The Situation

Now under construction in the Kendall Square section of Cambridge, 145 Broadway is a 19-story office building that will overlook Boston from across the Charles River. Slated for completion in 2019, the property will feature 10,000 square feet of ground floor retail space, plus a five-story, below-grade parking garage.

At the project preconstruction meeting, the general contractor wondered if there was a way to speed up the concrete’s standard 28-day cure time – at least for a split slab section that would sit atop the underground garage and beneath a loading dock behind the building.

The area shared a busy throughway around the building and would soon have to support a heavy crane for vertical construction. The general contractor wanted the most durable surface available to support the crane but did not want to wait the standard 28-day cure time for concrete. Thanks to a Henry® Representative who was also at the meeting, he never had to.

The Solution

The Henry Representative suggested switching the specified Henry 790-11 hot rubberized asphalt waterproofing system to the recently introduced Henry Pumadeq System. Featuring PUMA technology, the new system is a cold fluid-applied, monolithic waterproofing system that, when used with Henry GC Epoxy primer, can be applied directly to “green” concrete.

The Pumadeq System is also less than half the overall thickness of the hot rubber asphalt system, which would allow for increased slab thickness without increasing the overall height of the loading dock. This gave designers a way to improve slab strength to better withstand heavy equipment that would be used on the dock area. The project teams thought the Pumadeq System sounded like an ideal design upgrade and green-lighted the installation.

The Results

As promised, the Henry Pumadeq System cured within just an hour of installation. For the general contractor, this put the project weeks ahead of schedule and potentially on track to beat the completion date. The design team was also pleased, as slab thickness was increased by more than half an inch for improved slab durability. Even the installation contractor experienced the ease of applying a cold-applied waterproofing system. Ultimately, Henry® representative’s presence and problem-solving at the preconstruction meeting enabled a big win for all the teams involved.