Aggregate Industries, a member of LafargeHolcim‘s U.S. operations, installed a portable ready-mix plant to supply concrete for the new MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C.
The 477,000-sq.ft. expansion will include a new emergency room, 32 operating rooms, 156 patient rooms, surgical prep and recovery bays, underground parking and a rooftop helipad.
According to Jay Moreau, CEO of U.S. aggregate and construction materials at LafargeHolcim, the company’s involvement in the Georgetown University Hospital expansion is a strategic decision for LafargeHolcim.
“If you think about a project of this size, you’re talking about a 500,000-sq.-ft. facility in the middle of Georgetown,” Moreau says. “There are lots of challenges around that. So what we wanted to do was leverage [our] abilities to provide a solution that was innovative, new and – in this case – portable.”
Among the equipment at the Georgetown site is a portable RexCon dry batch plant that has a capacity of 170 to 180 yards per hour, according to Moreau, as well as a John Deere 944L loader to charge the plant. In addition, two to four trucks are used on site, depending on the level of demand on a given day.
“I think one of the beauties of a portable plant is that it can fit on a very small piece of property, and then we have to work the logistics to supply the plant so we can do that optimally and do it at the right time of day as we respond to the level of demand by the project,” Moreau says. “We can flex up and down the [production] volume very quickly with very little added equipment.”
LafargeHolcim is partnering with Clark Construction Group – a Bethesda, Maryland-based construction contractor – to complete the project, which is expected to be completed in third quarter 2021. The two companies have a longstanding relationship dating years back.
“We’ve been doing business with Clark [Construction Group] for many, many years,” Moreau says. “We started discussions over two years ago to figure out how we could help Clark develop a competitive advantage on the project, and how we can come up with a solution to help them be successful.
“It’s a situation where we can brainstorm together to come up with ways to save money,” Moreau adds. “You have the price of concrete and you have productivity, but there are 50 different small items that you have to address that go into those things. If you work together to make sure you optimize those things, it’s much more powerful than just a price or productivity rate.”