Above: Left: Jesus Barragan, CIS, Breakdown Roller Operator.
Top Right: Original DC Jets signage will continue to be displayed at the facilty.
Boeing, as the Long Beach facility continued to manufacture the Boeing 717 aircraft until closing in 2006. Now, Mercedes-Benz USA is making use of the old Boeing facility as their western regional office, as well as a vehicle preparation/learning and performance center. Construction began in June 2014 on the new Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA) West Coast regional facility in Long Beach. This new facility will consist of two buildings, totaling 1,091,754 sq. ft. on a 52.2-acre lot. The Vehicle Preparation Center will ensure that vehicles are ready to deliver once they arrive at the ports. The new Mercedes-Benz facility, located across the street from the Long Beach Airport, will give new life to the old Boeing factory. This new MBUSA west coast campus is currently undergoing a $27 million overhaul and will open for business in the first quarter of 2015. It combines three separate divisions of the company into one single campus to increase overall efficiency. According to Mercedes-Benz officials, the construction of this new west coast regional facility will shift 200 non-manufacturing
jobs to Long Beach from Irvine, Carson and elsewhere to handle more than 70,000 cars that come through the Port of Long Beach annually. Norm Wilson & Sons is the general contracting firm responsible for all of the updates and new construction on the new MBUSA campus. NWS is a family owned construction company whose roots lie deep in Southern California. NWS contracted Asphalt, Fabric, and Engineering, Inc. (AFE) to perform all of the asphalt and concrete work off-site. AFE serves all of Southern California with a long list of construction services including: asphalt and concrete paving, sub-base preparation, grading and compaction, seal coating and striping, asphalt patching and asphalt overlay. They perform their work for both public and private sectors on everything from street and road paving projects and mall and shopping center parking lots to office, warehouse and industrial parking lots. They have a complete demolition, grading and excavation division that fully compliments their paving capabilities.
California Asphalt Magazine • 2015 Private Construction Issue
Above: Javier Ochoa, Jr., CIS, Finish Roller Operator.
Rick LaPierre is the senior estimator and project manager for AFE and is responsible for all aspects of the paving and grading work on the Mercedes-Benz USA job site in Long Beach. According to LaPierre, AFE was contracted to execute a full remove and replace of the existing asphalt, before putting down new asphalt rock base. In all, they removed approximately 150,000 sq. ft. of damaged asphalt. They then graded the subgrade before find grading and compacting the new CMB-Class 2 rock base. For the paving portion, AFE turned to Consolidated Industrial Services (C.I.S.), a company that they use exclusively for all of their operated asphalt equipment rentals. C.I.S. has been providing Southern California with experienced, certified paving [ Continued on page 12 ]
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