The T Security Wall from Highland, Mich.-based Advance Concrete Products Co. affords robust perimeter protection for the United States’ first fully digital, plug-and-play, transmission-voltage substation. One Energy Enterprises Inc. built the facility at its Findlay, Ohio headquarters as a proof of concept for a new digital station architecture. Along with physical security attributable to precast concrete elements, the substation is…
Read MoreAuthor: Don Marsh
Pole Power
Where engineering efficiency and cement optimization go, spun prestressed power transmission and distribution (T&D) poles have few rivals in concrete production: The centrifugal forces that low-slump mixes encounter in hollow cylindrical molds, bearing on horizontal racks and spinning at up to 300 rpm, drive inordinate cement particle hydration and packing. Robust bonding of reinforcing cage and prestressing strand steel to…
Read MoreValmont Utility: A credible conduit
Cement and concrete interests will be challenged to find a better manifestation of traditional and low-carbon era value propositions than our cover story subject, Valmont Utility’s superlative spun prestressed transmission and distribution (T&D) pole plant (pages 38-41). Beyond elevating the industry and its customers, the Bristol, Ind. operation conveys the right message about concrete at an ideal point: Market development.…
Read MoreWorkplace heat-safety measures: Training vs. temperature triggers
Ahead of a month or more of vacation for some Washington, D.C. regulars, the White House instructed the Department of Labor to issue a first ever Hazard Alert in response to an unusually hot July. The agency will ramp up enforcement of heat-safety violations, increasing inspections in high-risk industries like construction, while its Occupational Safety and Health Administration belabors a…
Read MoreENERGETIC POURS
Advance Ready Mix paces 500,000-yd. Battery Park contract BY DON MARSH Batching and deliveries for one of the largest concrete supply contracts in North America are proceeding six days a week, two 10-to 12-hour shifts per day on a 2.3-square-mile, Glendale, Ky. site. Advance Ready Mix and fellow project principals have no wiggle room on the schedule as owners Ford…
Read MoreCalPortland v. Teamsters narrows NLRA gray area
A willingness to take a deep dive into ready mixed concrete production and revisit a tired National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) interpretation guided the highest court in the land to appropriate action in Glacier Northwest, Inc., dba CalPortland v. International Brotherhood Of Teamsters Local Union No. 174—a case we first examined here in December 2022. In last month’s 8-1 ruling,…
Read MoreCalifornia cement plant deal spotlights feds’ misdirected market concentration concerns
by Don Marsh Through direct action or implication of costly, prolonged legal measures, the Federal Trade Commission has helped quell a second cement plant sale in as many years. In 2021, the agency challenged the proposed sale of Giant Cement Holdings’ Keystone Cement mill in Bath, Pa. to Heidelberg Materials, then operating as Lehigh Hanson Inc. FTC officials cited concerns…
Read MoreCement Roadstone’s Wall Street destiny
CRH Plc guidance on 2022 performance—to which Americas Materials Solutions and Building Solutions segments comfortably contributed—offers some of the most definitive U.S. and Canadian market aspirations we’ve heard from the company during its 45 years of mining aggregate, milling cement, bagging dry mix, fabricating precast, molding masonry and delivering ready mixed concrete or asphalt this side of the pond. The…
Read MoreContractors challenge safety status quo
Organizations whose members and market objectives align closely with those of concrete producers have launched campaigns challenging the most basic of job site safety provisions, or delineating who owns what part of the accident prevention equation. The ASCC Education, Research & Development Foundation is live with www.hardhatstohelmets.org, stating the case for what sponsors view as stronger construction worker protection than…
Read MoreVillage Green
Unilock, LPS Pavement, PICP underpin stormwater management upgrade The Village of Kenilworth (Ill.) Public Works Department closed a 10-year stormwater management project in late 2022, signing off on nearly 84,000 square feet of permeable interlocking concrete pavement (PICP) from one of the Midwest’s best producer-installer tag teams: Unilock Chicago Inc. of Aurora, Ill. and LPS Pavement Co. of Oswego, Ill. …
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