815-416-1000UCP Holiday 2022 Newsletter
Check out our 2022 Holiday Newsletter!
Wishing all of our customers & industry partners a Happy Holiday Season!
It’s been an exciting 2022 for the Utility Concrete Products Team. See below for some of the projects and unique precast concrete solutions we created this year!
Red Purple Modernization (RPM) Phase One
UCP’s RPM Team is thrilled to announce our latest milestone – the completion of precast segmental deliveries for Stage A!
The bridge structure carrying Red and Purple Line trains between Lawrence and Bryn Mawr is being reconstructed in two stages utilizing a precast segmental superstructure. Stage A, consisting of 74 total spans and 841 individual precast segments, began fabrication in our Morris, IL facility in June of 2020 and saw the Walsh-Fluor Design Build Team receive the last segment delivery this week!
2022 was a year full of exciting milestones for the RPM project. Our production group reached 75% complete status right after Thanksgiving leaving only 385 segments to fabricate. The freight group successfully coordinated and moved 800+ oversized loads through the City of Chicago to the project site – no small feat! Last, but not least, we also started fabrication of the precast noise barrier panels that will be installed on top of our segments which will provide a reduction in track level noise for the surrounding neighborhoods.
Congratulations to all of our team members working on this historic project!
Click here to see additional Segmental Bridges projects
Mechanically Stabilized Earth Retaining Walls
Utility Concrete’s ability to engineer, manufacture, and deliver Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) Walls is a cost-effective solution for both private and public projects. While UCP has supplied hundreds of thousands of square feet to public infrastructure projects in Illinois, the photos featured here are from a private development in Berwyn with 900 precast panels for a railway yard. Towering at over 40 feet, these walls allow for easy access between the railway’s yarding facilities. UCP’s team of engineers and project managers worked with the Owner to provide a cost-effective solution that included a mix of traditional backfill and lightweight cellular fill to meet the finished grade while navigating the poor subgrade.
Our streamlined production, ability to execute, and dedicated freight department have allowed us to expand our geographic reach as well. Over the last year we have extended our services to the Wisconsin area by providing nearly 200,000 square feet of MSE solutions to the Milwaukee area serving the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
Click here to see additional Retaining Wall projects
Lake Cook Road Noise Abatement Walls
Our team has over a decade of experience in the design and supply of noise abatement walls making us the leading supplier in Illinois. That experience affords us the ability to provide unique noise wall solutions for various entities including IDOT, ISTHA, County DOTs, and private developments!
Look no further than this custom noise wall system we built this year for the Lake Cook Road reconstruction project in Buffalo Grove, IL. The project required two walls with a total of 143 precast concrete columns and 141 precast concrete panels. What made this one special is the English Drystack formliner used to create the natural stone aesthetic along with a three-color paint system applied by hand in our production facility. Special consideration was given to the wall alignment which required custom columns to accommodate various wall kinks and turns.
The use of precast concrete allows for a wide range of aesthetic treatments to provide the appearance the Owner and surrounding community desires, all while reducing noise!
Click here to see additional Sound Wall projects
Value Engineered Retaining Walls
With the help of our Chicago contractors and our partnership with Elevate Infrastructure, we delivered sizeable savings on multiple retaining wall scopes along Illinois highways this year. Our wide range of retaining wall products allows us to work with our local contractors to optimize the installed cost of every type of grade separation. The Illinois Tollway project featured here originally included over 51,000 square feet of cast-in-place soldier pile walls. After discussing logistics & cost considerations with the wall installer, UCP was able to replace over 2,100 cubic yards of cast-in-place concrete, 260,000 pounds of rebar, 6,500 linear feet of soldier piles, and 200 steel casings with prefabricated wall systems that arrived on site exactly when they were needed. Elevate Infrastructure’s precast counterfort walls were used for the taller applications while StoneStrong was used for the shorter walls. Both wall systems reduced material requirements, labor, and time resulting in substantial cost savings.
Excavation and right-of-way limits were key factors in deciding which wall system would provide the most value. StoneStrong was used for the shorter walls with a gravity design, which eliminated the need for select fill and extensive excavation. Precast Counterfort Walls were used to replace the taller soldier pile walls, because they can handle higher loads and the full height facing units greatly increase production speeds.
Together with Elevate Infrastructure, UCP also provided post and panel walls as value-engineered solutions on numerous IDOT & ISTHA projects. While they do feature steel posts, the full-height precast panels and composite steel design saved contractors countless hours in the field and big bucks on their projects.
Click here to see additional Retaining Wall projects
O’Hare Airport Precast Structures
The Chicago Department of Aviation is currently underway with their O’Hare 21 Plan, a multi-phased umbrella for the capital projects bringing O’Hare Airport into the 21st Century. The programs under O’Hare 21 include the completion of the O’Hare Modernization Program, the new Terminal Area Plan (TAP), Near-Term Gate Improvements, as well as other Capital Improvement Projects. Taxiway relocations, expansions, terminal renovations, and two new satellite concourses all contribute to the new O’Hare Global Terminal.
Utility Concrete Products has been the leading precast supplier at O’Hare for over a decade providing thousands of utility structures including handholes, manholes, light bases, junction chambers, specialty foundations and more. Over the past year we have been heavily involved in providing precast solutions for the various trade packages associated with the relocation of Taxiways A&B which included some of the largest ComEd manholes we have ever produced.
As the airport continues to expand at a rapid rate the advantages of precast become ever more apparent, saving contractors time and money with ease of installation while meeting accelerated project schedules.
Click here to see additional Electrical projects
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