United Brick & Tile New Kiln Building

Adel, Iowa

Project Manager: Sam Harding  

Superintendent: John Zepp

Architectural Work: Design-Build by Shriver Construction Company  

Structural Engineering Firm: Labate Engineering

Contract Amount: $1,057,909.00

Completion Date: September 2001

Project Description:

When Sioux City Brick & Tile Company needed to construct a new multi-million dollar kiln building for its United Brick & Tile Division in Adel, Iowa, it assembled the same team that had successfully constructed the new kiln building for its Sergeant Bluffs, Iowa plant in 1998 (a building that was listed in the 1998 VP Hall of Fame).  That team included Shriver Construction Company and VP Buildings paired with Ceric, Inc., a world renowned kiln design and manufacturing company.

This building is significantly larger than the previous facility with a capacity of 55 million brick per year.  It also incorporated a first of its kind, state of the art robotic brick sorting and blending machine that totally revolutionizes the way brick is packaged for shipment.  The entire process is highly automated utilizing state of the art technologies that make the new plant one of the most efficient in the world.

Shriver Construction Company was responsible for the construction of the foundation and the pre-engineered building shell.  The balance of the plant was constructed by Ceric, Inc. as part of its kiln design package.  The plant was designed on a fast track basis which made it necessary to order the building in phases.  Coordination between phases was critical as a common roof plane was shared as well as tight tolerances at connections.  The building also had to be designed for expansion along both sidewalls of the first phase as well as the entire endwall of the second phase to accommodate a doubling of brick making capacity to 110 million brick in the future.  The third phase, in fact, had to be redesigned just prior to fabrication due to a late design change to add 14’0” of additional height to fully cover taller clay storage bins and still accommodate the clay conveyor system.  The additional height placed the final height of the structure at 54’0” at the low sidewall with 45’0” rigid frames.  Two additional small phases for a compressor room and additional canopy space rounded out the five phase project.

A Standing Seam roof system was chosen to provide premium performance against the elements.  The Arctic White Panel Rib wall system provided an attractive and economical covering for the exterior walls.  All walls were lined with 26 gauge liner to 7’4” to protect the insulation system from damage.

Due to the tremendous flexibility and unique design options available from VP Buildings, Shriver Construction Company was able to successfully construct a well designed building on a very short timeline to meet and exceed the demands of its customer.

Unusual or Unique Features:

Since the kiln design along with the accompanying machinery was still largely in design stages when the building was ordered, a tremendous amount of flexibility within the building design was necessary to allow for potential changes as the kiln design was completed.  As noted above, the choice of a pre-engineered building allowed the flexibility to accommodate the last minute changes that came about in the final kiln design stages.

Working over the top of the kiln contractors presented a number of challenges for safety requiring careful coordination and communication.  This was further complicated by the language barriers between the kiln designers (Ceric), a French company, the kiln contractors from Germany , and Shriver Construction’s forces.  The teamwork on the project, however, made this a fairly easy obstacle to overcome.

Placement of interior columns was complicated by the placement of machinery as well as pits and rails upon which the kiln cars are moved throughout the plant.  One machine, in particular, required a jack-beam system to be installed in order to eliminate a column.  Many columns were spaced at varying intervals to maximize the flexibility of design that allowed columns and foundations systems to be placed in tight coordination with plant operations.  This created a unique structure in which nearly no two frames had the same interior column spacing.  It also required extremely close coordination between the building foundations installed by Shriver Construction and the various pits and machinery foundations in the plant.  Again the teamwork among all members of the project team helped make this a well coordinated effort that kept the project on track.