Pouring Concrete Benches for the Amphitheater at SLO Botanical Garden

This paper will outline the logistics and construction processes for the construction of ten concrete benches for a new amphitheater area at the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden. These benches will provide stadium-style seating for around forty guests that the botanical garden staff can utilize for special events, tours and outdoor classes. The overall project team was composed of 6 students broken out into a preconstruction (Anthony Masarweh, Sydnee Greer and Devon Barthmaier) and a construction team (Makenna Gitchell, Brandon Keefer, and Kyler Cruz). As part of the construction team, we were responsible for coordinating material deliveries, building the formwork, pouring concrete, installing the composite decking and transporting the benches from the Cal Poly campus to the garden. This paper will touch on the processes for each of the construction phases, but will focus mainly on the concrete pour and lessons learned from this specific scope of the project