The use of SCMs played an important role for the canister storage facility at the Hanford Site nuclear facility. The CSB is a large, 42,000 square foot facility in Hanford’s 200 East Area which stores about 2300 tons of spent nuclear fuel packaged in approximately 400 Multi-Canister Overpacks (MCO’s). The MCO’s are stored in 220 carbon steel tubes within a below grade concrete vault. The MCO’s will be safely stored in the tubes until permanent placement in a National Repository.  

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) Building (illustrated in Fig. 1) provides an excellent case study for the integration of (Building Information Management) BIM to achieve a sustainable building. This building required carbon accounting for construction materials and construction activities, and is LEED Platinum certified. Figures 2 through 4 show various views of the core walls of the building that incorporate vertical post-tensioning.

Awards and certifications

AIA San Francisco Design Award
GSA Design Honor Award for Architecture
GSA Design Award Citation in Sustainability

When a wooden floating dock in the Port of San Diego, San Diego, CA, had deteriorated to the point of having to be torn down, the owners chose to replace it with a floating dock assembled from precast concrete modules, the durability offered by the precast dock was a key consideration, and the modular design allowed a few standard-sized sections to be used in the creation of a variety of configurations.

Through the use of concrete repair procedures recommended by the International Concrete Repair Institute (ICRI) (chloride extraction and galvanic protection), a 50-year service life extension to this 75-year-old structure was designed and implemented. Designed and built in the 1930s as a Depression-era work project, the Rainbow Bridge is a critical transportation link in the Cascade Mountains north of Boise, ID. Completion of this project kept 1809 yd3 (1383 m3) of concrete in service.

Centreville’s Bloomfield Farm, once home to a working farm, now includes Whitemarsh Park, an active recreation facility that houses many attractions for this Eastern Shore community in Maryland that is within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Surrounding the original nineteenth century homestead, Whitemarsh Park includes fields for soccer, lacrosse, and baseball; a driving range, and a fishing pond, among other points of interest. Located on nearly 300 acres (120 hectares) of pristine farmland, Whitemarsh Park is home to forest and meadows unique to Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Awards and certifications

PCA Sustainable Leadership Award (to the city of Leawood, KS, for the I’Lan Parking Lot)

Structure specifics

The 140,000 ft2 (13,000 m²) Monroe correctional facility houses inmates classified as intensive management status (IMS) and segregation management status (SMS) with special needs. Each building has 100 single-occupancy maximum-security cells along with the necessary facilities that go along with running a complex of this size. Because of extreme security concerns, the structure has exterior walls of precast concrete sandwich panels, and all cells (including bunks, tables, and stools) are also precast concrete.

This eight-story residential complex in Philadelphia, PA, incorporates 414,000 ft² (38,500 m²) of premium residential and retail space in addition to 108,000 ft² (10,000 m²) of parking. Domus covers a large city block, and its vast exterior surfaces were initially designed for masonry, including a wealth of visual details to harmonize with the brick façades of the adjacent University of Pennsylvania. When construction documents were 65% completed, the Houston, TX-based developer accelerated construction.

At 750 ft (229 m), the Four Seasons Hotel and Tower is the tallest building in Florida, designed with concrete strengths up to fc′ = 10,000 psi (69 MPa). Modulus of elasticity requirements ranged from 4 to 6 million psi (28 to 42 GPa). The dense reinforcement configurations, particularly in the core of the building, required that the concrete maintain high workability even with temperatures close to 100°F (38°C) for up to 2 hours from the time of batching.