Choate Construction Honored for Concrete Excellence from the American Concrete Institute

Choate Construction Company has been awarded for their construction excellence across multiple categories within four of their five divisions by the American Concrete Institute (ACI). The ACI holds local chapters throughout the world, including one for the state of Georgia, and another covering the Carolinas. The ACI Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards recognizes innovative concrete design and construction projects.

An affiliated division of the ACI, the Carolinas Chapter covers all areas within the North and South Carolina borders. Choate’s Carolinas divisions, located in Raleigh, Charlotte, and Charleston, all walked away victorious from the 2016 ACI Excellence in Concrete Awards Banquet.

Marsico Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was honored with an Excellence in Concrete award in the Innovation category. The contemporary eleven-story, state-of-the-art lab and research facility services both UNC’s School of Medicine and the Eschelman School of Pharmacy. At 343,000 SF, Marsico Hall’s cast-in-place concrete beam and slab structure utilizes concrete shear walls and 18-inch slabs for resilience and vibration control.

Erecting the highest tilt-up panels in the state of South Carolina to date, Benefitfocus Customer Success Center was awarded an Excellence in Concrete Award in the Tilt-Up category. The stunning complexity of this 147,800-SF corporate building is beautifully camouflaged behind the impressively high, 70’ tilt wall panels and 202 floor-to-ceiling windows. The panels, weighing as much as 150,000 pounds each, were erected by a 330-ton crane.

Ashley Furniture Distribution Warehouse, dubbed by its team as “Project Hammer,” took home an Excellence in Concrete award in the Heavy Industrial category. From the very beginning, the team knew flatness of the concrete slab was critical; slab flatness can affect the performance of equipment, create safer environments for forklifts to place and retrieve product, and ultimately make an impact on Ashley Furniture’s ability to retrieve and deliver their product faster.  The specialized installation of an “Ultraflat” concrete floor slab, which runs the full extent of the building, resulted in a slab that is 237% flatter and more level than the average warehouse floor.

The Georgia Chapter, ACI recognized Choate’s Atlanta division with a total of four Awards of Excellence in 2015. In the category of Parking Decks, winners consisted of mixed-use development The Brady’s 183,481-SF parking deck, as well as Alpharetta City Center in Alpharetta, GA’s historic downtown district. Alpharetta City Center’s municipal parking deck consists of 140,495 SF with 450 total spaces for daily visitors. Two-story, 66,320-SF Oakwood, GA automotive dealership, Milton Martin Toyota, took home a Concrete Award of Excellence in the Low-Rise Building category.