Big Pour Kick Starts Ave Maria Project

Suffolk/Kraft Work on 3,000 Cu.-Yd. Mat Pour

By Scott Judy

In a secluded section of Collier County, Fla., an army of contractors, laborers and ready-mixed concrete trucks came together on Saturday, May 13, for one of the biggest concrete mat pours ever conducted in southwest Florida. The event was in support of the new Oratory at Ave Maria University, the nearly $140 million project that the joint venture of West Palm Beach-based Suffolk Construction Co. and Kraft Construction Co. of Naples, Fla., is building.

Created by former Domino's Pizza founder and owner Tom Monaghan, Ave Maria is reported to be the first Catholic university to be founded in the United States in more than 40 years. In addition to the university, Suffolk/Kraft's contract calls for the construction of a 1,100-seat church known as the Oratory that will serve as a focal point of the development's new town center. The university is being built first, and the new town of Ave Maria will be developed around it.

For the big pour, concrete - supplied to the project by Rinker Materials - started flowing as early as 2:30 a.m., said Mike Beaumier, vice president-West Coast, for Suffolk Construction.

"We had a whole logistic plan laid out as to how we were going to move trucks back and forth, temporary lighting and numerous ways to get the concrete pumps lined up," he said. "We had four concrete pumps on-site, and God only knows how many people."

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By the end of the day, the 3-ft.-thick mat for the 23,600-sq.-ft., 100-ft.-tall Oratory had required approximately 3,120 cu. yds. of the 5,000-psi concrete specified for the project.

Beaumier said the remote nature of the site was one of the bigger issues to overcome in the planning process. To solve the problem, Rinker had to establish a concrete plant on site. Two off-site plants, located in Fort Myers and Naples, also fed the project.

"The challenge was that the concrete was so far away," said Mike Fenton, project manager with Suffolk. "Two of the three plants were out of the way and they had to make sure they had the right amount of retarder added" to keep the mix from setting up too early.

Roughly 75 Rinker trucks supplied the ready-mixed concrete to the site throughout the duration of the roughly 8.5-hour-long pour.

"They tried to get 200 yards an hour from the onsite plant, and we tried to get 100 (each) from the two outside plants," Beaumier explained. "That was the plan to try to supply 400 yards an hour."

Interestingly, the 3-ft.-thick mat will function more as ballast than as support.

"On top of the mat, we'll place 4 ft. of fill and then we pour our slab on grade, and then the fill and the concrete acts as a ballast.," Fenton said. "It's really a ballast so the building won't blow over."

"When we build a large building, we (usually) put it on piles," Beaumier said. "The fact that we are building such a large structure that is not on piles makes it a unique operation for most of South Florida. It is so different from what most people do in this area."

In the end, said Fenton, "Everything went as planned. Both the supplier and the concrete finisher did a great job. By 11 o'clock, we had all the concrete in the hole and no major issues."