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>> Ms. Marty McIntyre: Just to finish up
I thought I'd talk a little bit about what kinds of
pre-cast products are out there.
What kinds of projects are our members working on?
We really are going to be in just about every market
that's out there.
So the commercial, specialized in industrial transportation
and housing are the ones that we see a lot of.
Commercial, everything from retail stores
to office buildings, a lot of mixed use.
A lot of parking decks are being done in that area.
We're seeing quite a number of stadiums now that are
using pre-cast concrete, whether it be for the decorative uses
or for the actual structure.
All of the risers, the vomitories, things like that.
Industrial manufacturing, you, if you've got anything
that requires USDA finishes on it which are very smooth,
you can't have a lot of bug holes or places
for food particles or bacteria to get in.
We see a lot of pre-cast used in those areas because of the
quality control that you can get up front.
Transportation, sound walls are an area that we haven't talked
much about but, and you don't see too much of them
down here but up closer to the city where there's more housing
near the highways you will see a lot of pre-cast sound walls
being used as well as all the bridges
that we've talked about.
This is an unusual part of the country that we actually have
some single family homes being built out of pre-cast.
There is one of our members does these, these homes in the city
of Chicago that are scattered site, low income housing.
And it basically is using eight pieces of precast
and it goes up in a day, so pretty, pretty fast.
Why would an owner want to use pre-cast?
Well one of the biggest things is the speed of construction.
You can put a Wal-Mart up in a week,
you can put an apartment up in 80 days of construction.
Basically if you're using wall panels for instance, a
pre-cast director can put up in one day what a mason
would take about two weeks to put up.
So you can really, really move pretty quickly with pre-cast.
The long clear spans, the 60 feet, for parking decks
and hollow core can get 30 to 50 feet long
so you can get some nice spans.
Fire resistance is a big issue, everything that goes into
concrete is resistant to fire except the steel so
what you want to do is have good coverage of your steel.
You want to usually have about two inches of coverage
and that's going to give you fire ratings, very easily
two hours of fire ratings and you can go up from there.
Acoustical control, we're seeing a lot of requests for this
especially where there's an airport nearby or train tracks
or something else.
Concrete has a nice ability to bounce sound away from the,
from the building.
We are seeing a lot of our members getting involved in
lead certified projects where sustainability is an issue.
They want to have energy conservation.
Sometimes the precast or one of the pre-casters was twilling me
this week, they're doing a project for food processing
plant near Beloit, Wisconsin.
And they're having to bring all of their waste from
the hollow core to the job sites so they can measure how much
construction waste is on the project for
the lead certification.
So, you know pre-casters are willing to work with you if
you have energy conservation or sustainability issues.
Low maintenance, you're not going to have to tuck-point it,
you're not going to have to paint architectural pre-cast
and so you can really get something that's
pretty simple maintenance.
Things that are going to add maintenance, I was just talking
to an architect last week who added a graffiti coding to,
to a university project that they were doing.
So you know if you've got special codings like that,
that will be a maintenance issue.
You will have to come back and caulk it and that's usually
a maintenance issue every 15 to 20 years depending
on the weather and exposure to the weather that you're in.
And I think the best, the best benefit to member
or to your customers is the attractive appearance that
you can really create something that speaks to them.
That you are giving them what they want
as far as the color and texture.
Some resources for you, you can go to our website,
which is PCI-IW.org, and I've got some projects on there
that you can look at, I've got a list of our member companies.
I've also given you all a list of our member companies
in the newsletter and the map that I had.
Yeah?
[unclear dialogue]
>> Ms. McIntyre: It was dash "IW."
"PCI" dash "IW" dot "ORG."
And then the national group is PCI.org,
which you've got up here.
So, on the PCI website, they've got something called
the designers knowledge bank and it's got a lot of
full-text articles.
If you want the hollow core manual you can find it online.
If you want an article on sustainability using pre-cast
you can find it online and they've got that right there
so you can do it without going to the library,
without ever leaving your desk.
You can find all of that information
right at our website, and that's who I am again.
And I'd be happy to stick around and answer
any questions that you might have.
[audience applause]
>> Ms. McIntyre: Thank you.
>> Professor: Any questions for Marty?
>> Ms. McIntyre: Yeah?
>> Male speaker: What do you think are
the biggest advances in pre-cast since
the big boom of the 1960's pre-cast?
>> Ms. McIntyre: Well there's a couple things.
One is just the spans that they're able to get
with the product.
The double T's now that they can you know use
more durable concrete and high-strength concrete.
They're spanning parking decks 60 feet, that's typical,
but they're even going longer to you know getting that
100-foot span with it and with the larger pieces of you know
15-foot-wide so they can use even fewer pieces of it
so it can go up even faster.
They're also using that self-compacting concrete and
that's really for some of our members revolutionized
the way that they're manufacturing.
That's been really a big benefit to them.
Hollow core also has much longer spans than it used to,
it's got deeper sections and, and longer spans.
So, I think two for the architects would
probably tell you the sculptural abilities of the product
and how pre-casters have kind of stepped up to the plate
and been able to you know make it look like
limestone if they want it to look like limestone.
Make it look like concrete if they want it to look
like you know they have that organic look of concrete to it
so I think that's, that's really come a long way too.
[♪ music playing ♪♪]
>> Ms. McIntyre: Thank you.
[applause.]