Good afternoon wherever you're sitting at your desk or riding an airplane or riding in a car or wherever you happen to be. Welcome to PCI's Precast Concrete 101. This is our introduction into Precast and as I've learned from my architectural student intern this week that this was the perfect presentation to kind of get him started into the world of Precast and what we're doing with it. So we're going to follow along the AIA guidelines, CES guidelines for the program. Becky talked to you a little bit about it. It's a registered education program. And my name is Jim Lewis. I'm an architect. I live here in Chicago, live downtown. I've been in our industry for probably about 17, 18 years. Before that I was a consultant. Before that I was in practice. I call myself a recovering architect because I consult more than actually in the practice. But I learned in practice I was probably a better consultant and I didn't have to chase money and didn't have to listen to customers say they didn't like my design. So today we're going to spend some time talking a lot about Precast applications, kind of what's going on with Precast, how it's being used. There's this big misperception, we'll kind of myth bust it, so to speak, that Precast is typically one color. It's gray and it's typically flat. And I think you'll see a lot of different applications today that are going to change your mind about that. Understand the benefits. There's some inherent benefits, some things that you probably know and some things you don't know. Cover a lot about architectural, structural, kind of how the solutions and things, how you design with those. And then we're going to talk a lot about design versatility, talk a little bit about an insulation and insulation systems and long-term performance. So I'm going to give you a kind of an introductory on what Precast and pre-stressed concrete is, talk about components, cover total Precast and kind of what that is, the applications, benefits, design challenges, and technical stuff. So I picked this quote, I always use a quote to start a presentation. I love it. Norman Foster, who knows the last one of his famous designs that is just being occupied today? Raise your hand if you know that. Well, if you raise your hand, you're probably using the electronics or listening to me today by the company that he worked for, which is Apple. But this quote, it makes you think about architecture in a different way. It makes you think about Precast in a different way. It says, as an architect, you design for the present with an awareness of the past for a future, which is essentially unknown. So true. Right now with the internet of things and all things with technology, the designs for the day, we have no idea really as design professionals what's going to happen in the future. And it's kind of a, for me, it's a fun time. It's probably the most fun I'm having now that I've had since I got out of a school. So we're going to take you kind of through the world of Precast concrete and give you kind of the good, the bad, and kind of the way it works. What is concrete? A lot of people, there's this big misnomer with concrete. People call it cement. Well, concrete, cement is a component of concrete. And basically, it's a material that has cement, water, aggregates, I call it ags, and then add mixtures and then entrained or air. And these are, you know, some of these are man-made materials and some of these are natural materials to create. What we know is concrete. So we've got that definition. So there'll be a test at the end. Remember what concrete is. So what's Precast concrete? Okay. Precast concrete, this is the American Concrete Institute definition, is Precast is concrete cast into a specific shape at a location other than its in-service position. Really, it's prefabricated. That's the new buzzword in architecture, new buzzword in the construction world, but it's prefabricated concrete made in a controlled environment or made in a controlled setting and then shipped or transported to where it's going to have its service life. So it's a different, you know, it's Precast plants are very high-tech, you know, types of operations. You're able, again, as we finish up today, I'll give you some resources where you can go to your local Precast plant. But Precast concrete, again, is not made on the site. It's not poured in place. It's actual Precast concrete that's cast in an operation or a plant and then shipped to its end-use. Very similarly, you see the parking garage on the left, the Vienna Park down in Miami, and just see those panels were made in a plant in Kissimmee, Florida, and then shipped into the job site. How is it made? Okay. There's a lot of variables when we're making concrete. Okay. The mix design and the composition within the mix design affects the color, affects the strength, affects the performance of the concrete. That's a variable. Weather conditions like temperature, humidity have a control or have become a factor when you're looking at making concrete. And then consolidation, or we typically use the word swamp, and how it basically moves. When you think of concrete, you've got to think of like liquid plastic or wax. And a lot of times, you're taking that concrete and you're trying to have it go into around to make brick joints and have it go in to make odd shapes. We'll talk a lot about how concrete, how you control that, and how you can be able to do these amazing objects. So, what's pre-stressed concrete? Okay. So, we're the Precast Pre-Stressed Concrete Institute. What's pre-stressed concrete? Okay. So, basically, I put it down there at the bottom for the test. Concrete strong in compression, weak in tension. Therefore, most concrete is usually reinforced with steel. So, pre-stressing is a primary. It's a cable that's primarily used to make it. It's called pre-stressing steel that's laid in to help with the compression of the concrete. So, it helps with the strength, and helps with the in-service life, and helps with the performance, the in-service performance of the piece of pre-stressed concrete. Some reasons you pre-stress. Increased load capacity is one item. Allows typically for greater spans. Reduces cracks typically. And then, you can do some smaller sections, and it gives it just a little bit more of an opportunity there to look at what's going on to make sure that it's performing the right way. The combination kind of when we talk about pre-stressing, the forces actually put a camber on the piece of precast. And typically, you're going to see this on beams. You're going to see this on double Ts. You'll see camber introduced on hollow core. And most of those elements are on horizontal surfaces. You may also see camber introduced on some spandrels as well, wherever you're loading the spandrels. So, it's kind of to get to the camber, and get to the loading aspects of it, is that you're introducing the load, pre-stressing the force, and creating camber. Well, what happens when you load that piece of camber is that the load basically makes the piece flatten out, but it improves. The camber improves the performance of it. It's just kind of this term that's been bounced around in our industry and concrete in general, high-performance material. So, what is high-performance material? It's kind of an architectural buzzword. I'm going to cover just about all of this today, and just show you kind of how precast is high-performance. But it's even more than that. It's resilient. I think resilient is probably the next generation of terms that we're talking about precast. So, let's talk about the history of precast. All right. Baja Temple. How many people know where that is? All right. So, hopefully you read the slide. See, it's north of Chicago. And what's interesting about the Baja Temple, if you haven't been to it, you need to go. It's beautiful. It's north of Chicago, just outside of Evanston. But what's amazing to this is, to understand the pre-manufactured or pre-fabricated level of this building, all these pieces you see, interior and exterior, were made in Roslyn, Virginia. That's right. Roslyn, Virginia, which is probably right between the Arlington Cemetery. My best guess that I've been able to track down is between the Arlington Cemetery there and the USA Today building. So, it's amazing that this precast was made there, and then it was shipped in to north of Chicago and to create this structure. Started in the 20s, 1921, finished up in the 50s. But this is a true testament of architecture precast. Again, the precast in general, back in Europe and both in the States, has been used since the 40s and 50s. So, as we look at this building here, this is one of the early bridges still in use today. The Walnut Lane Bridge in Philadelphia, which is circa 1949, 1950. Again, this precast concrete's been used in service, still being in service, in service life longer than I've been alive. So, we're going to kind of cover a lot of, again, this is precast you see here. We're going to cover a little bit on components and systems. If we're talking about kind of components and we're looking at what we call load-bearing or non-load-bearing kind of walls, there's kind of three different types of things that I want to cover here. The first is in the red, which shows a typical column and beam construction, which is just using the columns of beams on the inside of the building to transfer down the load of the structure down to the foundation. So, we would use that in a total precast or an all-precast structure. When you're looking in the blue, you're looking into your shear wall system just to help with the diaphragm of the interior shear wall, and then we'll talk about the exterior shear wall system and the purple on the right. All three of those systems are in play when you start talking about components and systems when we're talking about buildings. All right. So, typically for a long time, you would see parking garages were built with columns and beams and this type of system, and then you've seen architects and designers and developers start building structures, office buildings, dormitories, hospitals, medical centers, and using that system where instead of doing cast-in-place and doing the structural steel system, they're doing a precast system, which is, again, prefabricated offsite, brought in and erected, and they're doing that for speed, but they're also doing for a lot of the benefits with long-term durability, and we'll cover a lot of that as we kind of move through. So, that's called a rigid frame or rigid frame system. A shear wall system. What does a shear wall do? Okay. All right. So, the shear wall system here is a series of window punch panels. In this situation here, they could be either horizontal in application, or they could be vertical. Traditionally, when we see a shear wall picking up the shear in a structure that's not being picked up on the inside of the structure, it's typically a horizontal panelization, and if we wanted to, again, move out and do the shear walls on the inside, do the solid around, let's say, the elevator or the stairs, you could do that, and then you would not have to transfer the shear to the outside. So, it's kind of two different ways of looking at the shear wall system. One is on the interior corridor, and one is on the outside. So, as we talk a little bit about some of the parts and pieces of precast, I'm going to show you some wall panels. I'm going to talk a little bit about spangles, shear parsee, which is kind of fun. You're going to see some cool projects with that. I'll talk a little bit about tees, hollow core, columns and beams, bridge stuff, and specialty. So, as we talk a little bit about wall panels, here on Centralia, Illinois, new school, a question to you is, does everybody know what the mascot of this school is? Well, the mascot of this school is the orphans. They've won more basketball games than any other high school in the U.S., including DeMata. So, Centralia built a new school. These panels are vertical wall panels, and here in this situation, they are taking this two-story vertical panel and erecting it in place, and this wall system here is carrying, in this situation, is carrying the floor load and the roof load. So, that panel is all transferred down to a gray beam. This is some spangles. Spangle on the left is a window punch panel. In this situation here, it's covering floor to floor, and this is on a project in Miami, a Perkins and Will project in Miami, and it's called a window punch panel. The other panel on the right is using what's called photo etch, which is using some form liners system to do a spangle on the outside of this building. So, again, different uses, but again, some spangles. So, I love this picture. I've used it in just about everything, and I've met the man that the picture was taken of. This is glass fiber reinforced concrete. This is typically thin. This is typically somewhere three-quarters to an inch thick. Now we're seeing GFRC being made, glass fiber reinforced concrete being made with sections and then spray foam, closed-cell spray foam, sprayed in the back of it to give it its R value and give it its insulation, but these are pieces from the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, and we'll talk a little bit about that as we move on, but glass fiber reinforced concrete, which is thin concrete that is then mounted to a frame and then erected in place. The double Ts you see here, you see the bed on the left of the double Ts. Double Ts, I've seen them as long as 100 feet, over 100 feet long. Again, we talked a little bit about introducing the camber. You see it on the picture on the right, ready to take the live and dead loads of the structure, but double Ts again have prestressing strand in them. They're available two ways, either an un-topped T, which has a topping applied at the job site, and then they're topped Ts, which mean they're ready to be used. So, two different types of double Ts, so you can check with your local producer on what type of double Ts he does. Typically, they're going to be somewhere in the 10, 12, or 15 foot wide. So, for parking spacing, base spacing, and parking garages, where they use a lot in class A office buildings and then in apartments, typically people using 12 foot wide and or 15 foot wide double Ts. So, as we talk about Holocore, Holocore has been around forever. Holocore here, you're seeing they're erecting it on a block structure. They erected on precast structure. They erected on steel stud structures, but with Holocore again, you've got camber like you do with double Ts, but we're also seeing a movement that started in Canada that's here in the States now for school, where they're using the cores of this to blow, the use for the HVAC system. So, they're reducing the floor to floor height, reducing the size of the spacing between the floors. So, typically a lot of hotels, a lot of dorms and things are using Holocore. So, spans aren't as long as double Ts, but you can get these in a variety of thicknesses based on the span. Typically, they're four feet. Some people are doing wider pieces of Holocore. So, as we talk a little bit about, this is called an inverted T beam and a column detail here. So, you've got on the left, you've got a double T that's coming in to catch, and then it's going into an inverted T beam. So, inverted T beam is exactly what it is. It's a T that'll catch the double T coming from both directions, and then it's sitting on a column with a haunch on it. That's a pretty typical detail, again, that we're seeing now. I've been around parking forever, But in the last 20, 30 years, you're seeing a lot more in class A and dorms and those types of structures. Structural bridge beams. It's pretty amazing what they're doing with these big bridge beams. And then not only for bridges, but they're doing them for pedestrian walkways now. They're using them. And then even green spaces or green roofs or open spaces on the tops of buildings. Buildings you're seeing people use really heavy duty beams. But in this situation here, as you see, they're erecting this bridge beam. Again, a precast bridge beam for a bridge. So some other specialty components. Frost Museum, kind of a favorite. I visited to see this project in Miami. Amazing project. Again, this natatorium for students and others to come in. You've got the ring at the top, compression ring. And then you've got these load bearing panels that are erected in place. So again, you're seeing – you'll see a lot of this today during the presentation. You're seeing a lot of panels that are radius and alternate geometry. Why would you use precast on this if you're the architect or you're thinking about designing a building or you're still in grad school and you're thinking about doing – why use precast? Well, it'll – you can unload it there in that application. Look at the color consistency on the outside of the building. It's very consistent in color. It's easy to do in shape. Again, you're pouring concrete which just, again, moves like plastic or wax, hot wax. So it's pretty – again, precast concrete is so adaptable and can be used in so many different variety of areas. So as we kind of talk a little bit about applications, we'll talk a little bit about – as we kind of move through it. This is a project at the University of Chicago, a studio gang project in that I've had a chance to walk through. Just amazing dorm. And then some more applications. We're going to kind of cover what we typically see precast being used and some alternate areas that precast is being used as well. Transportation is easy. It's for bridge. But residential use and some other uses are pretty unique. So as we talk about kind of the design challenges for precast, okay, so it may not work on every building. Typically, your precast salesman is going to sit down, have a conversation with you and explain once you lay out exactly what your design intent is and your vision for your project. They're going to come in and sit down with you and say, hey, it makes sense. We can do this, this, and this. Or maybe it doesn't. For a long time, again, our industry was a one color and straight. And what we've seen is we've seen precasters joining, becoming collaborative partners in designs on all kinds of structures. And some of the things that are kind of challenges as you talk about it is you can increase the speed of construction. I mean, it's been documented a thousand different times on many different projects, especially stadiums and dorms. But it's general conditions and you get your ROI on the building quicker. Typically, we're not going to have, the trucks are going to come in with a shuttle driver, come from a shuttle yard. They'll bring the pieces in. They'll be picked up by a ground crane or tower crane. So, there's very little congestion on site. I was working on a project for a stadium and they looked at using brick and lay precast or they looked at handling the masonry. Well, to do it in the same time frame, it's going to take 200 masons and 400 tenders. And the question was on the job site versus two crews working day and night to do it would take basically about a half the time of that large crew. The question came up by the owner was, what am I going to do with the 200 masons and the 400 helpers cars and how am I going to get them back and forth to the job site? What kind of congestion am I going to have? Can I work over top of them? Can I work? Well, it's a big issue with job sites, especially with what we're dealing with, with the silica regulations. So, you need to think about that. But precast is brought in just in time, prefabricated offsite. We'll talk a little bit about noise and vibration and then floor-to-floor heights like we talked about with Holocore a few minutes ago. So, you really need to talk about what do you want for aesthetics? There's nothing you can't do. There's hundreds of jobs that are in historic preservation areas, which have gone through architectural review boards and looked at them, and they've been able to emulate exactly what was done before. I'll show you some pictures today. Create some distinctive look. Energy efficiency, is that important? More so now. I mean, it used to be we would let Mother Nature climatize our buildings and now we have rigid insulation and we're looking at different systems, glazing systems, and how do you make a building more energy efficient? I'll cover a little bit about that today, too. Operating costs is all about energy. Fire, just because of what happened in England, we've got more questions about fire coming in than we've ever had before. And then we'll talk a little bit about seismic. These are just some kind of all precast buildings that typically people wouldn't think about would be all precast. Again, this building's another building in Chicago's total precast, which means that they used a combination of load-bearing walls. Walls are then transferred down to the foundation and using a system of holocore for the floor systems. You see the brick and laid brick on the outside of the building, too. So again, if you could see this building where it's setting in the environment, you can see it on the picture on the right. Look at all the brick buildings around it. You've got what we would call the Chicago row houses or townhouses, and this building's being able to fit within that same environment. University of Michigan. Again, you're looking at a parking garage, but again, the aesthetic beauty of this parking garage is it had to match the surroundings. So you have a lot of hand-laid brick from older buildings on campus, have a lot of limestone and those types of accents. The architect and the designer and the owner said, hey, we want a brick that, we want a building that's embracing, not iconic. Can we make it? It has to be a parking garage, but we want to make it blend in with the surroundings. So again, the use of brick and the use of precast on this one. So this one's a cool project. This is JE Dunn's corporate headquarters. It's in Kansas City. So you're seeing some form liner being used. You've seen some, what we would call, spandrels, and it's just a really interesting design in Kansas City. Again, a total precast structure. So you can do some things. So the Nordstrom project in Winland, Texas was the start of a movement by Nordstrom to change the look of their store concept. Nordstrom had been embracing where if a mall was brick, they would go in and build a new store if it was brick, and they would not get any traffic benefit other than putting a name on the side because it looked like all the rest of the stores within the mall complex. They came up with this new type of system where they're using, again, vertical, series of vertical and horizontal walls. The composition is, you see the wall on the left, it's called a feature wall. The wall on the right with the window, it's a feature wall with LED lights are fitting in the reveal. But in this situation here, you've got multiple finishes and these feature walls, which are able to give them an iconic look instead of an embracing look within the mall. So again, it's amazing design work and being able to create. The vision of Nordstrom was big and the precaster was able to hit their vision and do it even better. So go to Nordstrom because there are a lot of them, these new stores around the country. So we talk about Fifth and Race Street, kind of a mixed use, which again, we've kind of got these buildings all over Chicago and around the country where we've got this retail pedestrian level, and then we come up with the floor, the mid span, and then we've got something maybe a little bit different at the top, which is a little similar that we have on this building. But again, you're seeing a lot of mixed use with precast, both the total precast structures, but also with cladding systems on the outside of the building. A parking garage, not really want it to look like a parking garage, but in this situation, they went ahead and moved their stairs and moved their elevator course out. But again, this building had to kind of fit in. This is a PCI design award winner, had to fit into the area that's around it. It's Swedish Covenant Hospital. What I like about this building and what we're seeing, a lot of buildings around the country is, okay, so they've got their mixed use MOB and hospital up top. You've got a mid span of the building. They use parking and then they've got their basically retail area and ramps and systems on the first floor. What we're seeing now is we're seeing buildings like this being designed, but then the mid span area, we're seeing now people are designing them for, excuse me, the potential for those to be adaptively reused. So maybe the floor to floor heights, larger column spacing. And so we're having some direct conversations now between designers to say, okay, with autonomous vehicles, Uber and different things, ride share, bike share, and all those things, maybe that may not be parking. Maybe we can use those as offices or maybe some sort of an area for residential housing or something at a later use. So let's not just pigeonhole us into parking. Let's go ahead and look at that as a potential adaptability. We're also seeing a lot of total precast structures around the country are being designed to have vertical expansions. So I've been involved in many projects where they added five floors on top of the existing structure. So that's where you see a lot of total precast. But again, you've got to talk about those conversations early on the development of the project. UC Davis Medical Center got to visit this project a while back, but again, just a total precast design with this structure, but it's just a series of columns and beams, and then they'll go in and lay in the double T floor system and then the exterior facade on. So really it's like an erector set or a Lego set. It's a kit of parts that is prefabricated at a plant and brought out to the job site. So really, really for precast, the only limitation is on your imagination. I've seen very few projects that could not be produced using precast concrete with enough time and sometimes money. Stadiums are a big part of the precast world. East Rutherford, the Meadowland Stadium, which is in New Jersey. You've got precast on the exterior of the new Falcon Stadium, Levi Stadium, which is out for the 49ers. Atlanta Braves have a new stadium and their new stadium has brick exterior facade and then has risers on the inside of the bowl for all the seats and the walls. So there's a lot of uses in stadiums around the country for precast concrete. Why? Why would you do it on a stadium? Well, now owners are saying, you know what, maybe I don't want to have my stadium and replace it every 20 years. If it's a billion dollars, one point two billion dollars, maybe I want to have something that can be multi-use. So it can be used for concerts or it can be used for football, soccer, or it could be the NCAA basketball tournament. And it could be, let's start, maybe I can't go back and get another billion dollars in 20 years. Let's look at some longevity of the stadiums. And so you're seeing, again, a lot of stadiums are being built using precast concrete. I love this project. They use precast outside and they use precast inside. Well, why would you use it? Well, one thing on this project would be long-term durability. You can do insulated panels with this. It's a controlled environment. If you put insulation in between the two layers of concrete, you can control for moisture, control for your dew point. All of those areas can be controlled within insulation in the middle of a sandwich wall panel. This is a great use of precast concrete in the arena. This project's won a lot of awards in Kansas City. It's just beautiful. I mean, it's just, it's, again, it's making a statement. Again, most people don't know that the Sydney Opera House, yes, the Sydney Opera House is precast concrete, has some load-bearing precast concrete, but all the sails, the white sails on the outside of the Sydney Opera House are glazed tile, which is embedded in ferrocement into architecture precast concrete panels. It's a pretty amazing use of it. I love this kind of as a live-work-play type of environment, a kind of a mobility environment. Again, using precast concrete, you'll hear some terms about ductile, which is, again, a high-strength concrete. This project here in Milan has gotten a lot of awards. It's just amazing what you can do, again, with concrete when you set your mind to it. St. Mary's Catholic School, again, brick and lay precast. They used a form liner at the bottom of the building and did some detailing. So, again, they wanted this church and school to look old, and they were able to use a precast concrete system. But, again, these conversations are what you want it to look like. So, it doesn't have to look like a flat parking garage. You can look like whatever your imagination can create it to be, but you're able to do that with a lot of precast concrete systems. So, this project is really neat out in San Francisco. Again, in San Francisco, we've got seismic, so you've got to use components and materials and things that will work with seismic zones. We'll cover a little bit later in the presentation. But, again, some amazing uses of precast. You wouldn't typically think that this would be a great use. You'd maybe think another material metal panel. But, really, it's just what your imagination can see. Missoula Federal Courthouse Credit Union, great project. What I like about this project is that they tried to remove cement, so they used a lot of fly ash in the outside. They used some chemicals to get the admixture up. But, this is a leach structure, which had a lot of recycled materials, and then, as you see, the photovoltaics on it. So, it's trying to move toward what we would call the net zero type of building. So, I told you about the Broad, okay? So, you're from Los Angeles, or you're from the West Coast. I didn't say left coast. I said West Coast. If you're from the West Coast, the Broad Museum is GFRC. It was done by a precaster. And, just the software. You traditionally probably, you could not have done this building probably design-wise without some of these new software systems that are being used. But, this is amazing. Gensler, there's a couple different architecture firms that worked on it. One of them was Gensler. This is a unique facade on the outside. This is just a veil over the outside of the museum. So, if you get some time, I could spend 100 slides on this building, get some time, do some research on the Broad. But, it's a GFRC precast on the outside. Lancaster Convention Center, again, just look at the building in the foreground, and then, look at the building behind it, again, trying to keep the building where it kind of matches or adapts to the local surroundings around it. And so, that's a great use of precast. You're able to come up with some more competition. Nowadays, those horizontal panels could have had the windows preinstalled in them. And so, yes, you could have the windows shipped to the precast yard. The glazing company comes in and glazes or installs the windows, and then, the precaster ships them to the job site, erects them with a crane, and puts them up on the outside of the building. Gwinnett County Detention Center, I mean, just from the outside, it really doesn't look like what it is, but that's what the architect was trying to achieve. So, just jails and prisons. This is a really neat building. It's a net zero energy building. But, in this situation here, they took precast concrete on this building. They used it for form. You can see it for form, and they also used it for function, which is to help them get to a net zero building. So, again, this is another PCI award winner. A lot of discussion about this, but District 3 in Cincinnati, Ohio. So Eagleton Federal Courthouse. So this job was designed, most of you have ever been to St. Louis, have seen this project. What's amazing about this is what material do you think it was first designed for? I guess that would be a test question. What do you think it was designed for? What material on the outside? Well, if you said brick, no, no, not metal panel. It was designed for limestone, Indiana limestone. And so they came back and said, hey, we looked at our budget. We looked at the time. Can you create this facade on the outside of this building and do it with form liners and do it in repetition to make the panels, again, for a federal courthouse? So there were restrictions on blasts and different criteria, but can you make, precast, emulate to some degree without the varnish, but to some degree limestone? And this project's won numerous awards. It's an iconic building in downtown St. Louis. And again, it's a building that the vision was limestone, hence that limestone. But really, you look at long-term maintenance, hence that limestone. And really, it's not a choice for a building that could be there 50 to 100 years. So that was a decision that was made by the design professionals and the owner. And it's a next-tier facade system on the outside of the building. Kansas City Temple in Kansas City, there's quite a few Mormon temples around the country that have all used precast. And this situation here is they wanted a very distinctive look of architecture, precast concrete, but they wanted some of the subtle nuances and things of the precast. So on the outside of the building, the shadowing and some of the natural features that you would have in a natural material. And some of the lighter temples around the country, that steeple that you see there is made actually out of precast. So as you're visiting other temples around the country or are talking with your local precaster, ask them about the steeples, but some of them are made out of precast concrete. The St. George Catholic Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It's an interesting project. Again, this project was originally designed for handset, limestone, and brick. Because the existing church was an old Catholic church, they wanted to go back in with a building that looked 100 years old. So you may think, oh, wow, look at the color, piece to piece. Is that limestone or is that precast? What is that? Well, the color piece to piece was chosen by the architect. Those are actual large precast panels, but the precaster was able to tone and change the color of the precast block to block within a large panel, therefore giving what the architect asked for, which was a building that looked like handset limestone. So they took handset limestone. They looked at all the impurities. They looked at where it came out of the quarry and how random it was and the vaynage and the marks of it. And then they went and looked at a brick which had parts and cross set marks on it of an old brick that came out of what we call a beehive kiln. And then they merged all that technology together to create these precast panels. So you've got old looking brick that's actual new brick, and you've got precast here, the emulite limestone on the outside. So it's not that there's a color problem. It's again, the precaster was asked to design with them on creating a facade that looked like an old church that had been there a hundred years. Barton Army Hospital, it's just, again, I'm just showing you some unique characteristics from precast. You're seeing precast used on the outside of the building, but you're also seeing precast used on the inside of the building. Why on the inside of the building? Well, it's a material that is resistant to any types of objects hitting it. It's resistant. It'll take the paint. Typically, you see a lot of people, if they get it finished in architecture precast concrete, that's what it'll be forever. You have very little degradation in the ultraviolet rays or you can go in and paint the inside if you choose. But most of the people now are going ahead and letting the precast be finished both on the outside and the inside. This project's in D.C. There's a couple of projects in D.C. This is a solar decathlon house. There's a solar decathlon going on now in Denver, Colorado. Another, Wash U in St. Louis was the participant that used a precast system. So if you get some time and you're interested in that type of technology, it's just amazing what these students can come up with. Things I'd never heard of, things I didn't even know had been invented. And these students, again, in this situation here in this D.C., a single family home, used insulated precast concrete on the exterior of the building, both for the roof and both for the wall system. So this is kind of a cool, this is another Baton Rouge. So Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to me, has some pretty cool architecture. But what you're seeing here on this home, you've got the black precast on the right is to emulate the wall or Ibituba granite, which you would see, or the granite or that you see like on the Vietnam War Memorial. And then you're seeing these shapes of the panels on this feature wall. This is a single family home. Again, you use precast on this entry wall down the right, which is black precast that's been polished. And then you see the unique shape of the white wall that's kind of a feature wall of the upper part of this residential house. And this house here is they also use titanium dioxide in the mix. As we look a little bit about this couple of distribution centers, they're all over the country. Just about distribution centers, warehouses, and data centers are using a tremendous amount of precast, both with brick, both with form liner, and different textures on the outside of the building. Well, I mean, bridges can be flat and bridges cannot be architectural, but you're seeing a lot of precast bridges now that are extremely architectural. It's kind of interesting for me as now some of these conversations where now they're saying, hey, we may need to bring in a design architect to help us make the bridge be more appealing or not look like just a ramp. Just some other floating concrete births or some other uses of precast in the industry. I'm going to probably cover the benefits as we kind of move around. We'll talk a little bit about all of these design flexibility. Hopefully, you've learned today kind of we've got everything. Control production. Again, ask a local precast or a regional for where you can go and look at a precast plant. We'll talk a little bit about safety, security, quality, our certified quality program, and kind of talk about some mold, which is just a big word. So, there's no color, form, or function you really can get with precast, especially with architecture and precast concrete. Again, left building, you're looking at this building. You've got some form. You've got multi-color, which you can do with different finishes. You can also do the color with different pours or different mixes. You see, again, you're seeing that window punch panel that's used on the project in Florida. And then here you're looking at stone that's embedded in precast on the Minnesota Twin Stadium. I'm going to call it the Minneapolis Twins, but I think it's the Minnesota Twins. Somebody can email me if I'm wrong. And then you're seeing, again, you saw stone before. And here you're seeing some glazed ceramic tile is being used. You're also seeing a lot of buildings now where you're seeing, you saw a lot of brick examples, but there's a lot of examples of terracotta is also being embedded. And here you see that pretty interesting form liner there on the right. So when we talk about why you would want control production and not doing it on the job site, well, one thing is, is that you've got people that are, that have control over the final appearance. You also have people that are on the job site that are able to, have been there for 20, 30 years. They can look at the tolerances. They can look at what they've been doing. They know how to put those pieces together. And again, in controlled environments, you're talking about places where they're manufacturing indoors or they're manufacturing in an area where they can go in. Now PCI has a qualified, has a certified program. And it's amazing because it's, it's the checks and balances system that PCI has put in where an auditor comes twice a year unannounced and checks for quality at the precast plants. So instead of you as a designer, you write it in your specs and then, and then you check it when it gets to a job site. These are actually the certification. People will check twice a year unannounced at the, at the local precast plant. So you just see these guys doing it. You know, some of the advantage, you can call out in your specs, you know, the bidders that are part of the quality, the, the PCI certified quality program. Typically when you're dealing with a PCI certified plant, you're going to have a lot more design options. Really, truly, you're going to be able to have, if you're doing a PCI, using a PCI certified plant, they're going to be able to also help you, the plant will in pre-design or maybe design assist to call your precast early. These are kind of some of the programs that reference the PCI plant certification program. Again, two unannounced audits, but it's checking exactly to make sure that the precast plant is following your specification to the letter. So I mean, you can read it, all those entities. And then of course it's in the AIA master spec is used for all of our products in there. We talked about safety and security. We've been getting a lot more calls lately about fire resistance and earthquake resistance. We'll look at wind and blast resistance, you know, and then also the light, you know, the reflectability, you know, the on precast and what the, the higher sheens, the colors white and what they can do. Kind of as we talk a little bit about fire resistance in buildings, because it's become probably a call a day I get now here is on, on fire. It's basically the, the, the how you look at the design of the structure. You've got four, four toward containment, detection, suppression, and education. Typically we're just showing you some pictures of some of the fire tests. Again, we have a tremendous amount. We have a fire expert as part of PCI, but we have a tremendous amount of test results from our products, both insulated and non-insulated, both for any different types of structure. So if you're thinking about the fire rating and it's going into adjacent structure, you're just thinking about it, long-term risk, have some conversations with your local precasters. This is just showing a insurance cost, long-term cost for insuring a, you know, wood frame versus a concrete or masonry structure. And precast concrete again would be, would be on the right. When you talk about earthquake, there's a lot of, a lot of things have been done by the precast concrete industry to talk about seismic and movement and the connections and how you set up these systems and how to set up the panelization system. So again, we have, PCI has all this information for reference for you to use if you're designing in a high seismic zone, but there are buildings all over the country. You know, the Paramount there on the left, there are a lot of, a lot of buildings and you could, I'm an architect, so I'm not going to get in deep into this, but just call a local precaster or in your area or design engineer, and they can take you through exactly how these types of frames and systems are able to work in a high seismic zone. So I'm going to take you through, this is, this is a wind cannon test, which was done in 2007. And this lets you show, there's some, some new things being done that was just done a couple of weeks ago on wind cannon testing, but I'll take you through and kind of show you what they're doing here. So you're seeing a lot of wind cannon when you're looking at tornado resistance and structures. Well here, there's some wind cannon tests. I think a lot of, for me, for any product that I use, I want to see the proof. I want to see the test results. I want to see it in action. I want to see it, how long it's been there. And that's what the industry has been doing. Tests, the same types of tests were just done a couple of weeks ago, and you can contact me or contact someone within PCI and we can send you some more information on this type of system. Again, I like this building here when we talk about security, safety. Again, what's interesting about this facade up here in the park is, is that you've got light outside, but you've got, you know, during night and then on the, during the daytime, you've got light coming into the building because those are actual holes within the building. And then with those types of systems, you put glazing behind it, or you can leave them open if you want to. So there's a lot of things with color, a lot of things with shapes, a lot of things with geometric shapes that you can do to, to create light. So, you know, we talked a lot about, as we kind of move through it, the sustainability of precast concrete. I think green's kind of a misused word. You know, when we talk about sustainability, this was a thing in the Boston Globe a couple weeks ago, it said, glasses like sugar. Sugar is incredibly, is incredibly commonplace item now, and we have an obesity issue. We're seeing a lot of issues now where we're seeing a lot of glass structures. Well, what's the actual long-term performance of that structure being glass and why you're using it? When we get into precast, pre-glazing, we can give you a lot of glass, but we can give you a lot of insulation and R-value and long-term durability as we kind of move through it. Insulated wall panels, this is kind of how you do it. Again, this system is pretty unique in our industry. Probably for some people, it's about 70 or 80% of what they do, but you can insulation edge-to-edge in panels without any issue. Typically, maintenance, long-term maintenance of projects, you're seeing long-term maintenance somewhere, it's just sealant. But again, there have been buildings over 50, 60 years old. Again, you're looking at STC inside this church and looking at the quality and the vibration and the reduction in vibration. With acoustical control, you have to have these conversations because it's pretty amazing with precast concrete. Mold growth, we know what the mold does. We know the problems with mold, precast resistant on the inside of our structures. So, we talked a lot about air, water, vapor kind of as we moved around it. Adaptability long-term, we talked about vertical adaptability. In this school here, they're able to go ahead and at a later date, they can take the panels on the left end of the school, they can remove them and do some shoring, and then they can go ahead and do expansion to these high schools. So, you're seeing a lot of schools and buildings are looking at adaptive reuse, either going vertically or like in this school system here, you can go horizontally. So, it's pretty amazing with concrete. Again, you just have to consult your precaster and have some conversations about it. So, we're kind of moving toward where we're going to have to probably get into some questions. So, I think I've covered repetition, delivery, installation. We've covered a little bit about design challenges. If you call your local precaster, they can give you great advice, engineering support, your regional managers, which we have local chapters within PCI, which you can find the local producers on our website. You can also find the local chapter directors or regional directors that can help you. They also can come in and give you this presentation and a whole lot more presentations. I think we've kind of covered all this. We've got design handbooks, literature. We've got a lot of guide specs and journals, and everything is on the pci.org website for your use. I'll take some questions, and I appreciate you sitting in on my webinar today. Thank you.

precast concrete

applications

design flexibility

controlled production process

quality

buildings

fire resistance

sustainability

consultation