UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA Fraser Hall - Chemistry Undergraduate Teaching Facility

The University of Minnesota’s renovation and 90,000-square-foot addition to its 100-year-old Fraser Hall transforms this historic building into a modern hub for undergraduate chemistry. The reimagined 117,000-square-foot facility will house classrooms, student collaboration spaces, professional offices and 18 active-learning science labs. The project is utilizing the State of Minnesota B3 guidelines (which include SB2030 Energy Standard) to meet sustainability goals for site, water, energy, indoor, materials and waste.

THE CHALLENGE
 

• Project team needed advanced concrete mixes containing high recycled content and locally sourced materials to achieve demanding sustainability, performance and productivity goals.
• Structural columns required an innovative concrete to flow through and consolidate around embedded reinforcement, achieve 6,000-psi strength and deliver a high-quality finish.
• Meeting construction schedules of floor slabs called for high-early strength concrete that—in widely varying temperatures—would reliably hit 4,000 psi in 48 hours and 6,000 psi in 28 days.
• Campus jobsite location created logistical challenges for ensuring continuous on-time deliveries from off-site concrete batch plants to pumping stations throughout the work zones.

THE SOLUTION

• Project team relied on 4,700 CY of ECOPact™ low-carbon concrete—containing 20% slag and 15% fly ash—to construct 5,000 and 6,000 psi footings, walls and slabs, while reducing CO2 emissions by 34% compared to traditional concrete.
• Agileflow® self-consolidating concrete achieved the flowability, workability, and strengths required for the columns, while eliminating the need for labor-intensive vibration and patching.
• High-early strength quick-setting concrete accelerated the construction of floor slabs in a wide range of extreme cold-hot seasonal temperature conditions of the Upper Midwest region.
• Extensive production scheduling, logistics planning and coordination using the ConcreteDirect smartphone app ensured on-time deliveries and improved productivity.