Let's get started, I'll turn it over to Barry. Thank you, Joel. On behalf of Tyndall Corporation, we want to offer a sincere thank you to PCI for providing the forum to present to you today. The title of our presentation is Engineered Utility Precast Solutions. We have a very broad definition of utility. When we say utility, we mean anything that is not a precast building or a precast pre-stressed parking deck. Today, Joel and I are going to share with you what we've learned over the past 20 years. When we started in the business, our business model was based on sanitary sewer structures. We shortly thereafter added storm drainage structures. What we've discovered through the years was a precast world well beyond standard and prescriptive sanitary sewer and storm drainage structures. We noticed many situations in which a precast solution was applicable, but was traditionally specified in cast in place or some other material for one reason or another. However, with some innovation and structural engineering prowess, we found that more often than not, a precast solution is available, just as long as you can dream it. Hopefully, a lot of the audience are already using precast systems for your utility infrastructure, but those of you who are not, we hope to open your eyes and, at the very least, raise awareness that precast is available and give you specific examples of engineered precast solutions for structures that have traditionally been constructed using cast in place methods. We will show specific projects in various market segments, explain the benefits and advantages to specifying precast, and also show you the variability of utility precast. With that, I'll turn it back over to Joel Sheets. Thank you, Barry. With that said, let's dive right in on an example of a project that most often would be thought of as being something that is cast in place. This has a little bit of date on it, but nonetheless, it demonstrates what I think we're talking about today. This was a project in Georgia on 85, a busy interstate, and so what they did was they took advantage of precast column and column caps, the bents underneath the bridge beams. All of the material for the column and pile cap was precast ahead of time. It was delivered during the middle part of the day when the traffic flow was the least so they could handle a single lane closure to offload the trailers. The pieces were marshaled in the median and then throughout the rest of the day and the next morning during peak traffic times, all lanes were open while they conducted this work outside of the busy roadway. You can see in here that it utilizes a system with projecting bars and a sleeve system to grout everything in place. So what is very often a traditional cast in place system, just right here, turned into a utility precast solution. So as we move to the benefits, as opposed to reading them off the screen, I think it's best to summarize the benefits of using precast for a utility application to summarize as follows. It boils down to two primary benefits, construction speed and safety. Please remember, when it rains and you have a rain event, your precaster keeps producing. In addition, I think there's no doubt that using a precast system involves less labor, less people, and fewer chances of injury. One thing that is very important to note, on successful jobs, everyone gets to take credit for it. When a project ends on time or early, no injuries, everyone walks away happy, including the owner. I'll move it back to Joel. No doubt. And as we talk about some of these solutions, it's really something that we're asking, from a design standpoint, things that people have traditionally thought of in cast in place to pivot to precast, and that can be a little bit daunting. You know, say, well, we've never done that before, how do you go about doing it? And the easy first step to sort of dip a toe into the water, if you will, is to use precast emulation of cast in place concrete. In its simplest form, it is still a cast in place design, however, then the joints are added to segment the pieces into manufacturable in a quality controlled plant, then shippable and reassembled on site, individual components, and where each of those joints is placed, then ultimately using a connection. For the most basic of emulative design, that connection is usually a sleeve. So where there was previously one bar length across a system, there is still, in fact, one bar length, but it is joined at each of those joints so that it functions in exactly the same way as it was before. This is something that so much so, there is this methodology for doing that, ACI 550 is the guidance for emulative precast design. So once again, as you might take number one, maybe someone has proposed this and you're considering it as an alternate, you're not totally out on an island just saying, well, I trust they're doing it right, but ACI 550 can be used as a guidance for the conversion of cast in place to a precast design. We want to start off by talking a little bit about the power and energy market. We started on this on purpose as we believe all industries can learn from the power industry. Because the ramifications of issues on a power plant are much higher than in other markets, quality is of the utmost importance. But in the past, the answer from the power companies had been to turn to cast in place just because they wanted to have the purview and increased surveillance and double checking of quality. That is why it's very important for engineers and architects to specify a robust quality system from a precast company, such as the PCI plant certification program. It's very important to make sure that a precast company has the eyes and ears in their plant, which is what PCI can provide for the engineer in this situation. We'll move on to a specific example. This is a heavy duty cable trench at a power plant. The cables were of vital importance to the function of the power plant. Because of the critical nature of protecting the cables, an emphasis was placed on the traceability of all the components, showing the pedigree and performance of each of the components within the precast trench. In addition, there was an in-depth structural analysis that had to take place that rated the trench for tornado missiles or other objects that could be turned into projectiles. This is another angle of the same trench, but what we're trying to convey is that you can have slopes and geography and very stringent specifications for loads and traceability, and precast can respond to those challenges. Absolutely. In addition to what Barry is describing, where the utility had previously always cast in place their own structures for the traceability and truly understanding and knowing with certainty what was where, the other component was complexity of job. On this one trailer, you can see examples of both horizontal and vertical bend sections that were made for this project, well within the producer's capability. One of the things that we really got into here was showing that the first piece you see closest to the photographer there is the radius section. That's a small radius section, but for the bending radius of the cable, that lends itself very well to a precast solution. It did require specialized forms, but that was all part of the project to make sure that the requirements of the job were met. As you look at yet another view of this, that's a tough geometry of fitting into all the angles and changes in direction. In addition, this one's out in the woods. It's a little bit remote from where the rest of the plant is, transmitting lines from the plant itself to the reservoir. This would have been a challenge to cast in place and still have all the controls they need. Once they accepted the plant's quality control program as their substitute for on-site surveillance, it really allowed the job to move very quickly, complex geometry was achieved, and everybody walked away a successful participant in this job when it was finished. This slide demonstrates, it keeps with the theme of precast can handle complex geometry. As you see, we have a zigzag piece in which there were specialized precast joints made to accommodate the angles. In addition, part of the tops is made and rated for HS20 traffic load, and another part of the trench will have angle and grading rated for traffic. What we're demonstrating is versatility. As you can see from this photo, again, part of this area has to be traffic-rated because they have to get equipment from one side of the trench to another, and another part of it is open. As you can see, the tray is being dropped into the trench, and another part of it graded. The point of this, again, versatility and precast's ability to handle almost any geometry. Okay, we move on to this. We love this photo because this shows congestion that is typical in a power plant, and even other industrial sites. As you can see, there are precast firewalls with precast columns. In addition, you see the trench to the right. It's tight among other equipment, and this just screams precast. Imagine having to cast in place this with the equipment around it. Precast enabled them to speed up their construction cycle by more than 50% than what they had anticipated. Speed, quality, versatility. In this slide, to continue the mention of congestion, this is two runs of communication cable trench at another nuclear plant. You really don't see in this view, you see the office on the right-hand side of the trench run. That is the immediate perimeter wall of the nuclear island, the area of the plant that's under the most security, high scrutiny, and there's a run of trench that's running right alongside of that. All of this was intended to be buried in this area, and they're going to use back excavation, so they would not disturb any other utilities. All of the trench was precast, and then as they went to install it, they just came to the conclusion that they really couldn't get it down under the slab. They cut the slab out, sank it six inches, just to gain the six inches, and then ended up putting the trench on top of the ground there and sealing it above ground. The chamfer, or fillet off the edge of it, was a cast-in-place add that they had to do that they weren't planning on, just so that there were no shadow lines on the edge of the trench where someone could hide. Here's a view from the other side, where on the left-hand side, you can most certainly see all of the razor wire and the security, the guard tower, where, believe me, there's guys with guns preventing any intrusion into the nuclear island. This would have been a nightmare. It was as tough as it was to get the pieces in there and have to shut down a segment at a time to bring a small boom truck in to set them, but if they had to truly cast-in-place the whole operation, that would have been a mess. In fact, in the very front of this picture, the two poles you see standing up, those are vibration lines that are strung along through there, so they know if anyone's coming through. Just a very high-security area, and again, it was something that it had to buy into the quality program to trust and believe that they could get this done remotely in modular fashion and then set on-site, but something, once it was done, worked out very well. Again, here you can see sort of a cut into that side shadow line hiding cast-in-place concrete. There's a small manhole there, a four-by-four junction that they still had to have access to where you can really see what they had to do just to sort of hide the trench and prevent anyone from hanging out in the shadows. Thank you, Joel. Electrical and communication vaults and manholes are a product that we ask you not to overlook when specifying your project. These often are specified in cast-in-place, but can be done in precast, and can be custom-designed for various load conditions and accommodate multiple duct bank pipe entry angles. All right, and that brings us to bottomless span structures. So one of the things that utility precast can offer is that when you need to get from point A to point B, look no further than utility precast to solve that challenge with a turnkey solution. In many cases, you might only have to provide the bearing pressure, and a qualified precaster can take it from there and do the rest. They're going to provide a solution from concept to design to manufacture, delivery, and in some cases, install. That will include the footing design that can also be precast. So in terms of a means of moving a portion of work off of the critical path and getting that in somebody else's hands from design to install, that can be taken over. These bottomless span structures can be used for multiple applications. Oftentimes, well, most often, we probably see it as wetland mitigation. So instead of having to worry about getting permitting for a four-sided culvert system, just go over it, and that saves a lot of time and money for owners that are moving quickly through a project. But they can also be used as detention structures. The whole system can be buried within walls as a cistern detention retention. They can also be used as overpass structures. So whether it's overpassing other traffic, other pedestrian, or just any other conveyance, a three-sided bottomless span structure is very versatile. Here's one that was not too far from us in Greenville, South Carolina. And this was used because there was limited cover over the top of it. So a three-sided culvert can take on a flat-top configuration. As this went in, very quickly, one day, it was completely installed. It's hard to get the true perspective there, but where the crane is sitting, the roadway was not much taller than the flat-top itself. And so in this case, it worked out to be the better solution than an arch, but arches can be used as well. This is another one that was 24 feet wide and 10 feet tall. Again, this one was about the volume that needed to be underneath it, so it made more sense to be this rectangular-shaped flat-top situation. They are a little bit less efficient structurally than an arch. But again, configuration, we're going to let the need of configuration dictate which system we use, depending on best solution for the job. So this one, no depth, less critical backfill. That's also something that helps. The backfill on an arch is a bit more critical from a quality standpoint of what material can be used. Each has their own niche. And finally, as in anything precast, speed of construction makes a big deal. So you can see in this one, this is a flat-top spanning over a creek that had washed out the culvert that was there. This will accept existing drainage tying into it. And as you can tell from this picture, it's raining out there. It was a wet day. All of the pieces got set. And I guarantee you, had that been a more traditional cast-in-place solution, the wet day would have delayed, slowed them down, the structure wouldn't have been set. In this case, you know, speed and the precast solution was the best fit for the job. Thank you. Joel spoke about letting the site conditions dictate the shape of the arch of the, excuse me, of the bottomless culvert, of the span structure. And in this case, the challenge was they had a total of 40 feet from the road elevation to the creek elevation. So a very tall situation in which you needed to make up, which what accounted for the 40 feet is 24 foot of depth underneath the slab to the creek and 15 feet of cover. Yes, there is a precast answer to this. It was a two-piece, 66 foot span. There were three creek crossings onto this property. This was a actually a high school property. The solution ended up saving a tremendous amount of time, allowing construction to continue, opening up access to critical areas of the job site. Again, we talked earlier about the benefits of speed. So there were three bridges and over 48 pieces, and essentially each bridge went in in less than a week. It allowed construction to move forward. The method in which they're put together is they're placed on cast-in-place foundations, which also could be precast, and there is a closure pore in the center of the two pieces. So again, a very, very challenging situation in which they turn to an arch for the solution. And I would say on this one from a concept standpoint, don't let shape or size sway you from at least asking the question, is there a precast solution? So this arch is 66 feet wide and 24 feet tall. If that was made as one piece, obviously that would be pretty tough to ship and very quickly become cost-prohibitive to manufacture, ship, and erect. However, because it can be segmented in two or more pieces, we've looked at arch solutions that would ultimately involve three pieces. That would, of course, involve some temporary shoring to get the closure pores put in place, but because the opportunity was there, it was segmented into two pieces that were very shippable, less than 12 feet wide, not overweight, so with two cranes that could be set relatively easily, closure pore done pretty quickly. In the scheme of things, it's a tiny amount of concrete with no additional forming. The depression did not go all the way through the thickness of the upper slab, so all of that could be done in place with a small tow-behind pump. The solution, again, utility precast engineered solutions found an answer for the job because it wasn't shut down too quickly and people had the opportunity to look for other opportunity. The next arch project we'll discuss, this is an MCO, the Orlando Airport. Years ago, they began infrastructure for their future international terminal and essentially a train station, so the beginnings from the hub system that is the center of the airport, the APM automated people mover, the beginnings of the bridge taking it away from the airport, have been in place for many, many years now, and finally, at this point, a few years ago, they were ready to go ahead and put in the train station, so you see three tunnels in front of you. The leftmost one is a straight shot 46-foot wide tunnel that was, I think, about 200 feet long and that is the APM, the automated people mover that will move people from their central core at the existing airport over to the train station and ultimately to the new international terminal. The other two arch systems that are in place there are both for conventional trains, so that can get up into the airport and carry people on to the Florida Sun Pass or SunRail. Both of those structures have a curve to them. They are not a straight shot. Each of the arch segments is essentially poured as a wedge, so you can go around and you see it curving off to the left as you look in the screen. This project was a myriad of multiple different building materials, so there's a lot of cast-in-place work because it made sense for things to be cast in place. There are walls adjacent to each of the spans that are both cast in place and precast segmental retained earth walls. Along the guideway for the APM, there are precast panels that are there for aesthetic reasons to close it off and it blends with the existing panels that have been on the airport for many, many years. So this was truly a solution where roads going over and under and on top of each other to get into a congested central part of an airport, everybody looked for the right solution and for the spans turned out to be arches. There were over I think about a hundred and fifty spans that were shipped to the project that allowed it to be set very quickly and everyone walked away happy. This project involved converting a historical textile mill with high visibility into a medical office facility. What you don't see in the photo is the creek that runs underneath the arch bridge. Downstream from the creek is a triple 12 by 12 culvert. So if you put that into perspective, aesthetically not what you would want to have when trying to preserve a historical building and turn it into a highly visible professional medical office facility. So we were given an opportunity to help with design and propose a precast arch system which worked very well in this situation. In fact, I like to bring this up on in this situation, the contractor who ultimately did end up making the buying decision is a concrete contractor. They cast things in place for a living, but they even saw the value in working with the precast solution in this situation. All right, the next project we'll show is certainly not a typical use, but we thought a very unique way of showing you where a large span can be used. This is a 55-foot arch span that is on a racetrack in Virginia. They wanted something attractive to allow a crossing for people to get from outside the racetrack over into the infield. And the road course track runs underneath our precast arch structure. So you would have the race cars during the race coming right through here. So again, I think they chose our system because of the aesthetics and speed of construction. But you can see in this photo, it demonstrates wing walls and headwalls that accompanied the precast arch. This is full precast with the exception of the foundations. Your precaster, again going back to where we started, if you can provide the bearing pressure, the precaster can generally take it from there. Tyndall designed the connections between the walls to the arch system but the headwalls and the wing walls. And really, Barry, on those last two projects, that's outstanding. Both were selected for aesthetic reasons as much as function. And so the Dominion Raceway is a pretty high-end facility, has a road course, a typical round oval, as well as a drag strip. And this gets the bulk of the traffic into the heart of the course. Aesthetics definitely played a role in the buying decision here. Alright, and to wrap up on that, the last one, because of the specially loading we wanted to show you, was a system we put in for Norfolk Southern in Birmingham, Alabama. This was an entrance to the intermodal facility when Norfolk Southern, a few years ago, was putting a lot of money into the Southern Crescent, their intermodal system that ran from the Gulf Coast up into the Northeast. Several intermodal facilities were being added or upgraded. There was an approach that had to cross wetland to get into the rail yard, and while it's not wet here, all of that has been drained and bypassed during construction. Rest assured, that gets very wet. This is just a small portion of the job. There's a mirror bridge just out of frame that is substantially wider than this one. All of them utilize the same 42-foot span arch with EAD loading. There were over 129 arch components cast, sent to the job site. As you look on top of the arches to the right-hand side of the screen, you see sort of this trough running down over that. That entire area was filled with ballast, and the tracks put on top of that. This bridge accommodated one track that split into two at the end closest to the screen as they get wider. The other one had three splitting into four. In addition on the project, there was also a flat-top structure, 20-foot span with 15 feet of cover and EAD loading. All of those things took a lot of convincing from an engineering standpoint to go through the design because it's so substantial for the freight train traffic running over the top of it, but it turns out that a precast arch, windwalls, and headwalls were all the correct solution for the project. All right, thank you, Joel. The next subject we'll cover is alternate design for water conveyance culverts. Typically, when you see a stormwater culvert, the inclination is to think, well, I'll crack open my DOT spec book and design that, or potentially have to cast it in place. What we found through the years are that many project needs beg some creativity with culverts, and we want to show you some specific examples of projects. This is a good start, showing you a double system with a bin. Another option that you can have with stormwater culverts are alternate end detailing, which this photo shows, but I believe this indicates probably best one way that you can have a more efficient culvert system, and that's by using a segmental two-piece system as opposed to one-piece box culvert. What you can view in this photo is a base section of the culvert, as opposed to it being one piece all the way around. This is a base section, but ran at much longer lay lengths, and the result of that is that you're not having to bell up shorter four-piece monolithic pieces in five to six feet length, and you're gaining up to 20 to 30 feet with longer lengths in one set. So what that means is four pieces, four picks, you can gain as much as 120 feet, whereas otherwise with your standard box culvert, you're setting multiple pieces, having to bell up the transverse joint. What we're asking by bringing this up is, please talk to your precaster about creative options and alternates on box culvert. This photo just shows some precast top system with the box culvert bases. Again, another project need that asked for some creativity with the box culvert. Oftentimes you'll find severe skews, such as this one. This was over 20 degree skew, and we were able to come up with it by using a longer lay length two-piece base and top configuration. By using the longer lay length, we're able to accommodate the skew in the one piece at the end. Very good. Thank you, Barry. Moving on to underground detention. Detention really is a blank slate, and there are just too many options to show you everything, so we've assembled a few, but one of the things to note is that for many, many different volumes of stormwater to be detained, whether it's for a cistern, for sprinklers, or detention retention components, owners that want something more durable than just plastic or metal that will ultimately rust and fail, look no further than a utility precast solution. Now, a very basic one, however very large as well, was constructed for a local contractor at an apartment complex. This had two cells of 12 by 12 traditional box culvert, so in the scheme of things, not the most innovative solution. However, there was a time consideration and a availability of delivery into the busy city of what could go when, and so it was determined that this volume containment was the best one for the job. Now, one thing that was included was the outlet structure was built internally to the detention system, and so once all of that was tied together, the only thing that happened on the job site were the pipes from the storm collecting system and all of their structures tied into this, and then the outfall pipe left the property, so it was all contained and hidden from pretty high-end development. Now, what they were charging for rent there was not insignificant, which is why it merited putting this confined or contained system underground. It ended up under the parking lot just outside of the building and met the needs of construction. Similarly, on another project, we had one where there were six cells of 10 wide, 8 foot tall to contain a very large volume. This project was done over 12 years ago, so it was pretty early in the evolution of different ways to contain stormwater, underground versus what we offer today, but as I say, the options are really very, very limitless, so there's a lot of choices of configuration out there. On to another one. This one is actually at the USC at South Carolina Athletic Complex, and this one's one that served two purposes. First and foremost, it was the detention system for the stormwater on a very large property. Additionally, it was also the cistern, so for watering all the athletic fields around this complex, they were able to recycle and draw the water from this. In order for that to work, there was also a water quality section of the system within there, so while this chamber is 24 feet wide, 10 feet tall, and I think this was 200 and some feet long, it was segmented off by baffle walls, so each of those distinct functions sort of lived on its own. Another great example of, you know, precast being able to be a schedule solution, as well as, you know, the quality and scale of what's offered. It sort of looks like the pieces are wet. They are. If you look around the base slab footing down by that blue ladder, you'll notice that it's completely flooded around there. It poured for the three days that this structure was set, and it didn't lightning, so the crane was able to continue to move, and the entire structure was set, while otherwise construction would have ceased. It's a bit of a grading challenge to keep the roads passable, but they did it because the contractor needed the pieces set, so it was definitely a utility precast solution that won the day for both the contractor, as well as the supplier and the owner. Thank you, Joel. We apologize to you Southern Cal folks for speaking of USC as South Carolina, if we have any people from California online with us. Moving on, the one very emerging market that we see are precast tunnels. Precast tunnels are durable, robust, and can be special designed for many uses and many applications, including fire egress, pedestrian, mechanical, air exhaust, and conveyor systems. One thing that's important to note is the timing of specifying precast tunnels. We found in some situations that the actual need for the tunnel is discovered late in the design process, but please know you can turn to precast, but giving a little bit of lead time, not always a lot, but just a little bit of lead time is very helpful. And if you can fit within the time frame, precast can be your answer. This is an example of a pedestrian tunnel for a BMW manufacturing facility. This enables employees to travel from the parking lot into one of their work centers underneath an entrance and exit road within the facility. But one thing of note is the quality. People are traveling through this in and out every day, and precast can come through with an excellent, high quality answer. And as we move on with some of the tunnels, we'll sort of pivot from what is in an exposed condition to closer and closer to indoor conditioned space. And so the tunnel we were just looking at is completely outdoors. As the folks leave the parking lot, they walk down a ramp, go under the road, and then are walking up trails back to the manufacturing facility. It's not conditioned. It does have lighting in it, but it's pretty much being outdoors. As we now look at this BMW egress tunnel, on one of their most recent expansions, they got to the place where the building was so large, building code dictated that they had to have protected egress for folks in the center mass of the building. It was too far from an exit door. So in the center of the manufacturing space, there's a shaft with stairs that people can get down in the event of something going south in the plant. They can get through this and move 400 feet down the tunnel outside. So considerations that were made here, these also, as we were talking about back with culverts, use very long pieces. And so that mitigates the number of transverse joints in the structure. As you look where the contractor is walking through that sort of dark strip under his seat, that's a poor strip. We put these washes in at every one of the joints so that once it was in place, they'd pour two inches of topping, about 12 inches, excuse me, 24 inches in length and the width of the tunnel. And in the best of aligned conditions, oftentimes there can be a little bit of an offset at the joint. It's well within tolerance. However, when we're considering an egress tunnel that your friends and family may be, unfortunately, hopefully it never happens, running through in the event of something going wrong, if the lights are out, we want fewer and fewer trip hazards. So this was something we offered to the contractor. Contractor and owner were very pleased with that once it was installed because it had a smooth transition piece to piece to piece throughout the length of the tunnel increasing safety. Another area that we use that as we continue to move a little bit more condition, this is truly conditioned space. This is at the Tryon Equestrian Center, a pretty world premier classy horse facility up in the mountains in North Carolina at the center lodge, huge, giant looking log cabin is their main restaurant and cooking facilities for the park. Think of it somewhat similar to a Disney World. They wanted all of their delivery and some of just the stuff to stay back of house. And in order to do that, they put it underground. So you can see that the lighting, fire suppression, as well as HVAC on the left-hand side, appears to be dripping, where that and same detail was used on the washes so that deliveries to their main kitchen could be made through this tunnel as well as cooked food going out in the warm room boxes to the multiple stations throughout the arena could all be done underground. You really see that on this next slide where they even went to the trouble to waterproof it. We told them that was not required with a high quality, high bag mix, but it was a belt and suspenders approach. This whole tunnel ended up being buried beyond the truck that you see, the white truck. That is where the arena is and the structure still with pink insulation exposed on the right-hand side. That is the main lodge. This was another one that turned into a great success of precast concrete solution. Moving on to another versatile use of a precast tunnel. This is at a textile plant for an air exhaust tunnel. This takes heat off the textile machinery in the form of air exhaust. One thing we want to note on this project is it was 800 linear feet with openings every 20 feet. The openings had to line up directly underneath very expensive equipment. So they had to rely on precision cast, precision in the precast production. I'm happy to report that no openings were over a quarter inch off, but that's oftentimes one of the concerns that you would hear about adaptability and can precast provide the precision needed. It absolutely can. So now as we continue sort of in this industrial vein of what precast can do, we'll look at a system that was used on a wood chip plant conveyor tunnel. I don't mind saying this was for Weyerhaeuser several years ago, and they were in the process of evaluating different modes of construction and what worked best for them. So they had already put in a tunnel, their conveyor system that went, what happens is underneath a wood chip pile, very tall, very heavy wood chip pile, all of the wood chips are gathered to the center and taken away from the bottom of the pile, go to a conveyor system that has to carry the wood chips under the pile, back out, up, and into the plant. So this is the enclosure that protects the conveyor system. They had already built two other modes of construction. This was their third. We were able to work with them on this for a precast solution. The first two, one was a corrugated metal pipe that they had to go back in and pour a floor in, so you had a flat area to work inside of a circular pipe. That one rusted and leaked very quickly. These are in the lower part of Georgia where there is a very high water table, and you just don't play around. Then the next one was cast in place, and that one was a nightmare. Again, that high water table, they played heck, constantly having to pump everything down and keep it dry enough just to get through construction. And so they were pleased that they were looking at this as their third option, and we were happy to work with them. As you see the tunnel set here, those are large sections. They ended up being greater than 15 feet long, and that was substantially longer than they had looked at in any other options prior to that. As I said, very heavy loading. The entire 300 feet of tunnel was set in three days, so the owner was thrilled with that, and from a sealing standpoint, they were able to seal it, get it backfilled and covered very quickly so it was less of a process, less cost of install. And so ultimately, this one was the best of the three choices. We went on to build a few other tunnels with them, and to this day, still work together on woodchips tunnels as a solution for the conveyor system. Last thing of note in this mode was the fact that you can see the cast-in embed plates in the ceiling of the tunnel. The entirety of the conveyor system, all of the mechanical equipment was suspended from the ceiling. In process situations where there's a lot of dust, woodchips generate some dust that can be very explosive and dangerous, so clean-down is of particular concern to these plants. It's safety-conscious, safety-oriented, so because nothing went down to the floor to support the conveyor, it allowed them a lot of room to sweep and blow down all of the debris to get that out of the way to maintain a safe working environment for the people who had to maintain the tunnel. I mean, it's one of a great success story that we were proud to be a part of. Another specialty application for precast tunnels was on this project. This dealt with a coal ash landfill with lots of publicity, scrutiny, and concern. It was designed cast-in-place, again, for quality reasons and surveillance, but we were able to offer an outstanding solution with the two-piece tunnel. This was classified as dealing with hazardous material, and again, we're looking at very long sections that sped up the project. They had a problem, wanted to alleviate the problem as quickly as possible, and precast ended up being the right way to go. All right, and finally, we thought we'd talk about some miscellaneous conversions from precast to cast-in-place. These are some of the ones that are out there that you probably never thought it was possible, and I'm not sure that I would necessarily specify these things as precast. What we ask of the design community is to be amenable when the contractor and the qualified precaster decide that we've got a better way, a build-a-better mousetrap, we've got a solution to a problem, let's take a look at it, and hopefully we've offered some tools of how that might be reviewed. So the first project we'll look at is at the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport. Starting in the top left, they had an existing cast iron trench drain that was cast into a cast-in-place concrete that runs down the entire flight line of all the gates at GSP. This was failing. The concrete adjacent to the cast iron trenches was chipping and spalling, creating FOD that would get sucked up into the jet engines. Not a good situation. So in this case, the engineer talked to us, and we decided that yes, a precast top inlet solution was indeed possible. So as you kind of move to the top right and bottom left, you can see what those slabs look like. We were able to develop something that had repetition. Also, as you look across the slab, as it goes across the trench, it starts at 14 inches thick, it tapers to 12 and a half inches thick, so it has about an inch and a half of fall, and then goes back up to 14 on the other side. All of the lifting is small recessed pieces so that they don't create any giant voids. All of the trench, the cast iron trench grate was replaced by the slots that were formed into the concrete, so those are two feet wide, about three quarters of an inch thick. The hydrology study was done so that we knew that they would accept the volume of water that they needed to to get it down into the cast-in-place trench that remained. The slabs were not replaced, so it was literally a matter of saw cutting out the slab associated with the inlet and replacing it with these precast slabs. There was a great deal of consternation on behalf of the owner and even the engineer from an aesthetic standpoint, and not the looks of it, but the feel of it. So as the planes would drive across to get to the gate, no one wanted a noticeable bump to be felt, so all of these slabs were poured upside down in steel forms so that we knew that the finish was consistent and the geometry of that top sort of swale shape was exactly perfect. Unfortunately, as somebody who has to get on a plane more than I'd like to some days, I can tell you there's never been a plane ride where people are like, oh my goodness, what was that bump? Nobody even knows the difference. So they're working quite well. They were all replaced a gate at a time, so sequencing of shipment and managing that with the installation contractor was a big deal. Went successfully. The airport's going through a huge renovation. We're proud to be a portion of that on something that hopefully the flying public never knows even happened. These are precast dock panels for a steel fabricator. They needed to extend their dock in order to get not this small piece of equipment, but a very, very large crane to load the barge. So again, we're in a specialized situation. They needed speed. They needed it to be precisely manufactured, and precast was the answer. In response to Hurricane Katrina and to avoid future flooding of Lake Pontchartrain, this was built at the Inner Harbor International Canal. They're very large precast bent pieces that function pretty much as a pile cap. This connects the straight piles and the battered piles. Although this might not be the most complicated production, they were very, they're very heavy pieces, and again, relied on the quality of the precast company and ability to lift large pieces and to mass produce. This allowed the project to go much faster than originally anticipated. Okay, continuing with stair towers and elevator towers, this is something that definitely, as I was saying before, I think is really best left up to the contractor and the precaster to decide from an economic standpoint when it's appropriate and when it's not appropriate. Certainly as weather and schedule dictate things to move faster, these were done in Denver, makes a great deal of sense. There are some times when the geometry is just too cut up and some cast in place makes sense. Sometimes a hybrid makes sense. It is something that we would hope that as the design community is able to see and review these, that they're just sort of evaluated on a case-by-case basis and that people are amenable to accepting a precast solution in lieu of what might have otherwise been drawn to help create a schedule improvement for a project, as well as oftentimes an economic improvement. You know, if you're building a resort and it opens three months early and you can contribute to that, that's definitely a bonus that everyone can enjoy. Here's a continuation of other precast stairs. These are often used pretty much when environment dictates. Anything that's indoors, you don't often, too often see precast stairs, but as opposed to casting these in place, we've seen plenty of cast in place concrete steps. I can't imagine the forming and expense involved with that, but being amenable to and operating with a precast stair solution. And finally, precast stair towers. We show this one because it's a project we worked on very recently. These were, the tallest of the three towers was 110 feet tall, had some massive openings for really owner preference. They were in the center of a large steel mechanical stack, let's just say, for their chemical process that was going around it. They needed a means of egress. It's not that protected because of all the large openings. However, they still did have to be fireproofed, inexplicably, but the salient point here is that that was 110 feet tall, could be stacked out as box tube sections versus a panelized system that would require a phenomenal amount of connections. These were able to be done with spliced connections and they're independently supported. So all of the seismic load that's generated for the stair tower itself is handled by the stair tower. Not accepting load from the structure, but we're not also imposing load on the structure. So that was a pretty big deal. It became a unique solution for the project that, again, has allowed the thing to move quickly and stay on schedule. Thank you. In the mode of throwing out ideas and being amenable to precast, please don't discount precast foundations. Again, this would be very job specific, but it's certainly possible that you have a project in a remote location where it doesn't have a very large labor force to cast in place or extremely aggressive schedules. We have found the ability for precast companies to make very large pieces in specialized sizes can speed up your construction process. Again, this isn't something that we would necessarily say, specify on all projects, but we want you to be open to the idea of how can precast impact the overall economy of my project. And lastly, we wanted to bring up sanitary sewer structures as this is where we started. The main takeaway is that this business continues to evolve and things that were always cast in place, such as very large pump station wet wells or large diameter sanitary sewer manholes, there are other options well outside of the ASTM standards. We ask you to rely on the innovation and engineering of your precast company in this. So I'll hand it back over to Jerry. Thank you, Jerry, and thank you all. We appreciate the time that you take to listen to us today. We hope that this has opened some eyes on options you may not have been aware of before. Also, that perhaps if it's presented to you, you could use a tool such as Emulative Precast in place to help get something approved or otherwise have confidence in the design as presented. And we hope that the options of how utility precast can create success on your project are something that there is a good takeaway from everybody today. So again, thank you for your time. We do appreciate it.

Tyndall Corporation

precast solutions

utility projects

cast-in-place methods

sanitary sewer structures

storm drainage structures

power and energy

construction speed

versatility of precast