The Blue Valley West High School, Overland Park, Kansas (above), was one of two Projects of the Year.

Concrete Surfaces magazine, published by Hanley Wood, has selected eleven projects to represent the best in polished concrete. The judges couldn’t make up their minds, though, so they chose two Projects of the Year: Blue Valley West High School in Overland Park, Kansas, and The Reach at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. To see all of the winners, click here. 

Deep grind and polish offered the perfect answer to the aging floors at Blue Valley West High School. Over the summer of 2019, the Blue Valley Unified School District hired Musselman & Hall Contractors, Kansas City, Mo., to polish the concrete floors at three schools totaling over 25,000 square feet of concrete floors. The floors were ground to fully expose the aggregates (Class C) and then polished to 1500 grit, high gloss finish (Level 4). The main challenge was a very tight schedule; the floors needed to be finished in time for school to reopen, so they had 3 polishing crews working 80+ hours a week to meet the deadline. Another issue was that some of the buildings had been added onto over the years and there were transitions between different concrete pours that had significantly different elevations at the joints. Through a lot of extra blending and grinding, the Musselman & Hall team was able to create smooth transitions that make it difficult to even spot that there used to be drastically differing concrete surfaces.

The Reach, part of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., was a Project of the Year.

The REACH, a new addition to the Kennedy Center in Washington, is a place where visitors, audiences, and artists can come together in the spirit of President Kennedy’s vision for a new frontier for the arts. Jim Cuviello, president of Cuviello Concrete and Terrazzo Polishing, says, “It is very exciting to be part of a project of this notoriety and caliber. The job came with many challenges but none greater than that of producing a high end finish with a 20-year life cycle under the tight time constraints of today's construction.” Cuviello installed its Green Endurance Architectural Polished Concrete system, which is unique to the concrete polishing industry by going beyond the typical planning and design components of construction. This starts during the conceptual stage of design. Green Endurance is designed based on the facility’s use, the amount of traffic, type of traffic, and aesthetic preferences which allows an architect to specify any manufacturer's densifier, joint fill, pin hole grout, penetrating protectant, and so forth. This allows Green Endurance to deliver the required performance and aesthetics.

The Auburn restraurant in Los Angeles was a winner in the Retail category.

To see all of the winners, click here.