Challenging Concrete: Profile of Tarlton Corp.’s Concrete Group

Concrete contractors are as varied as there are projects. As every job is going to be different, every contractor looks for a different type of project. Then there are the few that look for the difficult projects. The jobs that test the skills of everyone.

Tarlton Corp.’s Concrete Group is one of those teams actively targeting the more tough endeavors. And they’re standing out because of it.

Building in and around the area for 78 years, Tartlon Corp. is St. Louis, Missouri’s largest WBENC-Certified Women’s Business Enterprise general contracting and construction management firm. They provide preconstruction, construction and design-build solutions to clients in the commercial, institutional, government, nonprofit, concrete, energy, industrial and water-wastewater markets. They provide structural, civil work as well as have a concrete restoration specialty. The company is led by President Tracy Hart. While it varies seasonally, they employ around 250 professional, craft, and support staff.

“We try to target the more challenging, complicated projects that have a little meat to it, that we can offer our expertise and specialty,” says Michael Trettel, Vice President and lead of the Energy, Industrial, Civil, and Concrete divisions. Anything out of the ordinary such as a tough schedule, the scope of the work, what’s being installed, built, constraints, design features, etc.

They find their value and confidence from the people on their team, he says. “There’s a lot of contractors that perform the more cookie cutter type of thing. We have a lot of great people on our team that are really good at what they do. To take advantage of their talents and serve our clients, we gravitate toward those more challenging jobs where there’s not as many folks in the market that can do some of those jobs or have an interest in taking them. [The jobs] come with risks of course, but we’re properly positioned to manage those risks and still perform.”

Their primary territory is around the St. Louis and Missouri state branching out into Illinois and Kansas and as far away from home as Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin. They’ve been recognized in local award programs:

• a finalist for 2024 Construction Keystone Award, First Bank headquarters, Creve Coeur, Missouri
• AGC Missouri chapter 2023 Project of the Year Award, Proton Therapy Vault, Peoria, Illinois
• AGC of America 2022 Merit Award, Michael and Quirsis Riney Primate Canopy Trails, St. Louis Zoo

Like an Underground Concrete Bunker

In a partnership with the concrete and masonry contractors at Otto Baum Company Inc., Tarlton Concrete completed the concrete construction of a proton therapy vault for PointCore Construction. Proton therapy allows oncologists to target radiation directly without significantly damaging the surrounding healthy tissue, providing the patient with fewer short- and long-term side effects and a smaller chance of recurrence. PointCore Construction is a health care program and construction management company launched as a joint venture of OSF HealthCare and Core Construction, with a mission to design and build cutting-edge health care facilities.

The $5.5 million, below-grade vault is attached to the cancer treatment center on the campus of the OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center. It was the second proton therapy vault the Tarlton Concrete Division has constructed at the time.

Unlike many radiation centers, the 4,520-cubic-yard concrete vault was designed to have no lead lining. As such, extremely precise structural concrete work was required to prevent the escape of any proton radiation. The substantial concrete walls, which include some over 25 ft. thick, are designed to stop and absorb traveling protons.

To ensure all mass concrete pours were placed and cured properly, consistent communication and coordination between all trade partners was essential. The Tarlton Concrete project team included Kevin Oakley, project director; Brian Julius, project manager; Kurt Aubuchon, senior project engineer; and Jeff Vogt, project superintendent. Otto Baum Company Inc. supplied labor, equipment and construction materials for the project. Doka USA Ltd. fully engineered the concrete formwork to minimize deflections and maintain concrete tolerances.

A thermal control plan, critical to the execution of the pours, was developed in conjunction with CTL Group, an internationally recognized engineering, architecture and materials science consulting firm. The plan included a specific temperature control plan for each individual pour. Temperature sensors were placed in each pour to carefully monitor and track temperature differentials. The team maintained the schedule by streamlining a blockout process for adjacent concrete pours that allowed them to reduce the cure time between pours without sacrificing the integrity and quality of the concrete.

Odd Shape, Tight Constraints

Another standout project for Tarlton was the headquarters for First Bank which featured what Julius called “an odd shape design” and included tight constraints. The original First Bank building, which opened in 1967, was demolished in 2022. Cobalt Construction Consulting served as the owner’s representative. Tarlton’s portion of the project comprised the construction of two separate concrete structures – the four-story, 87,000-sq.-ft. headquarters building and an adjacent two-story, 82,000-sq.-ft. parking garage. The Tarlton team overcame uncontrollable weather delays and carefully sequenced concrete pours to help keep the overall project on schedule.

The design features an open courtyard connected to large building wings on each side, creating a U-shape which ended up creating a unique challenge for placing the concrete foundation. Built within the original footprint, the structure more than doubled the space. It was targeted for both LEED Silver and WELL certification.

Design challenges included columns where some were round while others had a bull nose shape – square on one end and round on the other – each four stories tall with each requiring an architectural glass finish, says Julius. Tarlton worked with Brinkmann on construction of the three 40,000-sq.-ft. concrete floor decks and on the installation of the massive, exposed concrete columns; multiple sections of glass curtain wall; and the roof. Tarlton also self-performed the concrete work for the new 295-space parking structure, which included the use of reinforcing steel and construction of an elevated post-tensioned deck. The team included Trettel; Oakley; Julius; Dan Winkler, project engineer; Vogt; Chad Schmidtke, project foreman; and Andrew Messina, project intern.

Their expertise in the challenging jobs helped them finish within two days of the original schedule. 

Scheduling Through Difficulties

Tarlton Concrete finds that it helps to look at projects with a different perspective. “We provide our expertise to figure out how to build it and build it to meet the schedule the owner demands,” says Trettel. “You generally see less competition on some of those projects, because not everybody can do them.”

And figuring out the schedule is one the biggest keys. Julius explains that they use a couple of different methods to help manage. The initial project will be built out matching the client’s needs or matching the schedule of the general contractor. “We try to take their schedule dates and build out a pretty detailed schedule,” says Julius. As the project goes, they’ll end up tweaking and updating it monthly or even weekly. They primarily use Primavera P6 as their baseline overall project scheduling software, some basic scheduling on Excel, plus some additional tools to help ensure they don’t miss details to stay on track and communicate with everyone involved.

“We usually will start brining in a detailed four week schedule that will show durations – something we can give to the field to explain it in better detail. To the point where it’s not just saying ‘we’re installing six columns this week.” Instead, the schedule breaks the job into more detail on what will be accomplished by day. For example, Tuesday could be to put up half side of the forms for six columns. Wednesday, “get rebar in them.” Thursday, “close up the columns.”

They conduct pull planning sessions with subs so each trade is aware of all necessary information. Juluis explains using the proton therapy vault jobs for example, “there’s a lot of stuff in the walls, because nothing can be embedded out or can be installed on the walls – everything’s mostly embedded in the concrete. That makes it extra challenging of making sure that everything gets in there correctly inside of our pour dates and our schedules. It’s a lot of coordination.”

Staying on top of things helps the Tarlton Concrete team to be almost ahead of any issues before they arise. “For First Bank,” says Julius, “anytime a schedule crunch was happening or was starting to get talked about, we get called in for a meeting. We’d already have it solved. Having been talking about it for the last week. They greatly appreciated that amount of effort and conversation.”

Even the best of planning can’t hold up to weather and environmental conditions. One of the group’s most recent projects include working in the local River Des Peres channel. “[The River Des Peres] is essentially a collector river channel for storm runoff,” says Trettel. The job requires the demolition, removal, and replacement of degrading concrete slabs and walls all while working when it’s not unpredictably full of water. The schedule is complicated in that they need a certain amount of weather days each month and figuring out the right seasons to do the amount of work. Almost guessing, at times, when they have a dry period of time and get work done.

The job is scheduled out till the fall of 2026, but they believe they’ll be able to get it done within the year if they get started in the next couple of months. “But with all weather and everything, we’re going to be kind of showing an aggressive schedule to our team to get out of there early,” says Julius.

It’s the field challenges that are hard to plan for. Even the award winning work for the First Bank building had near hurricane wind events (50-60 mph) that below formwork off the deck two days before pour. “We had to end up tearing a lot of that deck down, replacing it and getting the floor back scheduled,” says Julius.

Trettel says that there’s a couple of things that help them find and keep control of the project. “One, building that schedule as early as possible, during the bid stage. Secondly, bringing in all of the parties: the owner, the engineer, all of our subs, all of our suppliers, getting feedback on that to manage. There’s getting in front of critical long-lead items associated with the project, building that into the schedule, and managing that the whole way through,” he says.

Trettel has been with the company for about three years. Fresh eyes allow him to approach potential issues with new ideas. “I’m bringing in new ideas…always trying to take a fresh approach and challenge what we know and how we do it. You don’t want to fix what’s not broken, but you always want to strive for continuous improvement at the same time.

The construction industry has long been lagging in technology and innovations and options [but] now, all of a sudden, there’s an explosion of those tools and different things on the market. Vetting those out and seeing what makes sense for us is a big part of what we do now.”

Contractors looking to stretch their skills and bid toward the more challenging jobs, Trettle has suggestions. One, understand as much as you can before getting into it. Second, have the right people and the right experience to build the project that is potentially in front of you. “There is a leap going from a driveway. Know the risks, what’s involved, have the people, and the competency to build the project because, like any construction project – and particularly when you’re self-performing – they can go south in a hurry if you don’t have those controls and people in place.”