In early August 2017, Prairie Material, a Votorantim Cimentos company, opened the gates to a completely rebuilt concrete plant at its Yard 8 in Des Plaines, IL.

The new plant, designed and fabricated by Erie Strayer, features two identical central mixers and a dry lane with 16 overhead aggregate storage compartments and 10 cement compartments. “This is one of the biggest plants we’ve ever built,” says Kyle Strayer, Sales Manager at Erie Strayer. “It’s also one of the fastest – the top capacity with both central mixers running a sixty-second mix time would be about 700 yards per hour.”

 

 

Yard 8 is Prairie’s top suburban plant, strategically located adjacent to O’Hare airport and less than a mile from two interstate highways that allow a greater reach for its service area. It has been an integral part of the multi-year, multi-billion-dollar O’Hare Modernization Program and many of the Illinois Tollway Authority’s highway expansion projects in the area.

“Yard 8 has been a real workhorse for Prairie.  It started life as a single dry batch plant and then in the early 90s, we added an Erie Strayer central mixer,” says Paul Blatner, Prairie’s Director of Maintenance Operations, who helped to design the new plant and manage all the renovation work. “But after more than 40 years it had grown tired. The only choice was to rebuild the plant,” Blatner adds.

 

 

Once the decision to rebuild was made, non-essential parts of the plant were removed while production continued through the 2016 construction season. The plant was completely shut down by the end of November when disassembly began in earnest. “We salvaged what we could to rebuild the plant and then carefully disposed of everything else,” says Matt Clarage, Manager of North American Ready Mix Maintenance Operations. “All scrap steel was recycled. The central mix plant, a portable plant that we had built a building around, was taken down carefully and stored for future use,” he adds.

​

 

Design challenges

​

The existing site is situated near wetlands and next to the airport so to respect the nearby habitats and comply with existing permits, Prairie needed to keep the same footprint for both the plant and the aggregate piles, some of which are more than a quarter mile away. Wetlands considerations ruled out moving the aggregate piles closer to the plant, while airport height restrictions limited the height of the plant to 85 feet.

 

 

 

 

“The site limitations made for some interesting design/build choices,” says Joe Bogda, Service Manager for Strayer. “We had to re-design the angles for some of the conveyors based on the regulations,” he adds. Prairie rebuilt the underground aggregate conveyor lines and added an exterior back up conveyor with a side hopper to make sure there was a continuous flow of material.

 

Engineered for safety, efficiency and comfort

 

Even though the new plant sits on the same physical footprint, Blatner and his team took the opportunity to reconfigure the traffic patterns and locations of critical services to work more efficiently and ensure everyone’s safety. At times in his career, Blatner has driven ready mix and bulker trucks and spent time as a trade mechanic in the yard. That unique perspective is reflected in the traffic flow through the plant.

 

 

Empty concrete mixers enter on the west side of the property without having to cross the paths of loaded mixer trucks coming out of the plant to the wash down area. The two activities are separated by the maintenance shed which effectively creates one-way routes. “We tried to minimize the amount of backing up and blind corners in the flow so that it’s right and it’s safe,” reports Blatner. “The lanes are straightforward with no obstacles and the path makes sense. ”

 

 

Bulkers also come in on the west side of the plant where drivers check in at the scale and are directed to the appropriate blow line for uploading products. Each line is identified with a specific number.

The batching office was custom built by a local fabricator using a metal cargo container that sits on top of salvaged I-beams that face the plant.

 

 

“It’s quiet and air conditioned, with large tinted windows that provide good sight lines,” says Blatner.

​”We plan to add spray foam insulation to the underside to make it quieter and more environmentally sound. ”

 

 

The QC area is located just north of the old ground-level office, protected by concrete block bollards and next to the wash down area. The office itself has been renovated with a new driver area featuring modern bathrooms and a small lunch area. “We are aware that 65 people work here every day,” says Blatner. “We wanted to provide both comfort for the team and efficiency for the business.”

 

Flexible capabilities for any concrete job

 

The new plant holds up to 10 different cement types and 16 different aggregates, which offers a lot of flexibility to service the various types of projects in the area.

 

 

The airport work routinely calls for binary slag/cement mixes that incorporate a specially graded airport stone. Warehouse floors often require a blend of cement mixes with 2 – 3 graded coarse aggregates to prevent curling.

The Illinois Tollway Authority has increasingly complex requirements for high performance pavement mixes, bridge decks and rapid repairs. “Some Tollway mixes require 3 – 4 different cementitious materials including fly ash, slag and at times silica fume,” says Gary Hall, Technical Services Representative at Prairie. “Combinations of coarse aggregate blends and the addition of lightweight fines for internal curing are also common.”

 

 

The plant can easily accommodate specialty cements like the white cement used recently for the O’Hare Consolidated Car Rental (CONRAC) facility’s exterior. The setup also permits the use of esthetic specialty aggregates like pea gravel and red flint directly through the plant, Hall adds.

The new plant will be able to handle all of these requirements on any given day with a combined overhead storage capacity of 920 tons of cement and 1,080 tons of aggregates. The two central mixers ensure consistency for larger jobs and a guaranteed backup during maintenance.

​

A team effort

 

 

 

More than 40 Prairie employees contributed to the disassembly and rebuilding of the new plant over the course of the project.

 

 

To celebrate the opening, Prairie hosted an onsite breakfast prepared by the Prairie cooker crew for all the team members, contractors and the Strayer team.  “We all had a stake in the project, right from the beginning,” says Blatner. “Everybody’s very proud of it. ”

 

 

Florida’s Prestige Concrete Products adds two plants in the Tampa Bay area

 

 

Florida’s west coast construction market is booming. To keep pace, Prestige has added two new plants in the past year. One plant was re-purposed from Prairie Material and relocated to a 6-acre greenfield site in Lakeland in June of 2016.

“We took a 1989 Vince Hagan dry batch plant from Prairie’s closed Rolling Meadow Illinois facility and shipped it to Lakeland in seven truckloads,” says Rich Mueller, Plant Maintenance Lead for Prestige. “We had it refurbished and up in just a few months, but had to wait for final permits before we could batch,” he adds.

 

 

 

Mueller and Terry Haney, Plant Maintenance Field Supervisor, modified the original three hopper design to provide more flexibility in the mixes. “We added a field hopper and designed and built a conveyor system that allows us to add up to 5 different aggregates at one time for specialty mixes,” Mueller adds.

The refurbished plant has 200 tons of overhead aggregate plus 45 – 50 tons in the hoppers. Three cement silos provide the plant with a 285-ton capacity housing 3 types of cement. The plant can batch up to 190 yards3/hour.

Prestige also added a new Con-E-Co Lo Pro dry batch plant at Port Manatee near Bradenton south of Tampa this March.

 

 

 

The new plant is on a 2-acre brown-field site co-located with a Martin Marietta aggregate yard. The plant has 160 tons of overhead storage for aggregates and three cement compartments that hold about 50 tons of material. It can achieve production rates up to 160 yards3/hour. The design, fabrication and erection of the plant took just three months and the plant went into production in March of 2017.

These two plants completed Prestige’s footprint in the Tampa Bay area, says Matt Jetmore, West Regional General Manager. “The Lakeland corridor east of Tampa is becoming home to many new tilt-up warehouses as well as multi-family residential units. The Lakeland plant, along with the existing Tampa plant, allows us to cover that market well with shared resources,” he says. The Port Manatee plant will service new residential construction in south Tampa and parts of St. Petersburg.

 

 

Canada Building Material plans new ready mix plant in Toronto area

 

 

CBM is also adding a new plant to its Greater Toronto Area (GTA) operations to replace the long-time Maple Road plant in the City of Vaughan, northwest of Toronto. That plant is closing due to the redevelopment of the site and the area around it for future high-density residential. The new Weston Road plant is located approximately 7 km southwest of the existing Maple site and will service the same northern GTA market.

 

 

 

 

Currently in manufacturing at Erie Strayer, the plant is a low-profile single dry batch plant with two aggregate storage bins that will hold seven different aggregates and a total of 990 tons of material. The 5-compartment unitized cement silo will hold 518 tons of cement storage.  When operational, the plant will be capable of up to 170m3 /hour. The current timeline for installation is late Fall 2017.

The plant is designed to accommodate the addition of a central mixer in the future. “The northern GTA is projected to be one of the highest growth markets in Ontario for the next 5 to 10 years,” says Les Wakeling, Vice President, Operations CBM and North America Maintenance. “And our new plant will grow with it.”​