Business View Caribbean - April 2016 23
neering solutions. “If you look at our track record, there
was a point in time, in 1988, when we acquired the
first large scale trencher in Puerto Rico,” he begins.
“A trencher is a piece of equipment employed in the
construction of underground pipelines in rocky subsur-
face conditions. At the time it was an innovative, yet
risky acquisition. Several years following that, we held
a considerable market share of the underground pipe-
line sector of the construction industry.
“In 1990, we employed slip form construction and we
poured a silo while moving forms and pouring con-
crete continuously for nine days.” Slip forming is used
for tall structures such as bridges, towers, buildings,
and dams, as well as for horizontal structures, such
as roadways. Slip forming enables continuous, non-
interrupted, cast-in-place “flawless” (i.e. no joints)
concrete structures which have superior performance
characteristics when compared to piecewise construc-
tion that utilizes discrete form elements. “We’re not
experts in this, but we learned about the technology,
we tried it and delivered it successfully,” he says.
“Similarly, in 1992, we self-performed tilt-up construc-
tion for the first time without having any prior experi-
ence with tilt-up.” In a tilt-up construction project, a
building’s walls are poured directly at the jobsite in
large slabs of concrete called “tilt-uppanels” or “tilt-
wall panels.” These panels are then raised into posi-
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Venegas Construction Corporation
WHAT:
One of Puerto Rico’s premier construc-
tion contractors
WHERE:
Ponce, Puerto Rico
WEBSITE
:
