Walmart Places More Emphasis on Concrete Parking

Walmart recently confirmed that it has changed its drawing package on future new stores to include a concrete parking drawing sheet which should make it easier to bid concrete as an alternate or for when concrete is listed as the base bid, reports NRMCA Senior National Resource Director Vance Pool. In the past, the standard duty section was shown only on the detail sheet in the back of the site plans and sometimes not even there.

 

Recently, a concrete parking lot was placed in Houston, Pool said. Despite Houston being a concrete pavement market, Walmart has generally placed asphalt. Now, some projects in Texas get concrete parking as the base bid, but competitive sections will still need to be addressed in many markets.

Progress at Walmart can be attributed to members, partners, contractors and the entire National Resource Team at NRMCA, Pool said. While this is good progress, there are still more hurdles to remove. "Please make sure to look for any Walmart projects in your market and make sure to bid them even if you have yet to win one," he added. "As always, due to the scale of Walmart’s building program we should see the new drawings begin to trickle out in the next few weeks and have the vast majority in a few months."

NRMCA has tracked about 500,000 cubic yards of Walmart projects won in recent years, but Pool and his colleagues are not aware of all wins. Please let your national resource director know of any so we can estimate market share.