Blakeslee Prestress Hosts Gilbane Engineers in Quarterly Peer Group
On November 18, 2016 Blakeslee Prestress, Inc. in Branford, Connecticut hosted a visit from Project Engineers from Gilbane Building Company’s Connecticut Office. This was their quarterly Engineering Peer Group Meeting and were honored to been asked to hold the event.
The day started about 9:30am with a meet and greet for the 20 guests along with a continental breakfast.
After breakfast two groups were formed and were escorted by Blakeslee personnel into the plant where they learned the many different facets of the production facility. They were led through areas such as the quality control lab, batch plant, production and finishing areas.
Everyone returned to the office area where the group sat in a presentation by Rita L. Seraderian, the Executive Director of PCI Northeast. The topic touched on various types of precast construction including new trends such as mixed use buildings combining office space above parking garages and the use of the NEXT beam in different applications.
The next presentation was given by Bryan Eastman, CAD Manager with the topic of the Tekla 3D modeling program used at Blakeslee. Bryan not only discussed how the program works but how Gilbane can utilize the model with their trades.
Chris Carasone, Production Control & IT Manager discussed the Piece Tracker system we use to schedule product to be cast along with engineering scheduling their work. At any one time we know where any individual product is whether it has been scheduled, detailed, cast, qc approval, finished, shipped and erected among other stages. The model also provides a visual tool indicating different stages of each piece.
After the presentation lunch was brought in and a round table discussion started. Al Ignoto, Design Assist Manager discussed on how the "Design Assist Process" works and how it could benefit companies like Gilbane. One Gilbane project engineer coming off a recent project with us, reinforced on how Design Assist kept that project in line and made the process much smoother.
A question and answer session followed with Jim Braun, Engineering Manager and Michelle Haman, Senior Project Engineer fielding questions among others.
Hosting this event was not only beneficial to the Gilbane’s Engineers but it solidifies Blakeslee’s investment to work toward a successful and rewarding project for all.