This is awesome.
I wish I knew more about construction engineering. I have a dozen questions every time I see one of these.
The video author's comments about the Mobile Batch plant are fairly correct. He's highlighted the poly silos for Admixtures. All fairly standard for concrete work. I don't foresee too many different types of aggregate bins, as concrete really only needs sand, Portland cement and a single size aggregate. Concrete plants have far less aggregate types than say an asphalt plant (I was at a brand new asphalt plant two weeks ago) that have a larger variety of mix types and different needs. I'm curious where the aggregate comes from in this part of Texas. The proximity and availability can have some very large implication as to how the overall foundation and subgrade are designed. Berlin was unique in that they actually trained in aggregate. I've never seen that before, but having the rail line there is very handy for that sort of thing. I'm also predicting a lot of Precast concrete elements will arrive on site before too long.
The interesting production notes here is that the ground densification rigs (Excavators with auger and vibratory attachments) aren't working... on a Friday. This scope doesn't appear to be complete, and unless it's an unusual shift rotation with Fridays off, that seems a bit odd. I've actually been wondering if these factories have a night shift. Aside from the concrete work, all of what they are doing right now could be done at night, and it's actually more efficient in terms of equipment utilization to run round the clock. Labour, a little less so. The concrete can actually be done at night even easier, as it's cooler (makes things a bit nicer to deal with) but it's more a function of curing time on already cast elements, need to wait a bit.
The white hydraulic truck crane is obviously assembling what is likely the first of many lattice boom crawler cranes. This particular unit is so massive that it comes in a bunch of pieces governed by highway load limits. Not uncommon for a few dozen trailer loads to put these all together, and sort of funny when the counterweights comes in as they are just massive slabs of steel that look rather insignificant on a trailer. The crawler setup was also seen at Berlin, but went on to later assemble several tower cranes, I'm wondering if they will use the same here. The yellow crawler crane might just be for the deeper foundation work where they are pouring the slab, the crawler tracks spread out the weight of the crane and result in lower ground pressure. You'll note the truck crane is on crane pads, which is pretty common on anything that isn't rock. These cranes are heavy and lift many times their own weight, and that's hard on the ground below.
Speaking of foundations, that slab should be done in the next day or two. I'm wondering why that portion is lower. The foundation isn't heavy duty enough for large equipment. Might be for some utilities or some portion of the factory that needs to sit below the grade of the remainder. It's not the same sub-excavated detail that was seen at Shanghai for the press. Looks like they also have a mini-assembly line for the square footing reinforcing steel, so those will go fast.
The semi trucks with the belly-dump style trailers are about as effective as you can get for moving material at high speed for a long haul in open areas, as they drive through and don't need back up (They also tip over a whole lot less than any other style of dump truck, and yes, this is actually a common problem). I did a project a few years ago where we moved over 2 million tons of aggregate with this type of truck configuration. The belly dumps can also travel on-highway, which a Scraper or articulated haul truck can't do - however, scrapers are self-loading, and work great for short haul applications (Their top speed and horrendous fuel burn limit them to about 0.5 mile effective range, articulated trucks are somewhere in the middle range at roughly 0.5 - 3 miles, and highway trucks rule anything beyond about 3-5 miles).
We often use some basic applications or a decently-macro'd excel sheet to determine the optimal haul truck for an application. It's all based on distance, average haul speed, load/dump time at the pickup and drop-off locations and, terrain. The result identifies the number, type, and, size of truck to use. I'm sort of jealous at how simple and open the access to the site is. This is about as good as it gets anywhere, we sunk two excavators on my project last month because the ground conditions are so soft. There's no trucks lining up, and the bulldozer is correctly sized to the operation for the gravel / embankment material. In short, it's a well run show.
Construction is not that complicated, it's all about efficiently planning the operation and making tweaks to keep it that way. Autonomy would do wonders for this type of work - and does, but only at mine sites currently, no reason you couldn't have a fleet of Tesla semi platooning in and out of this site. I'm still a bit skeptical that Austin will open ahead of Berlin. I guess they can prioritize equipment, and the building is the fast part. But they still don't even have a single column up at Austin and Berlin has some nearly-complete shells.
Apologies to the mods if these posts should go elsewhere, but I saw the bat signal and just opened a big bottle of beer.
~~~If this post were to go anywhere, it would be to the “Of Merit” slot. tldr: keep ‘em coming~~~~
