Story

Kent Companies was hired by Rockford Construction to provide a turnkey concrete package for this 120,000 square foot, six story cast-in-place parking garage for the City of Grand Rapids.  The project included two concrete stair and elevator cores, over 4,200 cubic yards of concrete, nearly 300 tons of resteel and 112,000 pounds of post-tension.  Kent’s crews performed all aspects of the concrete package, including resteel and post-tension placement, formwork build-up and cycling and placing and finishing the concrete.

In a first for Grand Rapids, Kent utilized Potain’s HDT-80 portable tower crane to service the structure during construction.  The HDT-80’s remote control allowed the crane’s operator to stand on the structure during construction and operate the crane.  The HDT-80 also was utilized to hoist Kent’s 38-meter Putzmeister concrete placing boom on to a free-standing tower to aid in concrete placement.  Finally, Kent partnered with formwork supplier EFCO and utilized a custom designed Cunningham Garage Beam System to form the elevated structure.  All components of the formwork system were designed to cycle with the structure itself, eliminating the need for a crane to move formwork.