Keep it Coming! Florida’s Largest Concrete Pour

The Miami Herald/John VanBeekum

Dennis Mello of Mello Concrete Service, Inc. supervises his team as they participate in Florida’s largest concrete pour for the foundation for the Trump Royale in Miami.

It’s Saturday, January 7, 2006 at 2 a.m. and with temperatures in the low 40s, it’s cold by Miami standards. More than 1,500 workers – from BAC signatory contractor Mello Concrete Service, Inc., the general contractor Coastal Construction, C&C Concrete Pumping, and Rinker Materials – stand at the corner of 180th Street and Collins Avenue ready to begin the largest concrete pour of their careers, and the largest in Florida’s history. Dennis Mello, President of Mello Concrete Service, Inc. and a 36-year member of Local 1 Florida headed his team’s work on this historic pour.

Mello Vice President Randy McDade described the pour in detail to members of the Labor-Mangement Cement Craft Committee at it’s February meeting. He told the Committee that this was the second largest mat pour in the U.S., topped only by the Venetian Hotel’s 22,000-cubic yard pour in Las Vegas, and it may very well be the world’s largest residential mat pour.

With 190 trucks in constant rotation hauling concrete from seven South Florida plants, the pour took roughly 24 hours to complete. Some 13,500 cubic yards of concrete were expelled from the trucks into a hole 138 x 270 feet wide and 11 feet deep. Local 1 FL members employed by Mello Concrete ranged over the rebar grid covering the excavation pit using high cycle vibrators to place the concrete, which was pumped from the swing-tubes at a rate of 12 cubic yards per minute. Other workers were positioned down in the pit, wading and leveling out the elevator shaft.

By the end of the pour 3.2 million pounds of rebar and 53 million pounds of 7000 psi concrete had been utilized in setting the foundation for the Trump Royale, a 55-story, 386-unit luxury condominium building scheduled for completion in 2007. The luxury high-rise is part of the $700 million Trump Grande Ocean Resort and Residences.