Haiti’s Concrete Production Crisis There have been many large concrete projects throughout the years.

The Hoover Dam was finished in 1935 and required 3.24 million cubic meters of concrete. The expansion of the Panama Canal will use 4.4 million cubic meters of concrete. And the Grand Coulee Dam used 9.2 million cubic meters of concrete.

It is no wonder that concrete ranks #2 on the list of the most consumed products on earth. Concrete is the most appropriate material for producing solid foundations in homes, buildings, public facilities and for most major structures around the world.

Concrete will play a major role in the rebuilding efforts in Haiti. But they have a problem… They currently don’t have the capacity to meet the demands of a large concrete project like rebuilding a country.

The rubble piles in Haiti give us a hint as to how large this concrete project has become. It is undeniable that the majority of the estimated 17 to 20 million cubic meters of rubble contain mostly cement-based materials. This is twice the material than it took to build the Grand Coulee Dam.

Replacing this crumbled concrete will require millions of cubic meters of newly produced concrete. These rubble piles also include millions of concrete blocks, tiles and pavers replacement of which will only add to the production crisis.

Here are some of the numbers:

• Temporary structures of T-Shelters will require at least 275,000 cubic meters of concrete for their simple foundations.

• The targeted number of permanent home foundations will require another 1.4 million cubic meters.

• Replacing 20,000 to 30,000 commercial buildings with large material needs will further explode the demand for concrete

• 90% of all Government buildings need rebuilding or major repair.

• Add Schools, hospitals, churches, the airport, the shipping port and the resorts. Some of these projects will require hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of concrete.

• Miles of security walls fell down that surrounded communities, campuses, and compounds. These will use millions of concrete blocks.

• Upgrading or integrating Bridges, Dams, Water and Sewer facilities will also consume great quantities of concrete.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that the concrete production demand in Haiti will exceed the volume of the Grand Coulee Dam in the next 5-years. Let’s assume that that the final number is 4.5-million cubic meters over the next 5-years, or 900,000 M³ per year. The question becomes: How does a country as poor as Haiti produce that much concrete?

Before we tackle this problem, let’s examine the bright side of this issue…

1. Haiti has a resilient and willing workforce, who has the cultural skills to produce and work with cement-based building materials. The employment component of this issue may only require some better training and tools so that the quality of the work will improve. It is interesting to note that the concrete industry in the United States regularly employs over two million workers, so this sector should allow many Haitian’s to have steady employment.

2. Haiti has the financial support from US and other countries with the commitment to assist the country in rebuilding. The main question will be if this money can really build back the concrete infrastructure of Haiti in a way that it will not crumble down again. The best use of this funding will be to enhance the Haitian concrete supply chain now.

With these two positives working together, the work of replacing Haiti’s concrete can be accomplished. But it will take some real effort and coordination to make it happen.

Haiti’s current concrete production capacity is extremely low. Before the quake there were three operating concrete ready-mix plants and now there are only two. Efforts are underway to upgrade and expand the transit-mix capabilities of Haiti. There are some US companies investing in increasing the capacity of Haiti’s transit-mix operations.

Transit-mix Truck in Haiti

But adding more production capacity is just one of the issues with the concrete supply chain. There is the problem of concrete delivery trucks. The largest concrete supplier has 10 trucks that can only deliver about 7 cubic meters per load. When you consider the poor road systems outside of Port au Prince, it is not hard to imagine major delivery issues. Rebuilding the rural communities will be nearly impossible with a centralized truck delivery format.

Haiti has historically lived with minimal concrete production support and has used on-site cement mixing processes. Most of these mixing methods have involved shovels mixing concrete on the ground, or the use of very small contractor mixers. But the volumes needed to build a new Haiti will quickly overwhelm the small mixing processes.

Mixing on the ground with shovels may have been one of the major contributors to the failure of so many buildings, so this practice should be stopped if the goal is to build back better.

Regardless the damage done by shovel mixing, there remains a bottle neck in the concrete production capabilities in the rural areas of the country.

It is clear that shovels and just ten ready-mix trucks will never meet the demand for millions of cubic meters of concrete production. And stretching this existing system of production would certainly lead to poor quality control in the construction materials. It will be irresponsible of everyone involved to not plan for a better method.

Rebuilding Haiti will involve thousands of construction sites working simultaneously in order to meet the goals of the government and all of the non-government organizations. The best solution is based upon decentralizing the concrete production system that is now centralized in Port-au-Prince.

Decentralizing will require that systems of appropriate scale be provided. It makes no sense to place a large transit-mix facility in a small community. Truck-based ready-mix is impractical for smaller towns where roads make access difficult. The truck systems will be needed to supply the huge infrastructure projects and large buildings in the cities. CementTrust™ suggests that a scaled version of the concrete production model of the industrialized nations be implemented in Haiti. Instead of a transit-mix provider in each community, a smaller and simpler technology should be used. Instead of huge cement silos and towering conveyor systems to support trucks, small human-batched mixers that are robust and efficient on smaller job sites should be used.

The decentralized networks of small ready-mix operators will bring a mixer and a trained crew to the jobsite to produce the concrete needed for the project. The business is owned by a local entrepreneur who hires from the community and builds a trust in the quality of the product that is produced. They replace the shovels on the ground with measured batches and mechanically produced mixes that can be tested and quality controlled.

The CementTrust™ concrete production network will train and certify each mixer operator in the proper selection of sand and gravel to produce a strong result on a consistent basis. The network will provide regular spot testing of the quality of the concrete to insure that foundations, walls and columns are provided with the right compressive strengths.

Decentralizing the concrete supply chain will greatly expand the business opportunities and potential for employment in all corners of the country. Concrete production requires support from material delivery to engineering to masonry contracting. Rebuilding Haiti will require a focus like what was used to build the Hoover Dam, but with a plan that is spread widely around an entire island. We must start now to lay the ground work for a successful concrete supply chain.