In our Batch Plant module, we see how companies are efficiently stockpiling sand, gravel and rock, conveying them to mixers. Along with aggregate handling are views of cement silo configurations that producers are employing in modern plant design to maximize their production options. Also, we look at trends in mixing equipment – chief among them the advent of twin shaft, horizontal units for wet and dry cast operations.

In Block & Paver, we visit a host of representative operations, including those where owners are capitalizing on the boom in landscape products and value-added concrete masonry units for conventional building applications.

Under Pipe, we look at companies who have built greenfield operations or upgraded existing facilities to better serve drainage and sewer markets. Companies in these product segments have enjoyed support from strong housing and highway construction, along with programmed work tied to municipalities’ pollution goal measures tied to Clean Water Act goals.

Under Precast, our Tour stops at companies serving a variety of building or public works market segments. Here, as our subject producers and their contemporaries have discovered, opportunities abound throughout construction where standardized products or building systems can be specified in lieu of cast-in-place structures.

In the Prestressed module, we visit plants and projects reflecting the vitality of what in manufactured-concrete is the "engineered" segment. The prestressed business has been favorably impacted in recent years by increasing demand for quick construction solutions – especially in commercial buildings, parking structures and bridges.

We have assembled a representative portfolio of quality operations to showcase good operating procedures. These operations are current and indicative of a sweeping overhaul of dated facilities that the manufactured-concrete industry has effected during the past decade. Much activity has been fueled by solid financial performance owing to record product demand in consecutive years since 1995.