Construction of the new +50,000-square foot Soybean Crush Plant in Norfolk, NE included large day bins and several auxiliary buildings.  The soil conditions at the project site generally consist of up to 19 ft of loose to medium dense sand underlain by soft to very stiff lean clay overlying very stiff to hard clay or medium dense to dense sand followed by shale bedrock to the maximum explored depth.  Cuts up to 11 ft were required for grading the site to finished grade.

PCI and their design partners, Ground Improvement Engineering, delivered a design-build ground improvement solution that was tailored to the wide variety of structures and varied soil conditions.  The design-build solution featured over 500 GeoConcrete Column® (GCC) rigid inclusions for settlement control of the prep/extraction building and the day bins, and over 1,000 Geopier Rammed Aggregate Pier® (RAP) elements for settlement control of the oil storage building, hull storage bins slab, and fire water tank slabs. 

Field load tests were performed to verify the in-situ behavior of the rigid inclusions and RAPs in accordance with ASTM D1143.  PCI installed all rigid inclusions and Rammed Aggregate Piers with one crew to deliver an on-time construction schedule.