Precast concrete erection and connections field guide

Precast concrete, and the member that arrives finished

Precast concrete is concrete cast into its final shape at a plant, cured under controlled conditions, hauled to the site, and lifted into place by crane. The column, the beam, the double-tee, the hollowcore plank, the wall panel, the spandrel, all of them show up as finished members on a truck. The crew sets them and connects them. They do not pour them.

That is the whole idea, and it is why precast goes up fast. The strength is made in the plant where the forms are reused, the steam cure runs on a schedule, the cylinders are broken in a lab, and the weather never stops the pour. By the time a member reaches the site it has its design strength, its embed plates, its lift anchors, and its bearing surfaces already in it. The field work is rigging, setting, and making the connections, not curing concrete.

Here is the part that decides whether the job is safe or not. A precast member is engineered for three different lives: the form and strip at the plant, the haul and the crane pick, and the decades it stands as part of a finished structure. Between the pick and the finished connection there is a window where the member is held by the crane, then by temporary bracing, and by nothing permanent. The connections close that window. Until they are done and inspected, the structure is a set of parts leaning on a plan, and the plan is the erection drawing.

How is precast different from tilt-up and cast-in-place?

Precast is plant-cast and hauled. Tilt-up is cast on the jobsite, flat on the building's own floor slab, then stood up. Cast-in-place is poured into formwork in its final position and never moves. All three are concrete, and crews mix them up, but the difference changes the whole job.

Cast-in-place is monolithic. The concrete is continuous through the joints, the reinforcing is lapped and developed across members, and there are no field connections to make because the pour is the connection. The trade-off is time and formwork: you build the forms, pour, wait for strength, and strip, member by member, in place.

Tilt-up splits the difference. The panels are cast on site, so there is no haul and no plant, but they are still lifted by crane and braced before the structure ties them in, the same as precast wall panels. The bond breaker, the lift strength, and the wind bracing on a tilt-up job are their own subject worth getting right. Precast trades the on-site casting for plant quality and speed, and in exchange it lives or dies on the connections, because every member is a separate piece that has to be joined to the next one in the field. That is where this guide spends its time.

The precast members and what each one does

A precast frame is a kit of standard members, and knowing what each one carries tells you how it has to be connected and where it bears. The catalog is small and the shapes repeat across parking structures, data centers, and framed buildings.

Columns carry gravity down to the foundation and usually have corbels, the haunches cast onto the side, that the beams land on. Inverted-tee beams and L-beams sit on the column corbels and catch the floor members on their ledges. Double-tees are the floor and roof workhorse, two stems under a flange, spanning long and laid side by side to make a deck. Hollowcore planks are the flat floor and roof member with voids run through them to cut weight, set tight against each other with a keyway between. Wall panels and spandrels close the building and carry the facade, sometimes load-bearing, sometimes hanging as cladding.

The order in that list is roughly the order they go up: foundations and columns first, then the beams onto the corbels, then the double-tees or planks onto the beam ledges, then the walls and spandrels. The connection at each handoff, column to beam, beam to deck, deck to deck, is engineered for the load that crosses it, and the bearing surface is sized for where the weight lands.

Load-bearing members vs cladding panels

A precast wall panel is one of two things, and the connection detail is completely different depending on which. A load-bearing panel is part of the structure: it carries floor and roof loads down to the foundation, so it is connected to develop and transfer that load. A cladding panel carries only itself and the wind on its own face, hanging off the structural frame as a skin.

The reason this matters in the field is the connection it expects. A load-bearing panel has bearing connections at the base and structural ties at the floors, and it cannot be released until that load path is made. A cladding panel hangs from a few engineered connections, typically a pair of bearing connections that carry its weight and a pair of tieback connections that take wind and let the panel move with temperature. Crews who treat a heavy architectural cladding panel like a structural wall, or the reverse, get the connections wrong.

Architectural precast, the panel with the finished face, has its own discipline because the connection has to be hidden, adjustable, and forgiving of the tolerance between a plant-cast panel and a steel or cast-in-place frame that was built to looser tolerances. That tolerance gap is why cladding connections are usually bolted with slotted holes, so the field can adjust the panel to the line. The connection design comes from the engineer, and on architectural work the connection layout is on the panel ticket, not improvised on the wall.

Erection drawings, piece marks, and the sequence

Every precast member carries a piece mark, a unique stamp that ties it to a spot on the erection drawing. The erection drawing is the map: it shows where each marked piece goes, which way it faces, what connects to it, and the order it gets set. On a precast job the piece mark is the thread that runs from the plant through the truck to the connection, and losing track of it is how the wrong member ends up in the air.

The sequence is not a suggestion, and it starts before the crane. The members are loaded on the truck in the reverse order they come off, so the load order on the truck is the erection order on the deck. The piece that goes up first is the last one loaded, sitting on top, ready to come off. Get the load sequence wrong at the plant and the crew is unloading and restacking a 30-ton beam on the ground to reach the one they need, which is slow and dangerous and burns the crane.

Read the sequence and stage to it. Columns before the beams that land on them, beams before the deck that bears on them, the deck before the topping, the bracing in before the next pick leans on it. The erection engineer sets the sequence against stability, crane reach, and the connections that have to be made before the next member arrives. A job that runs out of sequence is a job making connections in the wrong order, which is how a member ends up set with no way to brace it or no completed support beneath it.

The crane pick, the spreader, and the rigging

The crane picks each member by its cast-in lift anchors, and the rigging between the hook and the anchors is an engineered system, not a chain thrown over the load. The pick is planned for the member's weight, its center of gravity, and the way it has to rotate from how it sits on the truck to how it lands in the structure. A column ships lying down and stands up. A double-tee ships flat and stays flat. Each rotation is part of the rig plan.

The spreader bar or lifting beam is what keeps the sling angles right. Picking a long member from two points with a single sling apex pulls the slings in at a shallow angle, and a shallow sling angle multiplies the force in the slings and the anchors well above the member's weight. A spreader holds the lift lines vertical or near it, so the anchors see closer to a straight pull and the member is not squeezed by the rigging. On long double-tees and beams the spreader is sized for the span between pick points the plant cast the anchors at.

Sling angle is the number crews underestimate. As the angle from horizontal drops, the tension in each leg climbs fast, so a two-leg pick at a flat angle can load each leg and each anchor at a multiple of half the weight. The rig plan sets the sling length and the spreader so the angle stays in the safe range, and the anchors and hardware are sized to the force at that angle, not to the bare weight on the scale. Read the pick weight and the rig plan together, because the anchor was designed for the rigged force.

How are precast members rigged and lifted?

Precast members are lifted by cast-in lift anchors, the engineered hardware embedded at the plant where the lifting design put it. The rigging hooks to those anchors through clutches or lifting eyes matched to the anchor system, never to a bar or a bolt of convenience. The anchor, its location, and its tie-back reinforcement come from the lifting design, and the field does not relocate one.

OSHA sets the factor of safety on the hardware, and the numbers are worth carrying. Under the precast requirements in 1926.704, lifting inserts cast into or attached to a precast member, other than tilt-up, must support at least four times the maximum intended load. Tilt-up lifting inserts must support at least two times. The lifting hardware itself, the clutches and the rigging accessories under the general rigging rules, carries a higher design factor, commonly five times, and custom lifting accessories get proof-tested before use. Confirm the current OSHA text and the project requirements, because those factors are the floor, and the design can be tighter.

The failure mode is an anchor that pulls. An anchor set too shallow, missing its tie-back steel, or loaded past the angle it was designed for can tear a cone of concrete out of the member with the member in the air. The mechanism is the same brittle concrete breakout that governs any cast-in or post-installed anchor pulled in tension, which is its own subject worth understanding. On the deck the rule is simpler: rig to the anchors the design shows, at the angle the rig plan sets, and if an anchor looks damaged or the geometry does not match the plan, that is a stop, not a field call.

How are precast members connected?

Precast members are connected three ways, and most frames use all three: welded connections, bolted connections, and grouted connections. The connection carries the load from one member into the next and ties the structure together so it can stand against gravity, wind, and seismic force. Until the connection is made, the member is held by the crane or by temporary bracing, and nothing permanent.

Welded connections are the most common. A steel embed plate cast into one member is joined to an embed plate in the next, usually with a loose erection plate or angle welded across the gap in the field. Bolted connections use cast-in inserts, anchor bolts, or threaded hardware and are reached for where welding heat would damage a finish or a nearby material, where the tolerance needs the adjustment a slotted hole gives, or where the connection is temporary until a weld is made later. Grouted connections fill the space at a bearing or a base with non-shrink grout to spread the load and lock the member in place, and grout shows up at column bases, beam bearings, and in the keyways between deck members.

Which one a connection uses is the engineer's call, set on the connection detail, and it depends on the load, the fire rating, the finish, and the tolerance. The detail names the plate, the weld size, the bolt, the grout, and the sequence. The field's job is to make the connection exactly as the detail draws it, in the order the sequence sets, and to leave the temporary support in place until the permanent connection that replaces it is complete. The sections below take each connection type in turn.

Welded and bolted connections

A welded precast connection joins steel to steel, not concrete to concrete. The plant casts a steel embed plate into each member with headed studs welded to its back that anchor it into the concrete. In the field, the crew sets the members, then welds across the joint, usually with a loose plate, angle, or rod that bridges from one embed to the other. The double-tee flange connection is the classic case: opposing weld plates, often called flange connectors, are cast into the flange edges of adjacent tees, and the crew welds a slug or a bar across them to tie the deck together and transfer shear between tees.

Bolted connections trade the heat for adjustment. A bolted connection uses cast-in threaded inserts or anchor bolts and a steel plate or angle bolted through slotted or oversized holes, which lets the field move the member to the line before it snugs the bolts. Crews bolt where a weld would scorch a finished face or a sealant, where a panel needs the tolerance, or to hold a member temporarily until the permanent weld is made. A bolted connection that the design intends to be permanent gets its bolts tightened to the specified condition and often a locking method, because a bolt that backs out under load or vibration is a connection that quietly opens.

The detail governs both. A field weld is made to the size and length the connection detail calls for, with the right electrode, by a welder qualified for the position and the process. A bolted connection uses the bolt grade, the hole type, and the tightening the detail specifies. The common field error is treating the loose erection plate as adjustable hardware, tack-welding the member into rough position, and moving on without ever making the full engineered weld. A tack is not the connection. The connection is the weld the detail draws, and the inspector is checking for it.

Grouted connections at bases and bearings

A grouted connection uses non-shrink grout to fill the gap at a bearing, a base, or a pocket so the load spreads evenly into the member below and the connection sets up solid. Grout is not glue. It is a load-transfer medium that fills the space the steel leveling left and bears the member uniformly instead of on the high points of the shims.

The column base is the common case. A precast column lands on its anchor bolts and is set to elevation on shims or leveling nuts, leaving a gap under the base plate, and that gap is packed with non-shrink grout, commonly a minimum on the order of 2 inches under a column base plate per the detail. A panel-to-footing connection works the same way, with a loose plate welded between the embed in the panel and the embed in the footing and a continuous grout bed under it, often a minimum near 1 inch. Confirm the grout thickness, the product, and the strength against the connection detail and the manufacturer's data, because those are the controlling numbers.

Grout has to be the right material, mixed and placed right, or the bearing it is supposed to make is hollow. Use the non-shrink grout the spec names at the flow the detail calls for, fill the space completely with no voids, and let it reach strength before the connection takes full load. Grout that shrinks, that was placed too dry, or that left voids under a base plate gives you a column bearing on its shims and air instead of on a full grout bed, and the load finds the shims. The detail sets the grout. The field's job is full, void-free placement and the cure before load.

What is a bearing pad in precast concrete?

A bearing pad is the pad set between a precast member and its support, where the member lands, to spread the load and let the member move. Without a pad, a precast beam or plank bears concrete directly on concrete at the high points, which concentrates the load, and it has no room to rotate or grow with temperature, which cracks the bearing edges. The pad fixes both.

Most precast bearing pads are elastomeric, a neoprene or natural rubber pad, sometimes laminated with internal steel plates on heavier bearings. The elastomeric pad does three jobs at once. It distributes the bearing load uniformly across the contact area instead of on the irregular concrete surfaces. It lets the end of a beam or a double-tee rotate as the member deflects under load, because a flexural member rotates at its ends and the bearing has to allow it. And it accommodates the horizontal movement from thermal expansion and contraction, so the member can grow and shrink without prying the support apart. Some bearings use other materials, like a random-oriented fiber pad or a composite, where the design calls for them.

Get the right pad in the right spot, because the pad is part of the connection design, not a shim. The pad type, size, thickness, and durometer come from the bearing design and the member it carries, and substituting a plain steel plate or a stack of random material for an engineered elastomeric pad removes the rotation and movement the design counted on. The blunt version: a missing or wrong bearing pad shows up later as spalled bearing corners and a connection fighting movement it was supposed to allow. Set the pad the detail calls for, in the location it shows, before the member lands on it.

Grouting the keyways and the deck joints

The joint between adjacent deck members is grouted to tie the deck together and make it act as one surface instead of separate planks. Hollowcore planks are set tight against each other with a shaped keyway running the length of the joint, and that keyway is filled with grout. The grouted keyway is what lets one plank share load with the next and what makes the floor work as a diaphragm, transferring in-plane force across the deck to the structure.

The keyway grout is its own mix and its own step. A common keyway grout is a sand-cement mix, often on the order of one part cement to three parts sand, reaching a modest strength commonly in the range of 2,000 to 3,000 psi, but the spec and the plank manufacturer set the actual mix and strength. The grout has to flow into the keyway and fill it the full depth and length, with no gaps, so the joint transfers the shear it was detailed for. Crews grout the keyways soon after the planks are set and aligned, because a deck full of ungrouted joints is a deck that is not yet a diaphragm.

The failure here is a keyway that was skipped, half-filled, or grouted before the planks were aligned. A joint that wanders open and closed down its length cannot be filled cleanly, and a keyway grouted to the wrong width or left short does not transfer the load between planks. Clean the keyways, set the plank alignment, then grout the full joint, because chasing a deck that flexes plank-by-plank after the topping is on is a problem you cannot reach.

Do precast members need bracing during erection?

Yes. A precast member needs temporary support, bracing or shoring, from the moment the crane sets it until the permanent connections that hold it are complete. OSHA's precast requirements put it plainly: precast wall units, structural framing, and tilt-up panels must be adequately supported to prevent overturning and collapse until the permanent connections are completed. A freestanding column, a beam set on a corbel, a wall panel on its base, none of them is stable on its own until it is tied into the frame.

What gets braced and how depends on the member. A wall panel gets pipe braces back to the slab, the same engineered wind bracing that holds a tilt-up panel, sized for the construction-period wind and held until the diaphragm ties the panel in. A column gets braced or guyed until its base connection is made and the beams that frame into it are connected. A beam set on a corbel needs its connection made before the deck loads it, and the deck members need their bearings and welds before the next bay leans on them. The erection engineer sets the temporary bracing as part of the sequence, member by member.

The rule that gets people hurt is releasing a member before it is supported or pulling the bracing before the structure can hold it. The temporary support stands in for the permanent connection, so it stays until the connection that replaces it is done and released, not until the member looks settled or the crew needs the braces on the next pick. The fatality record in precast and tilt-up is full of members that came down because a connection was not finished or a brace came off early. Treat the bracing and the sequence as the design documents they are.

Leveling, shims, and alignment

A precast member is set to line, level, and plumb at the moment it lands, while the crane still carries weight and the member is easy to move. The shims and leveling hardware carry the member at the right elevation and hold the gap that the grout or the bearing pad will fill. Once the crane is off and the connection is made, fine adjustment is a fight, so the alignment is won on the way down.

Steel shims set the elevation at a bearing or a base, stacked to bring the member to the line and left in place under the grout that follows. A column is set to its base elevation on shims or leveling nuts on the anchor bolts, plumbed, then grouted. A beam is set to bear flat on its pad at the right elevation so the deck lands true. A wall panel is set to line on shims at the base and plumbed with the braces. Every member has a leveling method, and the gap it leaves is the gap the grout was detailed to fill, which is why the shim height and the grout thickness go together.

The error is setting a member out of level or out of plumb and connecting it that way. A column set a half-degree out of plumb leans the whole stack of members above it and forces every connection downstream to fight the error. A bearing set to the wrong elevation leaves the grout too thick or too thin to do its job. Level it, plumb it, set the line and the joint, and confirm it before the connection locks it in, because the connection makes the error permanent.

Field welding and special inspection

Precast field welds get inspected, because the welded connection is a structural connection and a bad weld is invisible under paint and grout. The connection detail sets the weld size, length, and type, and the inspection confirms the field made the weld the detail drew. On structural precast, the weld inspection is part of the special inspection the building code requires, and the schedule of what gets inspected is on the structural drawings.

The welding follows the structural welding code that fits the joint. Welding steel to steel, embed plate to erection plate, follows the structural steel welding code, the AWS D1.1 family, including the studs welded to the back of the embed plates. Where the connection welds reinforcing steel, the welding of reinforcing bar follows AWS D1.4, which is the code written for welding rebar and is stricter about preheat and bar weldability. Confirm which code the connection detail and the spec invoke, because the welder qualification, the electrode, and the inspection ride on it.

Two field problems show up over and over. The first is welding to an in-place embed plate and cracking the concrete around it, because the heat expands the steel and the studs and pries the concrete, so high-heat welding on a tight embed needs the sequence and the controls the engineer allows. The second is the unqualified weld: a welder not qualified for the position, the wrong electrode, an undersized or short weld, or a tack left standing in for the full connection. The inspector checks the weld against the detail and the code, and a weld that fails goes back to a qualified welder to be cut out and remade, not ground flush and painted over.

Caulking and the joints between panels

A precast facade is a field of separate panels, so the joints between them are the weather line, and they are sealed, not left open. The joint width is set during erection as the panels are aligned, and it has to stay consistent enough for the sealant to work across it. A joint that runs from tight to wide down the elevation is a joint the sealant cannot bridge reliably, which is a leak waiting for the first driving rain.

The standard joint is backed with a backer rod and sealed with an elastomeric sealant sized to the joint width and movement. The backer rod sets the depth of the sealant and gives it the right shape to stretch, and the sealant has to bond to clean panel faces and flex as the panels move with temperature without tearing or pulling off. The panels expand and contract, so the sealant joint is a moving joint, and the wrong width, a dirty face, or the wrong sealant is what fails first. This weatherproofing detail is shared with tilt-up and any panelized facade, and it is one of the first things that leaks when the joint was not detailed and set during erection.

Set the joints true during erection and seal them clean afterward. Chasing leaks at panel joints after the building is closed in is slow, expensive work from a swing stage, and it usually traces back to a joint that was the wrong width or a face that was never cleaned. The connection holds the panel. The sealant keeps the water out, and both depend on the panel being set to the line.

Safety, OSHA, and the fall zone

Precast erection kills people in two windows: the crane pick, and the time a member stands before its connections are complete. The whole safety program is built around those two windows. The crane and rigging are inspected before the pick, the rigging is the engineered configuration for that member, a qualified operator and a competent person run the lift, and the load is rigged to its lift anchors at the planned angle. Nobody stands under the load or inside the swing radius.

The rules trace to a body of OSHA construction standards. The precast requirements at 1926.704 require precast members to be supported to prevent overturning and collapse until the permanent connections are complete, and they set the lifting-insert factors of safety, four times the intended load for precast members other than tilt-up and two times for tilt-up inserts. The cranes and derricks rules in Subpart CC and the rigging requirements govern the pick, the inspection, and the qualified people running it. Fall protection under the fall-protection rules covers the crews working at the connections at height. Confirm the current OSHA text and the project safety plan, because those are the requirements that control.

The blunt part: a precast member that lets go does not crack a slab or blow a schedule. It crushes whoever is under it, and it happens in seconds. The exclusion zone is real and enforced by a competent person, the wind limit on braced panels stops the work, and the connections get made and the bracing stays until the structure can hold the member. On a data center or a parking structure where the pieces are heavy and the picks are many, the discipline is the same on the last pick of the day as the first. The member does not give second chances when it goes.

What does the inspector check on precast connections?

The inspector checks that each connection was made the way the detail drew it and that the member is supported until it is. On structural precast the checks are part of the code-required special inspection, and the inspector works from the connection details, the erection drawings, and the statement of special inspections on the structural drawings. The list is short and it is the same list a good superintendent walks before the inspector arrives.

Connection by connection: the right member by piece mark in the right place and orientation, the welds made to size and length by a qualified welder, the bolts tightened to the specified condition, the grout placed full and to strength at the bases and bearings, the keyways grouted and the diaphragm tied, the bearing pads the right type in the right spot, and the temporary bracing in place and not removed until the permanent connections are done and released. On a heavily loaded structure like a parking deck or a data center floor, the bearing and the grout get the hardest look, because that is where the gravity load crosses.

What an inspector flags first is the connection that is started but not finished: the tack standing in for the weld, the bolt snugged but not tightened, the grout that left a void, the brace pulled before the diaphragm was connected. Those are the failures that hide, and they are exactly the ones that come back. Walk your own connections against the detail before you call the inspection, because a connection that fails inspection after the crew has moved three bays away is a connection you reach from a lift, on overtime, with the schedule already spent.

What to document

The erection record proves every member was set and connected the way it was engineered, and it is what an inspector, an engineer, or a future owner reads when a question comes up. Capture it member by member as the work goes, tied to the piece mark, not from memory after the crane has left the site.

For each member, record the piece mark and where it landed, the connection type and that it was completed, the field welds with the welder's qualification and the inspection result, the bolt tightening, the grout product, thickness, and strength at bases and bearings, the keyway grouting, the bearing pad type and location, the temporary bracing installed, and the release of that bracing once the permanent connections were done. The bracing-removal release is the one crews skip, and it is the one that matters most if a member ever moves.

Common mistakes

• Releasing the crane or pulling the temporary bracing before the permanent connections that hold the member are complete and released.
• Leaving a tack weld or a snug bolt standing in for the full engineered connection the detail draws.
• Missing or wrong bearing pad, so the member bears concrete on concrete with no room to rotate or move and the bearing corners spall.
• Keyways or deck joints skipped, half-filled, or grouted before the planks were aligned, so the diaphragm never forms.
• Grout placed too dry or with voids under a column base or beam bearing, so the member bears on its shims and air.
• A field weld made by an unqualified welder, undersized, or never inspected, hidden under paint and grout.
• Setting a member out of level or out of plumb and connecting it that way, forcing every connection downstream to fight the error.
• Erecting out of sequence, so a member is set with no completed support beneath it or no way to brace it.
• Rigging to a lift anchor at a shallower sling angle than the rig plan, overloading the anchor and risking a concrete breakout in the air.
• Substituting a different connection, anchor, or grout than the detail and the manufacturer's data call for.

Field checklist

Standards and references

Several bodies govern precast, and each owns a piece. The Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) is the design and practice authority for the trade: the PCI Design Handbook covers member and connection design, and PCI's erection guidance covers the field practice for setting and connecting members. The connection details on the job come from the engineer of record and the precast engineer applying those to the specific structure, and their details govern the welds, the bolts, the grout, and the bearings.

ACI 318 is the underlying structural concrete code for strength, reinforcement, and the anchoring provisions that the cast-in embeds and anchor bolts fall under. Welding follows the AWS structural welding codes: the AWS D1.1 family for steel-to-steel embed and stud welding, and AWS D1.4 where the connection welds reinforcing steel. Confirm which code and edition the connection detail and the specification invoke, because the welder qualification and inspection ride on it, and code section numbers shift across editions.

On safety, the OSHA construction standards in 29 CFR 1926 govern. The precast requirements at 1926.704 require members to be supported until the permanent connections are complete and set the lifting-insert factors of safety. The cranes and derricks rules in Subpart CC and the rigging requirements cover the pick, and the fall-protection rules cover the crews at height. Above all of these, the project specification, the manufacturer's data for the anchors, grout, pads, and sealants, and the adopted code edition with local amendments control over any rule of thumb in this guide.

Units and terms

Precast carries its own vocabulary, and the same part goes by different names on the erection drawing, the connection detail, and the deck. These are the terms that show up across a precast erection job.

Strength is in psi for the concrete and the grout. Member weight runs in pounds or tons and drives the crane pick and the lift-anchor loads. Bearing pad hardness is given as a durometer. Grout thickness, embedment, and bearing length are in inches. Wind for temporary bracing is in mph. The same connection can be called a weld plate, an embed, a weldment, or a flange connector depending on whose drawing you are reading.

Precast

Concrete cast to its final shape at a plant, cured, hauled, and set by crane on site

Piece mark

The unique stamp on each member that ties it to its place on the erection drawing

Embed plate

Steel plate cast into a member, anchored by headed studs, that field connections weld or bolt to

Corbel

A haunch cast onto a column or wall that a beam or member bears on

Double-tee

A floor or roof member, two stems under a flange, spanning long and laid side by side

Hollowcore

A flat floor or roof plank with voids run through it to cut weight, joined by grouted keyways

Bearing pad

An elastomeric pad at a support that spreads the load and lets the member rotate and move

Keyway

The shaped joint between deck members that is grouted to transfer shear and form the diaphragm

Non-shrink grout

Grout that fills a base or bearing gap and bears the member without shrinking away from it

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