The Concrete Connoisseurs

Since 2000, Scott Niemitalo, president and owner of American Concrete Construction, Inc. (ACC), has made it his business to bring an extreme level of care and adaptability to his industry. His firm has since won three Golden Trowel Awards, it has earned the world record for highest F-numbers (which measure floor flatness and levelness) in a single project, and it has poured more than 100 million square feet of industrial concrete flooring and tilt-up wall panels throughout the American Southeast and mid-Atlantic regions. “We are a turn-key concrete contractor,” Niemitalo says, “and we do everything from small flooring projects to warehouses over 1 million square feet.” The company’s credentials are impressive, but it’s this versatility that has kept the business on top.

Using the experience he gained working for a different North Carolina-based concrete company, Niemitalo founded ACC in 2000 to focus primarily on speciality slabs (ie: super-slabs, steel fiber-reinforced slabs, and shake-hardened floors). Because of the growing market and a demand for versatility, though, ACC also picked up other services over the next few years, including the ability to construct footings, walls, and tilt-up wall panels. “Tilt-up walls are a major component of what we do,” Niemitalo says. “If you’re pouring the wall on-site, it cuts down on delivery time [and] allows you to incorporate decorative reveals and install immediately after they’re set.”

Having refined its tilt-up wall procedures while maintaining flexibility and adaptability in other project areas, ACC is now able to adjust its services easily for different jobs, all of which have their own challenges. For a 138,000-square-foot, LEED Gold PGI warehouse project in Waynesville, Virginia, for instance, ACC was on a $2 million contract with a tight deadline. Its crew worked in rotating eight-hour shifts, 24 hours a day, for six days a week to deliver the project on time in 2011.

“Though this was a relatively small project in terms of square footage, it required a lot of unique specifications,” project manager Jeremy Lee says. “It incorporated a 24-inch-thick structural slab, which we hardened with a 2 percent nonchloride accelerator, allowing us to hit 75 percent strength in three days rather than seven.” ACC worked on the warehouse during the winter months, too, and its team used warmers to soften the soil in order to build footings without interrupting the delivery schedule.

In 2012, ACC completed a more unusual contract for the CAAC warehouse in Bennettsville, South Carolina. “The building was already in place, but we had to put in the flooring, which had to include places to set these proprietary machines shipped in from Germany,” Niemitalo says. “We had to dig down 19 feet for the footings and use an excavation box to shore up the walls during the process.”

ACC’s efforts have earned it superlative standing with the Face Companies, the business that awarded ACC its Golden Trowel Awards and the world record for highest F-numbers for its Fmin100 “Superflat” floors. “To hit these high F-numbers, it’s important for us to really pay attention to detail,” Niemitalo says. “We strike off our concrete with laser-guided systems and a laser screed.” The screed levels the high-tolerance floors and self-adjusts five times per second to ensure maximum Ff and Fl numbers.

It’s this extreme attention to detail and the incorporation of new building technologies that will keep ACC competitive as the industry continues to evolve, but the firm is also able to look back on its first decade of work with a deep sense of satisfaction. “There’s something rewarding about being able to look at the projects you’ve completed and know that you’ve built that,” Lee says. “It’s not buried or hidden; it’s right there in front of you.” ABQ