September 25, 2009

NORTH AMERICA CONSTRUCTION

Massive pour at the Duffin Creek Pollution Control plant in Pickering, Ont. had to be completed in 22 hours.

FEATURE: Concrete and masonry

Concrete pour a tightly choreographed affair

Some 363 truck loads, 3,259 cubic metres of concrete poured

DAN O’REILLY

correspondent

It may not have been the largest of its kind in Ontario, but even it wasn’t an almost round-the-clock non-stop concrete pour at the Duffin Creek Pollution Control Plant in Pickering went off without a hitch.

It took 363 truck loads or 3,259 cubic metres of concrete from three different St. Marys CBM plants for the construction of a 2, 970 square-metre 1.1-metre thick slab for an incinerator, part of a $575-million Phase 3 expansion.

The 22 hour continuous pour started at 6 a.m. one Saturday and didn’t wrap until the early the next morning, says Jeff van den Brink, project manager. North America Construction (1993) Ltd., the general contractor.

“It had been a wet spring and we got behind,” says van den Brink, explaining why the company proposed the idea to plant management officials.

A month’s planning went into the pour which had to be conducted on a weekend so as not to interfere with the daily operation of the plant, as well as the ongoing construction.

With the help of plant employees, North America Construction was able to create an internal ring road system so that trucks could enter and leave the site easily, he says.

“We had to move quickly because the specifications required that the concrete be poured within two hours of leaving the plant.”

Liquid nitrogen and over 1,400 bags of ice were used to cool the concrete which came from three batching plants: one on site, one from Scarborough and the third from Whitby, says CBM area operations manager Peter Burley.

Three concrete pumps and 64 trucks were used. There were no rejected loads and in addition to speeding up the slab’s construction, the continuous pour also eliminated construction joints, says van den Brink.

Approximately 540 tonnes of reinforcing steel was supplied by Harris Rebar.

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