The Trump Palace Pour

9,000-Yd. Concrete Pour Initiates Construction of 550-Ft.-Tall Luxury Condominium
in Sunny Isles Beach

Under a clear October sky, the hum of pumps and rumble of trucks filled the oceanfront air, during a skillfully choreographed mat pour at the Trump Palace, in Sunny Isles Beach.

"It went very well," said A.C. Kidd, the owner's representative for the Trump Dezer Development Group. "We put 9,000 cu. yds. in the ground between midnight and 3 o'clock Saturday."

To facilitate such a smooth operation at Trump Grande Ocean Resort and Residences' first residential tower, Kidd held four meetings with "all the players." Those included representatives from Florida Concrete Unlimited, Miami; Rinker Materials Corp., Miami; Commercial Forming, Pompano Beach; and the Sunny Isles Beach police department, which handled traffic flow.

Al Ross, vice president of Florida Concrete Unlimited, began preparing a blueprint of the site, drawn to scale, two months prior to the pour. It showed the location of each concrete pump, how far each would reach, and where trucks needed to enter and exit the property. This being the company's fifth major mat pour in 2002, Ross had the experience for such an orchestration.

On that Friday afternoon, Florida Concrete marked the location for each of the seven pumps and drew squares on the ground to show concrete truck drivers exactly where to pull up.

Florida Concrete's pumps included two, new 55-meter pumps, as well as five others ranging from 32 to 52 meters in size. Ross credited the company's annual upgrading of equipment with eliminating breakdowns or problems.

Portable lights installed to illuminate the area gave the appearance of "Joe Robbie Stadium during Monday night football," according to Kidd. The job consumed 1,000 truckloads of concrete from five Rinker plants. Rinker began planning about a month prior to the pour, coordinating delivery of cement and aggregate to its plants, as well as shuttling the 7,000-psi concrete with superplastizer to the jobsite. Superplastizer is a chemical that removes water to keep the water-cement ratio low and increases slump.

Truck drivers and plant staff worked two shifts, 172 drivers on the first shift and 100 drivers on the second. Approximately 30 trucks were onsite at any given time.

"The actual pour is so dynamic; you have to be so flexible," said Antonio Obregon, Rinker's Miami-Dade region manager. "Our biggest concern is safety. We wanted to make sure we implemented as much safety as possible."

Rinker experienced no injuries. All workers wore safety equipment and stayed mindful of what they were doing.

"People get excited about large mat pours," Obregon said. "But mat pours inherently carry a lot of risk, and the safety of our people was by far the most important thing."

Obregon described the pour rate as demanding. The set pumps had an hourly capacity of more than 1,000 yds. The pour rate averaged 650-cu.-yds. per hour. Some hours, it ran as high as 850 cu. yds.

"We set up two wash-out towers, so the concrete truck drivers didn't have to get out of their trucks to wash the chutes out," Kidd said. "Once we got rolling, we were pushing an empty concrete truck out of here and back on the road every 52 seconds."

Throughout the pour, crews maintained constant dewatering, with a diesel pump and two electric pumps, to keep the water table at an elevation of minus seven. The mat was poured in 9-in. layers, with eight concrete vibrators providing constant vibration.

Intercounty Laboratories, Miami, sampled concrete every 50 yds., on behalf of the owner.
Florida Concrete used an EL1 laser for the finishing grade on the 26,000-sq.-ft. slab.

"We didn't see any notable elevation until about 11 o'clock on Saturday morning," Kidd said. "It's a single mat, 9 ft. thick, supported by 350 30-in. piles and 179 18-in. structural piles. And then there is 1,500 tons of rebar on top of that and 9,000 yds. of concrete around the rebar."

Florida Concrete had 50 employees onsite during the pour. Obregon estimates Rinker had 500 people working on the pour, including truck drivers and plant crews.

"We had no glitches, no delays waiting for concrete, no backup of concrete," Kidd concluded.

"Everything just rolled through very smoothly. All the players involved put forth an outstanding effort."

The Trump Palace will rise just over 551 ft., and have 43 floors. It has three, elliptical cores that contain the elevators and the air-conditioning and equipment space.

"It's a very unique looking building," said Kidd, who expects construction on Trump Palace to wrap up in an estimated 30 months, or approximately June 2005.