We delivered the largest, most energy-efficient brick manufacturing plant in the 美国.

Imagine a world without bricks – the most essential building blocks for creating the structures we live and work in every day. 北美北部是美国最大的砖制造商.S., 但要跟上不断增长的需求, 公司需要一辆新的295,000平方英尺, 高度自动化和创新的生产设施. 通过班, 哈斯克尔公司, 这在建筑行业已经有100多年的历史了, we helped Boral build a world-class facility that integrated state-of-the-art manufacturing processes and systems.

Benham and Boral collaborated to innovate the brick manufacturing process with new technology.

开始这项事业, our design-build team worked with Boral to define the brick making process requirements and subsequently coordinated 采购ment and third-party vendors to develop and install a complex, 先进的工艺系统. 生产设施布局包括55个,1000平方英尺每小时粉碎150吨原料粘土, 还有240,000平方英尺来挤压和成型砖. Part of the innovations to the process included utilizing robotics to load formed bricks onto an automated movement “car” that takes the bricks through the 17,500-square-foot kiln and then delivers the finished bricks to an automated packaging system.

我们减轻了几个关键的挑战，以保持项目的进度和预算.

在项目执行过程中, we encountered two major delays due to difficult negotiations between the client and one of their suppliers as well as some local and state regulatory hang-ups. 这些延误有可能使该项目推迟10个月, but by revising our activity sequence and shifting our focus to 工程 and 采购ment activities, 我们能够将延迟时间缩短到四个月. Boral required the project budget to be developed at the conceptual (<5%) phase, 在这么早的阶段预测成本会带来潜在风险吗. We mitigated this by continuously providing our client with accurate cost-to-complete forecast projections that allowed them to make informed decisions to keep spending on track and meet our budget.

Early planning for green features made this the first brick facility to receive LEED® certification.

从这个项目开始, Boral made it a clear objective that all of the new facility’s process and utility systems had to be energy efficient. 结果是, site selection was carefully made to minimize energy and transportation costs associated with hauling clay from its source to processing. The manufacturing facility layout was also designed to reduce energy and equipment costs by limiting transitions and travel distances. 在包装方面, our team specifically sought out a vendor who could provide environmentally-friendly packing materials.

All of these efforts combined to save the plant more than $1M in annual operating costs and earn LEED Gold certification, 超出了Boral的所有期望. This was the first LEED certification awarded in the brick industry and one of only a few awarded to industrial manufacturing facilities.

Boral and Benham successfully met or exceeded all expectations for this brick manufacturing project.

一旦完成, the new 特拉豪特，印第安纳州, the facility provided capacity for Boral to produce an additional 120 million bricks per year, 使他们在美国的粘土生产总量增加了7%.