We were surprised when the Rausch team was approached with the question, “What’s so green about a bridge?”  Well, let us tell you…

As a new member of the US Green Building Council, Rausch Construction is helping to spread the word that the Green construction movement is not just for building construction.  It is equally applicable and important for civil construction projects.  Being green in the construction industry is all about minimizing your impact on the environment.  For example, it’s using recycled materials and also recycling any extra materials and debris.  Typical recycled materials on the heavy civil projects Rausch excels on, include recycled structural steel, stone backfill and many components of concrete.  Likewise, demolished concrete, steel and even office paper products are sorted and recycled by the waste management companies.  Many construction materials are also sourced locally, not only keeping our freight costs low, but also minimizing the impact of fuel emissions from a longer delivery.

Several recent Rausch projects include sustainable design elements.  The Wabash Riverwalk Project uses landscaped areas with trees to provide ample shading.  This helps to minimize “heat islands”, often caused in cities where there is an abundance of concrete and asphalt, radiating the heat, which can result in raising ambient temperatures up to 5 degrees. 

The Hyde Park Streetscape project utilized native plants and grass, which provides a natural habitat for the local species and also minimizes water wasted through irrigation.

Many of our projects have used concrete with fly ash, which is a waste product of coal-fired power plants, and is added to concrete to reduce the amount of Portland cement in the mixture.  Using fly ash in concrete is an environmentally conscious choice, because it keeps this waste product out of landfills and also reduces the energy costs to make concrete, as the manufacturing of cement is energy intensive.

And the Northern Indiana East Bank Retaining Wall Replacement project’s schedule was based on ensuring construction was started and completed outside of the mating season of the coho salmon.

Think outside the conventional green box, and you’ll begin to see our construction projects in a new light.

The US Green Building Council, founded in 1993, is a non-profit organization composed of leaders working to advance buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable, and healthy places to live and work.  Driving it’s mission to transform its built environment, is the USGBC LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System.  Since its founding, USGBC has focused on fulfilling the building and construction industries vision for its own transformation to high performance green construction.  More than 15,000 organizations are members of the USGBC.  We are proud to say that as of March 2009, this includes Rausch Construction Company!