Better than Steel

Precast concrete is not so different from cast-in-place. That was one of my take-aways at last week’s The Precast Show. On a snowy day, I drove the 50 miles from my Colorado office to downtown Denver to tour a miniature version of World of Concrete that had a lot of the same exhibitors without the bigger equipment like loaders, excavators, and concrete pumps. A big topic of conversation was infrastructure—whether money is coming and how to be involved in the projects. As part of that was talk about the accelerated bridge construction technique (ABC), which uses precast concrete for many of the structural elements with a cast-in-place (CIP) deck. This allows rapid onsite construction and minimal traffic disruption. This is just one example of how precast and CIP concrete can be combined to the benefit of the owner. CIP concrete contractors are going to see a lot more prefabricated elements in concrete construction, including precast elements—hey, it’s better than steel!