Oldcastle Precasts North Milliken Avenue underpass project received PCI Award

LITTLETON, Colo. – Oldcastle Precast, a precast concrete manufacturer, announced that the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) has named their Perris, Calif. facility project as the winner of its 2014 PCI Design Awards. The project was the North Milliken Avenue Underpass Value Engineering Redesign Project in Ontario, Calif., which won the Best Non-Highway Bridges category. This railroad underpass was a redesign from another material that saved the project over $1 million. The bridge was converted from its original steel design to a modified prestressed single box girder. Oldcastle Precast-Perris provided the precast concrete railroad underpass components for this project.

The high-strength precast concrete units met stringent American Railway Maintenance-of-Way Association strength and deflection requirements despite limited vertical clearance. The requirements were met by using high-performance, 9,000 psi, concrete and prestress forces.

The new underpass includes a 171-foot-long by 52-foot-wide two-span bridge. A precast concrete T-wall-based retaining wall system extends half a mile in either direction on both sides of the track to elevate the line while meeting the right-of-way requirements. Seven-foot-deep precast fascia beams also support maintenance walkways, railings, and communication conduit on both sides.

The PCI Design Awards (www.pci.org) honors design excellence and construction quality in buildings and transportation structures built with precast concrete. This year, a panel of four independent judges representing the construction industry honored 27 buildings out of more than 100 qualified entries from throughout North America.