BUILDING A PRECAST PRISON: INSULATED SANDWICH PANELS SPEED CONSTRUCTION OF OHIO PRISON.

By the end of June, prison population had reached a record high: 490,041 inmates, nearly a half million people. Just to keep up with this growth rate, over 52,000 prison beds must be added per year. One of the speediest ways of filling this need is building prisons using precast concrete. According to Norman L. Scott, President of The Consulting Engineers Group in Glenview, Illinois, building prisons in precast can cut construction time in half compared with other methods of construction. The savings in finance costs alone could total over 2 million, and the prison can be put into use much sooner.