May 29, 2008

Calgary’s Bow tower sets record for largest continuous commercial-building concrete pour

RICHARD GILBERT

staff writer

The largest continuous concrete pour for a commercial building foundation in Canada occurred recently as part of the first stage of construction of the $1.2 billion Bow building in Calgary.

The Bow is a 58-storey office tower in downtown Calgary, which is currently under construction for EnCana Corporation as a new corporate headquarters.

The Bow project, at about two million square feet of space and 775 feet high, will bring employees together in the largest single-tenant office building in western Canada.

Vancouver-based Ledcor Construction is the construction manager for the Bow project. The groundbreaking for the tower took place in June 2007.

“We started pouring the concrete foundation on Friday, May 9 at 8 p.m. and finished on Sunday, May 11 at noon, which is a total of 40 hours. This is the largest continuously poured footing of a commercial building in Canada,” said Kerry Gillis, senior vice-president of Ledcor Construction.

“The exact quantity of the pour was 13,778 cubic metres of concrete, which amounts to about 1,300 truckloads. The mixer trucks average about 8-12 metres per load.”

Inland Concrete Ltd. used between 70 and 95 trucks for each cycle to keep the pour rate going.

When they poured in the night less trucks were needed, but during Saturday morning traffic the number of trucks was increased to 95.

“There were 500 people involved in the pour, who worked vibrating and placing concrete, running pumps, driving mixers trucks and operating batch plants. These people worked over the course of three shifts,” said Gillis.

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