Construction continues around the clock on the High Explosives Science and Engineering facility at the Pantex Plant in Texas, where the first of three massive concrete slabs were recently poured during an all-night construction binge.
Crews recently placed the first of three 2-foot-thick concrete mat slabs at the High Explosives Science and Engineering (HESE) project’s High Explosives Lab Building, which required 10 concrete trucks to make more than 86 trips to the site, according to an Aug. 4 post on the Pantex Plant’s blog.
“In my 16 years at the plant, I have never placed this much concrete,” Project Manager Chris Howard said about the 869 cubic yards of concrete.
Initially planned for a May evening when the weather was cooler and the night air would allow for better working conditions, the project was delayed three weeks due to historic Texas Panhandle rainfall, according to Pantex.
“When the weather dried up, the steadfast construction support cast of Security, Safety, Construction Management, Quality, and Engineering pulled an all-nighter with design engineering firm Burns & McDonnell and subcontractor Hensel Phelps,” the blog post said.
Pouring this first slab gave the team some insight into similar future pours, which will eventually result in 11,751 cubic yards of concrete at the HESE facility.
When complete, the HESE will replace 15 obsolete facilities at Pantex, the average age of which is 68 years old, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency that owns the plant. The $100 million HESE project will add to the existing 650 buildings on the 18,000-acre Pantex campus. Funding for the project was included in the NNSA’s fiscal 2020 budget.
It will support the NNSA’s High Explosives Center of Excellence for Manufacturing by providing laboratory space, classified and unclassified office and meeting areas and a shower and changing area for high explosives operations personnel.
