Central Illinois is an ideal location for wind-powered electricity generation. Hundreds of turbine towers are rising on the plains. Leading builders including White Construction and M. A. Mortenson rely on Prairie's mobile plants and mat pour expertise to supply the 300-plus yard foundations that anchor the 300-foot towers. Prairie has supplied more than 100,000 yards of concrete for wind power projects to date.

Prairie delivered 5,000 yards of 10,000 psi low-heat SCC for the 10 foot deep foundation mat supporting the 92-story Trump International Tower in Chicago. 30 Prairie trucks totaled more than 600 trips to complete McHugh Construction’s continuous pour in 22 hours.

Wacker Drive demanded a high-strength mix that would deliver 75 years of service. Partnering with Walsh Construction, Prairie created the first high-performance mix of its kind used in Illinois. With a maximum compressive strength of 9,500 psi, the mix had superior workability – enabling Walsh crews to finish weeks ahead of schedule.

Prairie performed more than 300 tests to produce the 20 performance mixes that McHugh Construction needed to build Trump Tower including high-strength, high-modulus mixes, early strength mixes, low heat mixes, and SCC with slump spreads of up to 28 inches – all pumpable to 1,000 vertical feet and available year round.

 

Chicago’s Millennium Park is one of the largest green roof projects in the world. Prairie concrete was used in the cast-in-place garages that form most of the waterproofed roof deck, supporting the four feet of soil and growing medium that enables the park’s garden to absorb and filter storm water, clean the air, and reduce the urban heat island effect.

The flexibility, fluidity and beauty of concrete came together in Santiago Calatrava's iconic design for the Milwaukee Art Museum. Dense reinforcement and tight formwork for the curving walls and arches and demands for a blemish free surface required a close collaboration between C.G. Schmidt and Prairie Material to develop the performance mixes needed to create this masterpiece.

The City of Indianapolis found that up to 80% of its street repairs using conventional backfill failed within 12 months due to settling. After specifying Prairie's Redi-Fill for all street repairs in 2006, the failure rate dropped to zero. The Indianapolis Water Company uses nearly 20,000 yards of Redi-Fill annually, too, relying on it for every job requiring backfill under pavement.

In the final 2-mile phase of the Milwaukee deep tunnel project, crews from Shea-Kenny Construction completed 175 feet of 23-foot-diameter tunnel lining per day, placing 550 cubic yards at nearly 320 feet below grade. The Prairie mix created exclusively for this job reached 1,200 psi within 8 hours and moved smoothly through underground slicklines for up to one mile. On-site quality control experts ensured that every load achieved the consistency, flowability and fast strength Shea-Kenny required.

Weddle Brothers construction in Bloomington, Indiana used 5,800 yards of Prairie's performance concrete to build Indiana University's Cook Hall basketball practice facility. Prairie delivered five unique mixes including 6,000-psi HPC for 10 cast-in-place arches, a low-curl FiberMax reinforced mix for the playing floors, and StormHandler pervious strips for the parking lot.