Tennessee Soft Drink Production Company | West Memphis, Arkansas

In the fall of 2019, Tennessee Soft Drink Production Company and Alston Construction broke ground on a 204,616 square foot expansion of their existing facility located in West Memphis, Arkansas. The company needed to consolidate its two area production facilities because their operation had outgrown the existing building on property. The original facility is expected to close at the end of 2020, so this set a hard deadline for Alston Construction Company to complete the expansion on time. Our construction team not only delivered a quality building on time, but exceeded the schedule by two months and within budget.

Like all projects, our team first created a construction plan based on the available early information. Our approach to finishing this project on time meant we needed to phase the project. Each phase had its own temporary certificate of occupancy based on the clients’equipment schedule from the old facility to the expansion. Because of the team’s proactive approach to planning at every stage of this project, their plant remained operational the entire span of the project and the teams were ready to receive their equipment when it was delivered.

Alston Construction’s commitment to the schedule and excellence starts with how we assemble our project delivery teams with our qualification process also known as SPERS. Once we created our plan, the first step was to identify the trade partners who would be motivated to help us build toward the same goal as Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated. With the help of “A Team” local trade partners who collaborated with Alston Construction, our trade partner quickly and purposefully to maximize productivity and deliver the project successfully.

With millions of dollars’ worth of manufacturing equipment on its way from overseas, we had to calculate site and foundation tolerances to the millimeter to ensure each piece would fit perfectly in place. During site work, we encountered soil issues with a silty and clay soil and one of the wettest winters in decades. Our team lime stabilized the excavations for the building; this means we added lime to onsite wet soil to create dry material which made it usable for backfill. Later in construction, we encountered unforeseen dirt issues where the parking lot was planned. To avoid these soil issues, we installed a geo-fabric system known as Tensar with the help of our geotechnical engineer and vendor. It is an advanced geosynthetic product specifically designed for trafficked surfaces such as parking lots. With the supervision and guidance of the team, we successfully paved the parking lot.

COVID-19 is something unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Every industry has its own challenges navigating through a pandemic; however, in the construction industry, we are not only safeguarding our employees on a daily basis, but also managing and monitoring our partners, such as subcontractors, vendors, designers, developers and clients. Being considered “Essential”, Alston was faced with new challenges, as we were on the front lines for the new normal. Even with the complications that COVID-19 has brought, our team was still able to complete the project 2 months ahead of schedule.

The project scope includes construction of 198,703 SF warehouse, 3,087 SF first floor administrative space including mezzanine, and 1,500 SF mechanical equipment open storage. Our day-to-day role involved managing the design and construction of the project and unifying the various teams to achieve a common, successful goal. With multiple stakeholders in several nationwide locations, our constant effort to keep everyone working together became essential in ensuring the project would be ready for their consolidation by the end of 2020.