From Precast to Piledriving in New England

The Vynorius Companies
Written by Nate Hendley

The Vynorius Companies, headquartered in Salisbury, Massachusetts, have divisions devoted to piledriving, making precast concrete piles, crane and equipment rentals and specialty trucking. The firm primarily serves the New England market including the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.
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Vynorius Piledriving Inc. has a fleet of piledriving equipment including hydraulic cranes weighing seventy-five tons and Manitowoc crawlers. While most of its pile driving work is land-based, the firm can do marine-based projects when required. It has handled projects ranging from a few thousand dollars in value to several million.

The company takes pride in its piledriving abilities that cover a range of pile types and soil conditions. It has driven timber, steel and precast concrete piles. Vynorius, in fact, specializes in precast concrete piles. These piles offer tremendous flexibility in lengths and are cost-effective because of the cost of materials and the fact that the company makes its own piles. Its PCI-certified plant for its precast concrete division makes precast, prestressed concrete piles for the piledriving division in standard sizes of twelve, fourteen and sixteen inches square in lengths that are customized to site-specific soil conditions to mitigate waste.

The company can also transport these piles to worksites.

Company founder Wayne Vynorius was born in 1951 and lived in West Newbury, Massachusetts. “He was one of a kind: a handshake meant more than a contract. He meant what he said and said what he meant. He touched many lives; he will never be forgotten and missed dearly. His shoes will never be filled!” reads a memorial piece on Wayne in PileDriver, the magazine of the Orange Park, Florida-based Pile Driving Contractors Association.

Shortly after graduating from high school in 1969, Wayne began working as a labourer at Hub Foundation. He later switched to R A Francoeur Piledriving Inc., moving up the ranks to become a foreman, supervising a work crew while in his late twenties. In 1971, Wayne married his high school girlfriend, MaryLou Smith.

Wayne worked for R A Francoeur for three decades, becoming a supervisor and general manager. In April 2004, an opportunity arose to buy out the company that had employed him. Wayne took the opportunity, a decision that led to the birth of the Vynorius Companies. Wayne brought in his son Bill and daughter Tracy to work for the firm. Also on board was Wayne’s brother, Bob.

Unfortunately, Wayne died of a chronic lung condition less than a decade after founding the Vynorius Companies. He left behind a growing firm and a reputation for hard work and honest dealing.

Its piledriving division can drive piles with diameters ranging from twelve to seventy-two inches. The company even installed 102-inch diameter casing for a job on the Sakonnet River in Rhode Island a decade ago, in what was then the “largest static load test ever conducted in New England,” according to PileDriver magazine.

The test was conducted near the Sakonnet River Bridge in Tiverton, Rhode Island. The bridge had been built in 1956, but by the late 1990s, the rapidly aging bridge needed to be replaced. Piledriving tests were conducted to determine the foundation needs for a replacement bridge.

The Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) analyzed soil conditions near the bridge and decided a deep foundation solution was necessary for a new bridge. Testing then commenced. Vynorius Piledriving was honored to have participated in both the first and second round of testing at the bridge. The first test contract was concluded in the fall of 2006. The second test program was launched April 2007 and concluded in November 2007.

The second test had two stages and involved a Manitowoc 4100 Series 2 crane and IHC S-600 hydraulic impact hammer.

In the initial phase, a pair of seventy-two-inch diameter pipe piles were piledriven 133 feet into the ground. One was the standard pipe pile and was open ended, while the second was plugged forty feet from the tip with a two-inch thick plate. A static test was then performed that caused the open-ended pile to fail at 2,500 kips (a unit equal to one thousand pounds of force) while the plugged pile tolerated a load of 4,500 kips.

For the second round of the second series of tests, a longer open-ended pile was driven 235 feet deep, and the plugged pile was driven in 187 feet deep before testing. The plugged pile stood up to the maximum load of 6,000 kips.

Christopher Roy, an estimator with Vynorius Piledriving, was quoted in PileDriver magazine as saying, “We were proud to have the opportunity to complete the largest load test in New England.”

The Sakonnet River job isn’t the only major project the Vynorius Companies have worked on. The firm has also done assignments for the South Station, Rowes Wharf, the Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant and the JFK Library, all in Boston.

Situated in Boston Harbor, the Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant (also known as the Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant) is operated by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. The plant treats water from forty-three communities in the greater Boston area.

Rowes Wharf is a major commercial initiative featuring hotel facilities, shops, a marina, restaurants, an entertainment stage and a water transportation terminal. The initiative transformed the old waterfront area into a chic tourist destination.

South Station is a historic railway station that originally opened December 1898. It was the biggest railway station in the world for a time and handled an astounding thirty-eight million passengers in 1913.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, meanwhile, is situated in a ten-acre park in Boston.

The Vynorius facility that makes its precast, prestressed concrete piles is certified by the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI). Headquartered in Chicago, the PCI is dedicated to maintaining standards in the precast/prestressed concrete industry (including the design, fabrication and construction of precast concrete structures). Under the institute’s certification program, precast concrete plants will experience two comprehensive audits each year. These unannounced, third-party audits are performed by engineers, and facilities are inspected according to criteria that are expressly directed at the specific products made at that site.

The audit touches on dozens of points, covering everything from quality control to engineering practices and management team commitment. All aspects of plant operations are scrutinized. And such intense scrutiny is worth it. Precast, prestressed concrete piles are much in demand for foundations by architects, contractors, engineers and developers.

The Vynorius crane rental division offers a wide variety of cranes including includes thirty-two-ton RT (rough terrain) cranes and Manitowoc 222, Manitowoc 3900, Manitowoc 4000 and Manitowoc 4100-S2s.

The Vynorius specialty trucking division, meanwhile, transports heavy equipment of diverse sizes, including both small and massive cranes among other gear. This division is also responsible for moving the company’s prestressed concrete piles to job sites.

“Our team of drivers are among the best in New England. With years of experience, they maneuver their big loads through the tight streets of Boston without breaking a sweat,” according to the company.

The Vynorius Companies continue to be busy. According to a June 24, 2016 article in the Lynn Journal newspaper of Lynn, Massachusetts, Vynorius recently won a bid to do pile driving work for Wynn Boston Harbor. Wynn Boston Harbor is a huge luxury resort and casino slated for Everett, Massachusetts that is currently being developed by Wynn Resorts, with an opening date around 2019.

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