NRMCA Announces New Publication: Improving Concrete Quality

NRMCA is glad to announce a new publication: Improving Concrete Quality. Improved concrete quality has far reaching benefits, in improved performance, reduced time and costs, a lower environmental footprint of concrete and an overall improvement in the quality of concrete construction. While there are many books on concrete technology, it is hard to find a book that is focused on the subject of improving concrete quality. In addition, quality measurement is not prevalent in the concrete industry and, as a result, quality investment is not seen as generating a positive return.

This book discusses concrete quality measurement as well as the tangible and intangible benefits due to improved quality. The book suggests steps to measure and reduce variability due to concrete ingredient materials, manufacturing and testing, and thereby improve concrete quality. The book gets into basic statistics and how to use test data to improve quality. Doing a test and collecting data by itself is of little value unless data analysis and necessary corrective action are taken. The book addresses a number of topics that are of great interest, including how to identify poor testing, poor initial curing; how do identify abnormal material variation; how to control mixing water variation; improving batching accuracy; how to ensure ingredient material quality; elements of a quality management system; how to do a quality audit and tests a concrete producer should do.

This book will be of significant value to concrete producers who will come away with readily implementable steps to reduce variability and attain a more consistent product, thereby seeing performance benefits and cost savings. This book provides suggestions on how architects and engineers can ensure good quality concrete through their specifications. This book will help testing labs measure and improve testing quality. This book will assist cementitious and admixture suppliers better understand how their material variability affects concrete performance and thus can help reduce it.