Novelis, one of the world’s largest suppliers of aluminum, hired Walbridge to provide construction services at their existing facility in Oswego, for the addition of two new Continuous Annealing Solution Heat-treat (CASH) lines that produce aluminum sheet metal products. This increased plant production to over one billion pounds of aluminum per year.
The size of the entire addition is just 500’ by 200’, which is just larger than a football field. The Walbridge portion of the work included heavy foundations and 8 concrete pits that were approximately 24’ deep across and approximately 500,000 square feet of new production area. Because all pits had to be excavated to bedrock, no toe was left for the soldier beams, so two rows of horizontal bracing was required.
Flow fill was installed above the bedrock and mats of 3’ thick were installed. The installation included over 900 H-column piles and 19,000 cubic yards of thickened concrete floor slabs requiring over 1,600 tons of rebar.
Also installed were over 2,000 anchor bolts, 900 production piles, and some 2,000 electrical conduit sleeves penetrating multiple walls, pits, foundations and equipment pads.
Due to the overall small size of the building, the placement of an extensive amount of forms and eight hydraulic cranes, two lulls, and 200 tons of rebar at any one time was challenging.