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Kristofer Grimnes—development manager, Harbor Technologies
Kristofer Grimnes is the development manager for Harbor Technologies of Brunswick, Maine. Grimes, his brother and his father started Harbor Technologies in 2003 when demand grew for longer lasting, environmentally friendly building products for the marine infrastructure market.
What role has innovation played in development of your floats?
Floats are a dock that is not attached to land, and I am certain others had made fiberglass floats of some kind prior to us, but we feel we were the first to commercialize the product and make them with state-of-the-art construction methods adopted from the boat building industry. The floats were developed from one project to the next, always tweaking the process and materials in an effort to improve the product and reduce the cost. This same development process continues today for all of our products and that process makes Harbor Tech a fun place to work.
What process is producing optimum results?
We predominantly vacuum infuse our HarborPile products, which is a more environmentally friendly, efficient and cost effective manufacturing process than the traditional hand lay technique used in the composites industries for many years. The process was adapted and modified, and the molds and materials used, to manufacture the beams, but generally speaking it is all existing technology. Like any evolving manufacturing process, there is always a little bit of art, mixed with science, to getting everything to work right, which is only learned through experience.
What is the role of composites in bridge beams?
We have worked with hybrid composite beams over the past five years to help develop and refine the beams and their manufacturability. The challenges have been many, mostly revolving around efforts to remove cost whether in materials or processes and market growth. It’s always a challenged to get your foot in the door, so to speak, and gaining entrance to the many infrastructure markets that could benefit from composite beams. But the development process is enjoyable and rewarding, particularly as we see the beams gaining traction in a number of infrastructure markets such as piers, wharves, bridges (both rail and highway), runway extensions over water and buildings—particularly for highly corrosive environments such as chemical storage warehouses or sewage treatment plants.
Are the challenges faced prohibitive?
Probably the biggest ongoing challenge is cost reduction, as we try to be more competitive with traditional materials and gain acceptance for everyday use rather than select projects.
Do you foresee hybrid composite beams as less expensive alternatives?
Our goal, and we are getting close to achieving it, is to be cost competitive with traditional materials on an installed cost basis and consider the longer life span to be a secondary benefit. If you include lifecycle, carbon footprint and maintenance costs into the equation today, I suspect we are already far cheaper. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks this way and changing people’s idea of how to evaluate value is a challenge which requires a great deal of patience. Gaining acceptance to highway construction as an approved alternative to concrete and steel can be a challenge, but, again, cost will certainly help us in that effort as well. Public opinion is becoming more accepting of new products and people are gradually starting to consider the bigger picture, which now includes carbon footprint and life cycle costs as factors in how to build smart in the future.
How do you put your product in front of the infrastructure decision-making bodies?
Typically we put together a proposal for construction firms to go to bid with, just like traditional materials would. We like to establish relationships with engineering and construction firms so they think of us and our beam’s advantages when designing projects. Our earliest projects were DOT highway bridge projects, which were considered demonstration projects and the decision making process was a bit different for those. Highway bridges have much stricter regulations (AASHTO) for use of new materials than say a private pier would, so the decision making process can be very different depending on the project. In most cases though, price is a major factor. You have to be in the right ballpark pricewise for any decision maker to consider you and hopefully there are enough benefits in reduced installation cost and life cycle costs to get the decision makers attention.
Do you see composites being used more in future marine applications?
Absolutely. Even in my short time doing this, the attitude toward use of composites in infrastructure, particularly marine infrastructure, has improved considerably. I suspect the next decade will be exponentially more.
Where do you see more use for it?
Composites are already widely used in other high performance products, such as race cars, skis, bikes, jets, boats etc., all of which at one point were predominantly made of metal, wood or other traditional building materials. Any other products still made of those materials today has to be a target in the future. Infrastructure is certainly one of the major markets that is still largely dominated by traditional materials and ripe for composite use. Transportation, such as trains, planes, ferries etc is also a ripe market as is energy, where composites are seeing more and more use, for example in wind blades and solar panels.
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