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The Brownstown Business Center Complex
At first glance at the Brownstown Business Center complex,
most see a sprawling network consisting of nine warehouse/distribution buildings within a black sea of
asphalt. Ford Motor Company, as well as a few other
businesses, viewed this as an opportunity. Ford envisioned a
new state-of-the-art parts distribution warehouse.
Wixom, Michigan-based Oliver/Hatcher Construction, contractor
for the new building, hired Ajax Paving Industries, Inc.
for the $1.6-million contract. The job required the installation
of the asphalt parking lot at the Brownstown Business Center,
a four-million-square-foot warehouse complex. In addition to
getting the building open for business quickly, quality was
uppermost in everyone’s mind.
“All the parking lots were previously built and showing
signs of premature cracking,” notes David Cowper, P.E.,
Senior Estimator at Ajax Paving Industries.
“The new lot, which was built around the perimeters of
buildings four and five of the complex, was conceived as a
heavy-duty pavement,” says Ted Miller, Director of Operations at Oliver/Hatcher Construction. The 700,000-
square-foot parking lot surrounding these two buildings would
serve as a trailer staging area for heavy trucks and needed to
be strong enough to resist the wear and tear of constant truck
traffic, according to Miller.
Building five, also constructed by Oliver/Hatcher, is a 60,000-square-foot cross-dock facility — a long, narrow building
with loading docks along each length, designed for the quick
transfer of freight from incoming trucks to waiting trucks on
the opposite side, which, in turn, ship the goods to retail outlets.
Owned by ASW Services, a logistics company that manages the
transfer of freight, the building was completed last September
and is made of pre-engineered steel. ASW’s biggest tenant at
the facility is Wal-Mart.
Building four, a 220,000-square-foot warehouse facility built
by Oliver/Hatcher, was completed last November. Transfreight,
a freight-logistics company, owns half of the building, with the
other half still available.
A New Classification
To help ensure that the new pavement would successfully withstand
the heavy truck use associated with these buildings,
Oliver/Hatcher had demanding specifications for the new
surface. Ajax Paving, the sole subcontractor, worked with its
customer to create an entirely new classification for paving,
according to Cowper.
The parties involved decided to change the MDOT 1500 mixes
originally planned for use to a higher-quality, longer-performance
mix, consisting of MDOT 4C for the top course and a coarser
MDOT 3C mix for the leveling course. Ajax’s own Rockwood
Quarry supplied the 4C and 3C aggregate used in the asphalt on
the job. “Because the company produced its own aggregate for
the asphalt mix, we could control the quality,” says Cowper.
Quality Assurance/Quality Control
“In addition, the job came with a quality assurance/quality
control specification, with penalties for poor density. If we
didn’t compact the asphalt correctly, we’d be penalized for it,”
says Cowper. To meet the specification, Ajax established a
rigorous quality-control procedure that required testing and
measuring the quality of the asphalt at the site and the plant
each day. The owner spent nearly $2 million on the parking
lot and wanted to ensure it was put in properly to last,
notes Cowper.
Construction of the lot began last July and was completed
in November, right on time. “It was built under a tight
schedule,” says Cowper. Rainy conditions in September
and October delayed construction, so when the skies cleared,
Ajax employees worked seven days a week to get the job done
on schedule.
Further Concern
Another challenge was the discovery of a great deal of wet,
soft ground on the site near building five. Ajax had planned
to cover the ground with geo-fabric, a blanket-like covering
designed to keep the mushy clay of the earth from mixing
with the stone base of the parking lot. Dave Marshall, Project
Manager at Ajax, and other project engineers decided to
switch to a geo-grid fabric, webbing similar to the material
used for snow fencing, that would serve as a more effective
barrier against the muddy ground.
The use of geo-grid fabric was a significant expense, costing
an additional $115,000. But given the material’s greater
effectiveness, the extra cost was well worth it, says Cowper,
noting that it holds up to more stringent conditions.
A total of eight buildings and almost 4,000,000 square foot
of facilities has now been built at Brownstown Business
Center by Oliver/Hatcher Construction. Together, ASW,
Ford Motor Company, and Transfreight, along with Ajax
and Oliver/Hatcher, has given new life to an area that now
represents economic growth for the community. |
