applied to the University of Connecticut and is looking at Lehigh University and Bucknell University, both in Pennsylvania.

“I know girls are the minority in engineering right now,” she said. “But I think there’d just be more guys around, and I’m not afraid of that. I’m more than willing to work with a team of guys.”

She said she was the only female in her high school computer aided design class and one of three in her engineering class.

Haynes said her parents were always careful not to pressure her into following in their footsteps. Instead, they gave her the opportunity to see where her interests took her.

“They’ve always said I can do whatever I want,” she said of her parents. “My dad’s always worked with me on projects, whether I’m a girl or not. I don’t have a brother. Me and my sister both do it all the time, and we’re always excited to.”

Before setting off the day’s blast, Haynes donned a hard hat and a fluorescent vest with engineering teacher Frederic Clark and the rest of his students. She made a turn on the packed mud like it was a runway.

“Do you think I get to keep this?” she asked. “It’s fashionable.”

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