Good afternoon. This is Bob Papps from High Concrete. I'll be giving the first portion of what is architectural precast concrete. So what is architectural precast concrete? Well, first and foremost, it's a prefabricated product. It's made in a factory off-site. To be an architectural precast product, it has the attributes of the design, the building enclosure, that is achieved through color, texture, all your function, form, and finish that an architect desires. So that can be transposed into the precast. So the components of the architectural precast can carry some structural significance and attributes, as well as carry the architectural attributes for a designer. It can be load-bearing, it can be non-load-bearing, you can have simple cladding or decorative accents, and it can be reinforced either conventionally or pre-stressed, and we will get into a lot of these different areas in the coming slides. So components and systems, as you see in the diagrams here, this is a combination of both structural and architectural products. The horizontal members are going to show you various structure components, such as hollow core double Ts, and then that's supported by beams and columns. So the vertical products you see here labeled the H, the F's, the A's, these are walls, these are what is going to be the building enclosure, the facades, the elements for viewing from the layperson outside of the structure. So these standard components get pulled together to be on different frames. Here, it's just showing total precast structures. So structural versus architectural. So structural precast can have an architectural finish. However, you look up and you go to your resource and governing body of knowledge, which is PCI manuals and design guide. So under 116, that quality control standard, that basically defines everything for the structural. You can have structurals, as you see in the picture to the right, a parking garage to total precast structure, and has all the attributes to give you your structural design. The exterior elements, your spanders, your wall panels, have architectural features to them. And being that there are structural in nature and required to be structural, they have different tolerances. So those tolerances are a little more liberal as opposed to going to your architectural. So architectural precast products. So they are governed in the body of knowledge by PCI under M&L 116. 117, sorry. So there we have more stringent controls and tolerances. And it is driven for the demand of the overall appearance. It's the building facade. It gives you your design features. A lot of decorative finishes you can do. So you want to use and follow M&L 117 and make sure you have a class A1 certified precaster. Now the various different products for concrete systems, you have basically two elements here. Exterior cladding. Now cladding is those panels for your building enclosure that simply get attached to the structure. So it can be just a solid precast unit, all right, or it could be a thermal efficient unit. But you can give the architect the ability to do any kind of dimension that is needed and layouts and work with your whole building enclosure. Insulated wall panels is a different type of product for architectural precast. Typically used that it bears all the weight and the load down to a foundation and you can stack them. They are self-supporting. So they could be non-load bearing. They could be load bearing. They could take on shear for the building. A lot of different applications can be used for an insulated wall panel and that could drive the design. So work with your local precaster to figure out what is the best application, what the actual dimensions should be of the product. So insulated wall panels. So great value here for insulated wall panels for your building enclosure systems. So it gives you can do a continually thermal performance using these products here. If you look to the right, you'll see that one method of maintaining that thermal break is carbon fiber grid shear stresses. Several products on the market that can bridge those wires together. Or you could design an architectural insulated wall panel to be composite or non-composite. That bridging helps with that composite reaction. Again, your precaster can help you. So what you get is thermal performance that is paramount to other building materials. The interior-wise of the wall panel, the concrete can be in varying thicknesses, but that gives you a thermal mass. And having that thermal mass, it minimizes energy consumption. It helps in the beginning of the design process utilizing precast and evaluation to be done by the entire design team to look at the demand of controlling the environment inside the building. So that can give some efficiency. It can give some economy across the whole structure and the course of the project. That's all your construction costs. Moving forward, post-construction, having this great performance product for your building enclosure, this can help in your operating costs, your long-term investment, you're saving money year over year, because that thermal mass and the continuous break and the insulation you put in there it helps lower your heating and cooling loads, which of course energy costs money. So you do get a good savings there. So all the panels that you use for a wall panel job, you want to maximize size, you want to talk to your local precaster, and you want to identify and locate where the joints are. They do get caulked, and there's several applications and methods to caulking those joints and insulating those caulked joints as well that can extend the lifetime of the caulking product itself. Concrete on the outside, the exterior face, that's durable, sustainable. You pick your finishes and it will last a very long time. Total precast concrete systems and structures. So the great advantage here is, as we showed you earlier in some diagrams, you have structural precast products, you have architectural precast products. So you put them together, you can do an entire structure for that. There's a lot of buildings around the country and your local precast that can guide you, give you profiles, give you case studies, work with you on design assist startups that can see if your development is good for a total precast structure. And when you use that, the architectural elements here can be provided, those products, with varying finishes. You can go vertical schemes, horizontal schemes, that's your panel orientation. You can do multiple finishes, you can do profiles, you can do cornices. And what you want to do is really optimize the layout. So consult your local precaster. But when you do this, it's prefabrication. So you save time on site for those aggressive schedules, just for the savings and costs for an overall schedule. All the work is done up front. It's prefabrication. So you need to invest in your time with design and engineering, designing the precast, and designing the products that need to be made in the factory, go through the production. When you hit on site and it's ready for the installation, those are very quickly. So you could save a lot of time, usually months, of savings on a total construction project schedule, as opposed to more conventional building designs. So, and the precast with the architectural elements gives a lot of flexibility to your finishes, and the spans inside for those structural portions also give you a lot of capabilities for long spans, open interiors, you know, good working spaces to really meet any program design that you can think of. So, aesthetics, color, texture, combinations. So concrete is a great material. It's been used for thousands of years. And so what you get is all these different aggregates and textures and combinations and recipes you can put together, along with what finishes you want to apply to that, what you want to expose, what you don't want to expose, all kinds of combinations. We're going to get into more color aspects a little bit later when we'll look at that, but more color aspects a little bit later when Bo Wright from GATE takes over. So, what I'd like to do here is a case study. So one project that was done in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, kind of a nautical theme. The Navy Yard is a bunch of commercial properties in its development, and it's a unique complex, sort of, it looks like the architects there really like to stretch their imagination to come up with unique building designs, almost like a design competition when you walk through this. If anyone's been there or would like to go there, come to Philadelphia, go to the Navy Yard. You'll see some great architecture. So, Jock Angles Group designed this building here. It's a commercial office space, and along with the nautical theme and the layout and development of the Navy Yard, which this building is on a circular road, and it has a circular running track, and it has a circular field and park in front of the building. So, Big wanted this shockwave type design, sort of, mimicking the circular designs and geometries of the development and the nautical theme for the Navy Yard itself. What they did in the front facade is came up with this multi-radius shape that connects, you know, everything around in the environment that it's in. Very difficult. In precast, one of the advantages to economy and to being successful is repetition. So, you look at this building and three elevations look pretty repetitious, right? Panel to panel to panel. You come to the front with this sphere and these radiuses that they integrated. Every piece on that front facade is unique, right? It's unique in shape. It's unique in its chambers and its facets. So, we thought, how are we going to do this as a precast manufacturer? So, we came up and identified a couple of form families. We used some innovative technology. We used, we put products into six different forms, for example, and you take each of those forms at the max size and you make with a CNC machine and the BIM technology and 3D cutting, you make forms that go inside forms and you finish those forms. So, we really had to put our heads together between the architect, the engineers, our engineers, our production people. A real collaborative effort to make this successful on this project. Added into the equation for the facade here is they wanted it all load bearing. So, the steel frame inside of this building was not designed or engineered to hold the load bearing for all the precast panels. So, including the front facade that when you stand underneath it, you can kind of get some anxiety like it's going to fall down upon you. It's a great design and it is strong and it's held in place. But we had to design some unique innovative connections to do that. But all the panels, they're interlocking. It's sort of like a tile pattern of glass and precast. But the precast panels have some voids, some pockets, and they have the bearing tube steels coming out at certain points and they kind of interconnect and bring that load all the way down, which then gets transferred down to the foundation. Here, you'll see some cross sections of it, a picture of the installation of the front facade, which also had a lot of challenges. How do you erect this piece and swing it in and come into it? Again, some innovative connections were designed for this project along with, you know, your expert PCI certified erectors that do a wonderful job. It's just we all collaborated together to do this magnificent structure. So, really a great success. Shows you what you can do and that an architect, you know, his imagination can come to life. The next case study we're going to look at is a project for the Statue of Liberty. So, there was the Statue of Liberty Museum project evolved out of a need. There was a foundation that was developed, the Ellis Island Statue of Liberty Foundation, and they raised money to build a museum on site and it was private, it was donations, and an FX collaborative was hired to FX collaborative was hired to design this and they had a lot of unique challenges, unique asks from the owner. Certainly, the lady of the harbor there, you don't want anything to overpower her, you know. They wanted the lady to be still the focal point of anything around New York Harbor. So, the museum design that FX collaborative came up with was, let's do a low structure that kind of looks like it's rising out of the ground, give it a green roof, it'll blend in, we'll have all the history and everything inside the museum, but really subdued and blended into the environment. So, when they came along and were considering options of building enclosure and structural frame, they had called up a precaster to give some design assist options and look at it and we helped the design team develop a system of precast that satisfied a lot of their unique challenges. So, not only did they want the building enclosure to be fully insulated, continuous insulation, meet an R-value, they wanted it to be load-bearing, they wanted it to take shear, they wanted it to take the load of all the steel that was going to be inside, and they also had a very unique wave load that they had to contend with, being right at the edge of the water, and they developed this design system overall that would allow water to come into and underneath the building structure in a sort of tub environment, a holding tank, and some openings and relief penetrations through the building exterior to allow this to happen in and out in storm surges or severe weather issues. So, we helped them design it. The bottom base panels are extremely thick, they're 23 inches thick, they're fully insulated, we stack vertical panels on top of that. As you see in the one picture here, those dark openings or slots, that's for the wave relief, and that allows all that water to come in and out in a great big storm. Here's two pictures of the panels going up. So, we mobilized on site with the crane, we laid all the panels in a factory, we took it to a port in New Jersey, we barged them over, had the crane on site, assembled the panels together, and the design, the rip design that you see there, custom design by FX Collaborative, they knew what they wanted and had something in mind, and it was about shadow form and function for this project. They took the vertical striations for across the river, if anyone knows the Palisades up by Englewood Cliffs, you sort of see that huge, the cliffs, it's vertical striations of rock coming and as they emerge out up from the water into the land that supports above. Same type of design they wanted to keep here. Vertical striations, they loved the precast elements they worked with, what kind of design, texture, tactile, how to feel, how to look, how's it look in the sun, how's it look in all these different shadows? So, we developed their custom pattern, we had form liners, custom made, and we were able to match up and give them exactly what they need and satisfy a lot of different challenges. Key takeaways. So, architectural precast, it's made in the factory, it's precast concrete, it's going to give you the form and function and the finished effect that the architect desires or the owner or end user whoever's trying to drive the design and whatever they're planning in a community or vision or an imagination, whatever, precast and concrete can be a palette to a designer. Components and products for architectural, they can be strictly cladding, non-load-bearing, hung on a building, or they can be part structural and be part of the structural frame of a building and load-bearing such as wall panels. So, a lot of versatility, the products can be used in all different applications. So, when you're considering your building that you're designing, should I use architectural precast? Call PCI, call your local precaster, get them involved up front and they will find a solution for you. At this point, we're going to transition and give you the unique qualities of color, surface texture, which is going to be presented by Mo Wright. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next section of today's webinar. We're going to be covering, like Bob said, color, texture, and basically forming and the way we approach that. So, before we ever really get started on a project, when an architect calls, the first thing we do is refer them to the color and texture guide. Most every PCI producer has a copy of this book in their library, and most architects do. So, if you don't have a copy, please order one. And one of the reasons I encourage this is because you've got color plates inside that book. It's a good starting place for someone to decide what type of finish, what color, surface texture, form liner, that they can that they can peruse in that book and decide what direction they want to go in. And then at that point, you can order with a producer based on those color plates. Everybody knows what color it is. You're not looking at screen variations between monitors. You all know your base starting point. And then from there, you order a range of colors and finishes. So, samples can come in small 4x4 blocks, 6x6, and 12x12 samples, depending on your market area and what kind of size space you have in your library as an architect. So, keep that in mind. So, the process from there, once you've selected your color and you've engaged your producer, after that, you're going to be moving on to mock-ups. Mock-ups can range from 4x4s for approval of color and texture on simpler jobs, like what you can see on the top right. On the left, you've got an in-place mock-up where they're testing systems. So, you've installed most of the systems that you would have on an exterior to see how they fit together. And on the bottom right, you've got a mock-up that was produced with pre-installed glazing to test wind load and seismic. So, it just kind of depends on what your job calls for and what your budget calls for, for the owner. So, from ground zero here, the concrete mix. Concrete is going to be made of white. Most of the time, it's going to be your white mix for consistency and color. Some jobs, I'll show you one later on, go with gray cement and even flash sometimes, just kind of depending on what the goals are. Fine coarse aggregates, pigments, all of those things mixed together to make a panel. You can have multiple mixes in a single panel, or you can use different textures to achieve your aesthetic goals. So, to start with our recipe item, pigment. All of the PCI plants participate in the QC program, and so we all are conforming to ASTM C-979. And the other interesting fact is most of us have long-standing relationships with pigment suppliers. And so, we know that the pigments that we get are high quality, and they're all going to ensure color fastness. So, from there, you can see on the slide, there are three different samples there with a variety of colors. Each one of those is its own mix design. So, you can see that a finish can be a mix design. Each one of those is its own mix design. So, you can see that a finish can vary greatly just by the kind of texture you're giving it and the depth of texture. So, here on this slide, you've got a cool recipe. It's a cooler color on the left and a warmer on the right. But the variation in colors is achieved by the different finishes that you see there. So, the first finish that I'm going to talk about is acid ash. It's one of my favorites. It has a really deep color, rich color, that's achieved through a non-abrasive manner. It's a pressure wash with acid mixed in with water. And it's removing the formed finish from the precast panel in the yard and exposing the fines that are gained from the sands and the aggregates that are chosen. So, you want to make sure when you're doing this that you're picking a pigment that blends well with the fines that you're trying to expose. Acid ash does really well with the darker colors. Typically, when you're doing an acid ash panel, you're going to be getting some rich, deep browns, blacks, buffs, tans, in some cases white. It just kind of depends so from there, sandblast. Sandblast, of course, can have light, medium, and heavy exposures. In this particular picture, it's a panel that has multiple finishes, multiple colors, and sandblasted at different depths in those areas for maximum variation. Exposed aggregate, it's also known as retarder finish. It's sometimes called retarder finish. Lately, it's exposed. It's usually used to resemble flame finish granites. And the way you get this is applying a chemical surface retarder to the mold. You're prepping the mold prior and then when you pull the panel the next day, you're rinsing the slurry off of the face of the panel. That chemical, what it's doing is it's retarding the surface of the precast panel while it's curing. So as the panel reaches its desired stripping strength, the surface at different depths, depending on the size aggregates that are chosen, can be washed away to give you a nice finish that is utilizing the rich color that you're getting from the different quarries that are available around the United States. In this slide, you can see you've got a variety. With this, you've got a variegated stone finish. You've got exposed aggregate. You've got sandblast. But it's all with one mix design. So you're able to achieve all these different colors by by a smart designer taking advantage of the different finishes available. Well, so it can work with glass. So you can kind of get the theme here. Architectural precast concrete can can take any form from bright vibrant colors that you see on this slide to more clean designs, solid white, things like that. So one of the newer finishes that are on the market today is a polished finish. It's becoming more and more prevalent. And originally, the reason people were picking polish was as a suggestion for replacement for natural stone. And the project that you see on the right in the photo, that project was originally designed as a granite exterior. But they were looking to try and achieve an edge-to-edge thermal and vapor barrier along the air barrier. And they couldn't really achieve it with the design that they had, and they looked for a precast alternative, and thus this mass-produced polished exterior was the result. So one of the side benefits that ended up being a driving factor for some of the later design are the crisp details that are able to be achieved like you see on the left. Natural precast forms, it's a wet cast material, so most of the forms are caulked as the design elements are installed in the mold. And what caulk does is it rounds the edges off. So when you're sandblasting or acid etching, the details are more rounded and they're not quite as pronounced. The details are very pronounced, as you can see in the picture there on the left. This particular project in Manhattan, the polished finish was used to match a prior project that Sir Chipperfield had produced on Fifth Avenue for a high-end retail store. He had used a terrazzo floor ceiling and he wanted to use that same look again, but as an exterior element near Bryant Park. So lots of questions as to whether or not this project is terrazzo or precast. And yes, it is an architectural precast project, and those are large window units that you see. So they were able to take advantage of the fast installation time that we were able to offer. For this project that you see, it's from Miami, this originally was designed as a metal panel, but because of the hurricane codes that they've got down there and the fact that Florida International University has gravitated towards precast concrete on most of the campus projects of late, they looked for a precast design that could provide a not necessarily a metallic finish, but something that would be smooth like a metal panel would be. And a burnished finish provided them a solution. Burnish is a light polish that only gets maybe a couple of passes with the finer pads, much different from the previous where there's multi-step processes, so a little bit different. So starting to get into forming here, reveals are the unsung hero of the precast industry. You can have a very simple exterior, a very cost-effective exterior just by taking advantage of reveals and patterning of reveals. So for this project in Chicago, you've got very large, economical, high square footage panels, but instead of being just a standard flat panel, you've got a real pattern that was applied very economically, adding very little cost per square foot, but ended up with a very interesting, what appears to be complex design, but very economical. Form liners is another way to take advantage of precast concrete's plasticity. So you can start with some of this in that PCI color and texture guide. They've got lots of slides of available form liners. And of late, there are a variety of form liners available on the market due to the increased number of suppliers that we have. So there's more competition, which has spawned more potential solutions from these different suppliers. You've got CNC machines that they're taking advantage of, different kind of forming that they're using in the form liner industry. So lots of things have advanced. You can see here, you've also got the ability to order up custom form liners. Lots of manufacturers have their own CNC departments now. So we're able to produce any design that an architect might have as their vision. On the right, you've got a nice project in downtown Chicago where we're achieving natural stone with a form finish. So you're casting on the form and then pulling directly and storing it and shipping it. So we're able to achieve some really complex looks without adding too much to your project. More custom solutions available. This is a custom form liner cast using rubber, which really came from this project. Some of y'all might recognize the beginnings of the Perot Museum on these slides. You can see on the right. What is so significant about this project is that the idea of using modules within a mold, working directly with an architect, this process was developed to achieve this very complex design, but without adding tons and tons and tons of mold work. We're able to use a single form, but use those rubber modules and shift them around, matching the BIM model tickets to achieve a very random facade, but only using a few molds. So that's how this project kind of started a revolution in a way. Some of the other projects that I'll cover later on, really born from the ideas surrounding this project. So before I get to that, I'm going to cover brick. Brick and lay. It's kind of interesting. This one on the top left is a joint venture between High Concrete Group and Gate Precast Company, which is nice to be able to showcase it today. And brick and lay was selected for this project due to scheduling constraints. Those barrel vaults that you see, there's I'll pick 11 pieces that comprise what you see in that picture. So you're talking about a day and a half, two days, you're not going to achieve that with a masonry facade. They just couldn't meet the schedule at all. So they turned to precast for the solution. Then that was the motivating factor for that project. Now the other ones that you see, there were other concerns. So top right, it was that they wanted their design and they could only get it with precast with an edge to edge insulated exterior. The lower right, same deal. We replaced the exterior frame and those elements became load bearing and the same on the left. That's a good solution for a dorm on a college campus, originally designed as masonry and shifted to an edge to edge insulated precast for performance, but also for speed of construction. Now this here, this slide, when we first started making brick and lay panels 20 plus years ago, we only had a few products available to us. In a similar way as the form ladder industry has matured, so has the brick and lay industry. We now have edge cap corners, closure edge caps. They can resemble or mimic a masonry facade to the nth degree. And this is how we do it. You have a form ladder placed in the form, you've got your reinforcing, you pour your first layer of mud, you come back and you pour your ASHRAE 90.1 compliant edge to edge insulation and then pour your back white. And as you can see on the left, you've got kiln flashed, tumbled brick, which we didn't have access to say even 10 or 15 years ago. So it's nice to have more options for architects today. And similar to that is terracotta. Terracotta is treated in the same fashion that brick is because of the expansion contraction properties are similar. You can lay the terracotta down in the mold, pour right over the back of it, the same way that you do with a brick. Of course, giving you the deep dark colors that you can get with terracotta, but you're not having to settle for a rain screen system if you choose not to. You can take advantage of the inherent properties in the precast concrete as an air barrier. And if you choose, you can add insulation to it for the thermal and vapor. Natural stone, very different. Natural stone requires the use of anchors. You place your pieces down in the mold, you put your pre-drilled anchors in. And the next step, the important one, is your bond breaker. You place your bond breaker down and then you pour over the back of it. And this allows the stone to be able to float on the exterior of the precast concrete without having any issues with the expansion and contraction properties being so different. You can see an example right there. The home of Indiana limestone, Indiana University, with precast panels doing the heavy lifting. Next, these are brand new products on the market, graphically imaged concrete. We're achieving it on the left, far left, where it says marching nets, a monument in downtown Nashville, of course, to the Civil Rights Movement. That's achieved with a retarder finish. So you've got a dark aggregate that's had a retarder applied to it in a pattern that's a stencil. And then to the right, you've got something called photo etch. So you've got a very fine detail and form that's supplied to you by one of our wonderful suppliers. But of course, you don't apply a finish to this. It's a form finish taken right out of the form. And it kind of works like the old Cracker Jack box images, where you look from the left and the right, you can see the image, but you look at it dead on and you can't really see it. So it's using light refracting off of the shapes that are etched into the form to give you your image. It's really, really cool. If you've never seen it in person, it's not like anything you've seen on a building. So these types of projects are wonderful to be involved in because they're really, really special. Lettering, back to something that's really basic, signage. When an owner decides to put signage out front and he's paying all this extra money to put in lighting, and you've got these anchors that are put in the face of the precast, with the lettering and everything, all that can be done in precast very economically just by adding the foam lettering to the form, like you see on the top left, pour over the back of it, and boom, you've got your sign out front. In the center, bottom of the slide that you see there, you've got a saying. There's another project on a university campus that puts the entire campus creed on the exterior of the building. So there's lots of different possibilities in working with lettering, and if you've got any questions about that, feel free to type away. We can tell you what's possible. Endless options, that's kind of the theme of architectural precast. If you can imagine it, it can probably be cast in precast. So from making precast look like something else, whether it be limestone or brick cast in, or just taking advantage of the natural inherent beauty in precast concrete that you see on the bottom right. In that situation, you're taking advantage of the design options available, and you're not really putting a whole lot of money into your next design. You're reallocating those funds into forming and custom pieces. So that's a wash. So the case study that we're going to talk about today is the Domino Sugar Factory redevelopment. It's Site A, also known as 260 Kent. I think it just underwent another name change earlier this week, so we'll see if that one sticks. So Cook Fox, the architect, was after using the depth of the facade as shading elements. And so they went through a sun study. As you can see on this slide, you've got different – each of the elevations had little tweaks to them. The east and west were typical. They were pretty much the same. The south and the north were very different. On the north, you had the verticals that were pronounced, and on the south, you had the horizontals pronounced. And that's all based on the sun study and the shadows that were able to be cast by the pieces. On the right-hand side of this slide, you see that it's a 3D-printed study model, which was a little bit of foreshadowing. At the time, we didn't really – it really wasn't a possibility, but by the time we were nearing completion of the design, as the design assist partner, we had this situation. This is the Oak Ridge National Lab, which was a joint venture with PCI and Gate Pre-Gas Company. And it was put into use on this project. This is large format, large area, additive manufacturing. There's lots of different acronyms based on the manufacturer producing the machine. So this is a new technique that's available. You can see here, this is one of the several tours through a plant, looking at the forms and the way they were used. Now what makes it special, which makes this whole process special, is the design assist portion. You've got your contract documents, or your design assist, your design development documents on the left, your floor construction model, which was a Revit model. So to create the possibilities of having continuity in design and intelligence retained in the model, the voids within – the voids in Revit that are used to create the shapes were exported and turned into solids, which were able to be able to use an inventor to communicate to the 3D printing software. The Cincinnati machine is what was used, and they have proprietary software that was able to talk to an inventor. And so the slicer and toolpath programs were taken directly from the same intelligence that was used to create the profiles in Revit, and that produced the model. So it's an architect's dream to be able to have the model be directly – that information that's put into the model be directly exported to produce the product. Complete control and assurance to know that their design is being directly reflected in the field. These are the different families that were created. You've got all kind of different families, and using families in this way gave them the ability to make different design changes as they were moving through design. Here are a little interesting tidbits. Pre-installed windows, which added to their ability to – for reducing scope onsite from caulking to the installation and inspection of the windows, connections, and the like. So with this, I'm going to skip that. We're starting to get out of time. This is one of the images from Jobsite lately, and I'm going to invite Bob to come back and join me for this slide. This is something near and dear to our hearts. This process here, design assist versus traditional delivery method, what this is doing, the types of projects that you've seen in case studies today, most of those involve some sort of design assist method, whether it was contractual or whether or not it was just a good partnership with an architect early in design. What you're looking for is time savings. You've got this illustrated, obviously, on the right. You've got time savings gained from the shop drawing being developed during design stage leading up to the construction document. Then the other factors that you have are potential redesign possibilities, post-bid, either due to budget issues or items that are discovered during the bidding process, gaps between trades. All that can be tracked and taken care of well before a final budget is established for the owner. Costs can be tracked on a weekly and biweekly basis, giving the owner real-time information direct from the subcontractor producer of the product about any design changes or issues, as well as how they relate to the other trades. Over time, this allows the owner to gain the confidence in the design. They can start reducing contingency and either move that capital into other assets or just take it as an overall cost saving. It's a whole new way of delivering a project on-site for an owner, and it's really for the owner. That's what this is for. It is a great delivery method to be used. A lot of advantages here. You reduce risk. That's important to everybody. Once you reduce risk and control risk and minimize it, you start to save money. As Mo mentioned, contingencies can be reduced when you realize that you are collaborating and identifying the exact products that will be used eventually. The process is similar to IPD, Integrated Project Delivery Method. That's a collaborative spirit and method of doing it. Similar method here. When you do get the precaster on board, it helps the designer. You can identify connections or structural concerns, your design factors, your architectural elements, the facades, the building enclosure. You start to understand all of those factors and those attributes for a precast design. When you're involved with that, you can identify the costs. You work from a budget, and then you narrow down the scope, and then you work with the team and the owner and the construction manager and all the staff, whoever's maintaining the budget. You identify what you need and your end goal, and it's a great opportunity to have more time to value engineer should that be needed, whereas if you did the traditional method, you're so far down the path of making designer assumptions without a specialty precast contractor involved that you sometimes have to go backwards or you're pricing too much risk or a lot of unknowns and a lot of scope creep. Get the design assist method. You eliminate scope creep. You reduce your risk. You reduce cost of collaboration, and the time savings is a value that's for everybody, so good method to use. With that, we're going to switch over to connections. I understand we're running out of time, so I am going to try to get through this a little quickly. Connections are more structural, so the architectural elements we've gone over in pretty great detail and depth, so how you connect it to a building is what we're going to cover here pretty quickly. When you work with a precaster, when you design and considering the connections to use, you have to identify the application and the product, again, going back to that non-load bearing, load bearing, and supporting, what are you using the product for, what's your structural elements doing, and integrate them and figure out where you need to connect. How's this going to fit together? So standard typical connections we'll go through here. So precast sits on top of foundation, so load bearing, and you can stack precast upon precast and go mid-rise, you can go pretty high with it. So here you'll see simple schematic here. So the red is an embed in the precast in the factory. The orange is an embed in the field that goes to the CIP contractor that's designed and coordinated with the precaster and CIP and the construction managers. The purple you see on the vertical is just a bridge plate connecting it, and the purple that you see underneath the precast, that's shim stacks to be able to. So cast-in-place structures above ground, you know, what we showed you was that foundation, this cast-in-place structure going above. So you'll see on the left the bearing is tube steel cast into the precast product, and that's the bearing connection. And then right next to it, you'll see in a little greater detail, is for your lateral connection, which is simply a slotted connection, an angle on the precast, and it's a threaded rod and a manual connection. You do want to utilize, whenever you can, to economize the cost, to reduce cost, trying to do mechanical connections. Welding in a field can be quite expensive. Sometimes it is definitely needed, but you really want to take that into consideration and consult your local precaster, they can help you with that. So when you're hanging these precast panels, spandrels, you know, window panels, so sometimes you're attaching your bearing to just one floor part of the structure, and your panel is really extending lower. So you're concerned about the lateral. So sometimes kickers are needed. So you want your panel to really go column to column, wherever that could be. And then the mid-spans, because you can optimize your precast with large panels, and you'll need these kickers. So it's simple miscellaneous steel, embeds into precast, and it gets coordinated and you have your easy connections to make. On your steel, come up with a steel deck and you pour in your concrete. Similar to a concrete floor, it's just different parts and pieces, concepts all the same. You know, the lateral connection that gets into the metal deck or on top of your steel beam, same slotted connection in the precast itself, again, all coordinated. Most precasters will supply what gets cast in or attached to steel, but very simple solutions and a lot of standardization across the country for that. You can go to your design guides for that, BCI. Steel kickers, similar to the cast-in-place structure, you'll have a kicker that's needed upon time, so depending on your layout and your structure, your bearing. So whenever you're designing your structure and using precast, you want to optimize the size of it, like we've said before, make it as big as possible, insert constraints with shipping and erection and logistics. So there's a formula there and you can consult your precaster once again to help you there. So your columns, you want the bearing and you need to put a ledge, a corbel, something there. Usually it's a C-channel or could be an angle with some gussets, but you have the steel fabricator have that attached in their shop, their prefabrication, comes out to the field that way and the precaster, with their prefabrication, they're embedding that way as you see, that support tube steel and we bring it to site, hang it with the crane, drop it right down on the edge, go, get your laterals connected, real simple, a lot of standardization and of course, a lot of collaboration. So we also have pocketed bearing, this has to contend with designs where your columns, so your steel columns could be offset, it could be out to the front of the building. So we do have solutions for all types and cases, so you can have some pocketed and ledge bearings. So a lot of different connections, we could usually figure out and give you a solution for any of your needs and anything in precast capabilities. Okay, so that's going to wrap up all the slides, all the detail that we've gone to and through. So the presenters today, myself, Bob Papps and Mo Wright from GATE, if there are any questions that the group or field would like to give, we're going to turn that back over to PCI and they will administer and manage any Q&A type errors.

architectural precast concrete

prefabricated product

cladding

decorative accents

thermal performance

energy efficiency

case studies

design assist

precast construction