Ford Motor Company’s new revolutionary research and testing facility, the Vehicle Performance & Electrification Center (VPEC), houses the most technologically advanced wind tunnel of its kind in the world, a state-of-the-art rolling road system and a variety of battery cyclers and environmental chambers to improve fuel efficiency and vehicle performance.
Michigan Concrete Association Michigan Award of Excellence
NMAPC Zero Injury Safety Award
Engineering Society of Detroit Construction & Design Award
Ford World Excellence Award in the Performance Category
Throughout this project, Aristeo’s scope of work expanded from the wind tunnel to include the addition of the battery lab, various support facilities, foundations for a future to-be-determined battery lab, and additional functional spaces for employees. With these additions, Aristeo provided the customer with expert advice to ensure we were designing for constructability, capacity and safety through the scope expansions. Thanks to our recommendations, Aristeo was able to adapt the project plans to suit the expanding scope, while still ensuring the feasibility of the project as a whole. We successfully executed the entirety of the new scope while minimizing sacrifices in terms of functionality, schedule and budget. Thanks to Aristeo’s proactive and collaborative planning in the early stages of the project, and close coordination with both the owner and our design partner, this project was successfully executed to the highest quality standards.
Our innovative use of the lean methodologies, high-tech equipment, addition of value engineered ideas and overall collaborative processes ensured the project stayed on track and operated efficiently and safely despite the large number of subcontractor partners and ongoing activities. We provided earthwork, concrete, steel fabrication and steel erection services. Included in our scope of concrete services were a number of complex and unique concrete pours. One such pour was one of our largest single concrete pours at 3,000 cubic yards, completed at an impressive rate of 400 cubic yards per hour. We also poured our tallest cast in place wall to date at 48 feet tall, which included a 28-foot octagon box out and two double curved contraction walls, one at 47 feet tall and the other at 43 feet tall.
At the wind tunnel building, Aristeo excavated 240,000 cubic yards of material and poured 22,000 cubic yards of concrete for the foundations, floors and walls. In addition to our concrete services, Aristeo fabricated and erected over 2,100 tons of heavy structural steel, miscellaneous steel and multiple sets of architectural stairs for the three buildings. The majority of the steel was for the two story battery lab building and attached support facility, which is one of Aristeo’s largest ever structural steel projects ringing in at over 1,800 tons of structural steel. For this project, Aristeo carefully coordinated the sequencing and scheduling of multiple crews and erection cranes across the job site. This allowed the building to be erected on multiple fronts and prevented conflicts with the large, ongoing concrete pours.
Challenges included the coordination of multiple project teams – all with unique schedules, working simultaneously across three buildings and many different activities on a single jobsite. Aristeo utilized many LEAN construction solutions, value engineered ideas, proactive collaboration and specialized equipment/processes to help solve several planning/scheduling and materials-related challenges on this project.
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