Eastern Vault Company Receives Multiple Awards for Work on Historic Bridge

The Evercast team took home two awards at the 2023 National Precast Concrete Association Precast Show

MST Concrete Products Inc, an Evercast Company located in Central, SC was honored with a milestone achievement for being a certified plant for 20 years.

Dellinger Precast Inc, an Evercast Company located in Denver, NC was honored with a milestone achievement for being a certified plant for 15 years.

Evercast would like to thank the teams at both branches for their years of hard work. The leaders and employees at MST and Dellinger are dedicated to producing high-quality product built to last. It’s their reliability and attention to detail that has kept happy customers coming back for the last 20 years.

The Precast Show brings together more than 4,000 manufactured concrete industry professionals each year to network, grow in business and learn about the newest technologies.

Princeton, WV- Jan. 18, 2023- Eastern Vault, an Evercast™ company, was recently part of a team that was awarded two 2023 Precast/Prestress Concrete Institute awards for their work on the Swift Island Historic Arch Bridge.

Evercast™ is a leading specialty precast and prestressed concrete producer in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast United States.

Eastern Vault was the precast and prestress concrete producer to help earn the project team the Special Award for Sustainable Design and the Transportation Award for Best Rehabilitated Bridge.

In earning this award, the company demonstrated outstanding leadership, teamwork and problem-solving skills.

“It’s always nice being recognized for the hard work that goes on here,” said Chad Stultz, the Prestress Manager at Eastern Vault Company.

It was a nearly 4-month process of completing the shop drawings and taking care of any necessary revisions and resubmittals. The project also required Eastern Vault to develop a specialized self-consolidating concrete (SCC) mixture.

“I was pretty surprised,” said Kyle Bowling, when he found out about the award. “You know we’ve never been featured in those designs. A lot of what we do is not very architectural or pretty. It’s a bridge beam at the end of the day. It’s a necessity. So to be able to rehab an older bridge like that and it be aesthetically pleasing and a staple of that community, that was something that we’ve never had before.”

Bowling was the quality control manager on the project. The bridge was the biggest project he’s worked on during his eight-year tenure with Eastern Vault Company.

The bridge was originally built in 1922 and eligible for the Historic Register. Residents were avid on preserving it.

“The use of precast concrete helped to preserve the original arches rather than having to demolish the bridge and build a new conventional structure,” said John Sloan, PE, the North Carolina bridge program manager for AECOM. “This preserved a historic resource while providing significant cost savings for the North Carolina Department of Transportation.”

The team was able to preserve the architectural character by using precast concrete fascia panels. These panels aren’t just aesthetically pleasing, but provide a durable solution. The team was able to complete the project as quickly as possible to minimize the inconvenience to those traveling by car or boat and the project was complete in May, 2021.

“The remote location of Lake Tillery and the complex construction sequencing needed to avoid overstressing the arches warranted the use of precast concrete,” said Kevin Fischer, the NCDOT assistant state structures engineer, field operations. “Precast concrete beams reduced the construction timeline and improved constructability. The unique continuity details of the precast concrete beams allowed the elimination of several joints in the bridge to reduce future maintenance needs.”

It’s not easy to earn a PCI award and the team didn’t take any shortcuts when it came to their work. They had to overcome multiple obstacles and logistical hurdles to send over 100 truckloads of material 200 miles away to Albermarle, NC.

“We sent quality personnel down there a couple of times because some beams had been damaged while they were setting them and our guys had to go down there and make repairs,” said Bowling.

The project included 6 castings of prestressed box beams (20 beams), 18 castings of precast spandrel beams (192 beams) and 32 castings of prestressed deck panels (849 panels total).

If you ever find yourself outside the Charlotte area crossing the Pee Dee River on the Swift Island Arch Bridge, take a moment to recognize Eastern Vault’s hard work.

Photos courtesy of the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute