When completed and operational in the second half of 2009, Holcim's new Ste. Genevieve Plant will produce 4 million metric tons of cement annually. Located on the banks of the Mississippi River, just north of Bloomsdale, Mo., the facility will be the largest single kiln cement plant in the world and its slack water harbor will be the largest on the Mississippi.

In all, Holcim is investing nearly $1-billion in the plant.

As the design-builder of the plant site and harbor, Bloomsdale Excavating's work includes five main components. The local contractor is developing the 70-acre plant footprint, building the quarry development roads, digging and dredging the harbor, building a massive earthen dam to hold materials from the harbor construction, and finishing the access road they started nearly six years ago.

Bloomsdale Excavating started dry excavation of the harbor in August and plant excavation in October. Dry excavation of the harbor is done and dredging will start in June to be completed by the first of the year. The earthen dam will be completed by June and plant excavation will be done by July.

Their work on the site totals more than 7 million cubic yards of rock and earthmoving.

"We built the 2-1/2—mile entrance road into the area in 2000 and we moved a couple million yards of rock for that project," said Tom Drury, president and CEO of the 60-year-old family business. "We have about 3.2 million yards of rock excavation for the plant site that will be used as fill for the quarry development roads. And the harbor is about 1.8 million yards of excavation."

To move such massive amounts of material efficiently, Bloomsdale Excavating is using some of the largest earthmoving equipment operating in the four states, six Euclid-Hitachi EH1700 100-ton rigid frame haul trucks.

In addition to the EH1700's, Bloomsdale Excavating also has six 65-ton EH1000's and about 15 40-ton articulating haul trucks.

"There are some long hauls and we can haul more material longer distances with the 100-ton trucks," said Bloomsdale Excavating Regional Manager Scott Drury. "That's what gauges the size trucks we use on different parts of the job."

"On a project this size, we get more for the money from the 100-ton trucks so it's a better value," Tom Drury added.

Bloomsdale Excavating also has eight large excavators on the project, including a Hitachi Zaxis 750 and several 400-450s, to dig and move material and load the huge trucks.

Other significant equipment includes wheel loaders up to a Komatsu WA900 to stockpile and load materials, several Tamrock Ranger 700 and 800 drills, and an Atlas Copco ROC L6H Surface Drill Rig.

"To clear the area for the plant site, because of the size of the depth of the limestone, we've been drilling upwards of 125 feet with the L6H," said Tom Drury. "The L6H is a 5-1/2-inch diameter downhole drill and it has worked very well. We've had blasts of as much as 60,000 yards at a time."

Bloomsdale Excavating's equipment on site also includes several Caterpillar dozers: four D10's, four D9's, and three D8's as well as three D8's and a D6 with GPS.

"GPS makes our work here much more efficient," Scott Drury said. "Previously, we might have had four or five grade checkers running around out here. Now we don't have any stakes and we don't have any grade checkers because we can do all that from the machine."

"That efficiency is a big thing, especially on a project this large," said Tom Drury, "because we sometimes have to make quick decisions to move to another area for one reason or another. With GPS, we can move to a different spot efficiently and effectively with the information we need to begin working there immediately. In the old days we would have had to wait for the survey party."

Among the biggest challenges on the project, the first was the design-build aspect of the work. "We understood that we were going to begin building things from preliminary drawings," Scott Drury noted. "That was challenging because our design was behind from the outset. To overcome that, we had to put a lot of thought into the daily operations so that we didn't do things that we would have to go back and do over again. We had to be very smart about what we were doing."

"It was different than any job we had done before because of the size and scope of the work," said Tom Drury. "One of our vice presidents, Dennis Underwood, was very active in keeping everyone focused on what we had to do."

The quarry development road and haul roads also presented a challenge, as some of those required 150 feet of fill. "We had to design the roads to fit the operation and the terrain but also design them to save on the cost," Scott Drury said. "We designed the roads in-house with a consultant to check it."

Building the earthen dam provided an engineering challenge. The dam will be about 900 feet long and more than 140 feet high. It's mostly a shot rock structure but includes a concrete cap running through the dam, a clay core, transition layers, sand filter and a grout curtain all the way through.

Bloomsdale's crews work six days a week on the project, double shifting five days a week with their heavy hauling, and the company has about 120 employees on the job. "One of the biggest challenges we had was getting the skilled help we needed and having the operators step up to be able to get the work done," said Scott Drury. "But we're going to walk away from this job with an excellent core group of people who have the experience to handle anything."

Throughout the project, Bloomsdale Excavating has maintained the excellent safety record that is a focus of the company.

"Bloomsdale Excavating has been an excellent partner for us both in the beginning of this project on the construction of our road and now with the site preparation and harbor excavation," said Holcim Ste. Genevieve Project Manager Rudy Blum. "They share the same philosophy as Holcim in putting safety first and that is most important for us as we work toward a project free from serious injury to any of our contractors."

Bloomsdale Excavating took a proactive role in safety on the project, forming a partnership with the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). "We're pretty proud of the fact that MSHA is partnering with us on this project and every MSHA project we may do in the future," said Scott Drury. "MSHA has never done that with a contractor so it says a lot about our safety record and our approach to safety."

As the work continues on schedule for Bloomsdale Excavating, Tom Drury marvels at its good fortune.

"To be a part of this project is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," he said. "There are a lot of local people working on it and we have many longtime employees working on something they have worked a lifetime to get to. We have two men retiring this year who have worked for us for 25 years or longer. They've been all over the country with us but now they are working on our biggest project ever and it's within 30 minutes of their homes.

"It sometimes overwhelms me, being a small-town contractor, that we're on a project like this. A job like this in this area is probably never going to happen again and we take a lot of pride in the fact that we're on it."