Usgunite - Concrete Crafter

By Author: Jim Kinnebrew
Total Articles: 1
Comment this article

USGunite maintains its headquarters in Keller and employs a workforce of 450. This past year, the company as a whole took on about 11,000 projects. That is off from our highs of a few years ago, but we are still profitable even under the current economy, Kinnebrew says. Some markets are experiencing significant declines more than others, but overall as a company we are handling the economic downturn fairly well.
He attributes this to USGunites expansion from its core commercial and residential pool market into industrial and commercial segments. "Some of the federal stimulus package is going to infrastructure projects and that creates opportunities for us. In addition, in this economy a number of contractors have had to reduce their workforce; as projects do arise, and as the economy improves, they want to focus their resources on what they do best, and look more to subcontract competencies that aren't their strengths. That creates further opportunities for us."
He adds, I want to stress that we are not moving away from our core business, we are ...
... adding to it. The same skills sets and capabilities, as well as the time, logistical and cost savings achieved from blowing concrete for use in a commercial pool located on the seventh floor of a building - and you might be surprised at how many of those kinds of projects we do on a regular basis - applies to any industrial or infrastructure project that requires concrete.
By the same token, Kinnebrew is quick to point out that the same in-house engineering and design expertise USGunite offers for pool construction is equally up to the most formidable industrial application. The general public doesnt realize how precisely engineered a pool has to be. Take any Olympic pool, for example, used for sanctioned meets. A tenth of a second can be the difference between a medal winner and an also ran. So there is no room for error in any dimension of the pool. You can't have a point on one end that is even one-tenth an inch shorter than the other or you are going to give someone enough of an unfair advantage to make the difference between a world class finish and second place.
Case in point is a USGunite project performed for Linbeck Construction in building an Embassy Suites Hotel in downtown Houston, which involved pneumatically applying concrete to 30-foot-deep retaining walls comprising 250 linear feet. Rather than install cast-in-place retaining walls, construction teams installed wood shoring secured with tiebacks into the wall face and reinforced with steel. Shotcrete was sprayed on and around the steel at a rate of about 40 to 50 yards per day, completely encasing it in concrete that ran as thick as 18 inches. A further inch of gunite was sprayed on parts of the wall that remained exposed as part of the below-grade parking garage; this covering was then trowelled into a smooth finish.
According to the project supervisor, Ches Bromley, Using cast-in-place, we would have had to monopolize the crane operator is time to handle form placement, leaving him no time for other lifting assignments. He estimates using the shotcrete/gunite process cut two weeks off the project schedule. At an estimated $20,000 a day for construction costs, this resulted in significant cost savings.
Based on USGunite demonstrated success in the past,that is a concrete expectation for the future. For more detail visit: http://www.usgunite.com