NRMCA RES Committee Meets at NRMCA Convention

The meeting of the Research Engineering and Standards (RES) Committee held earlier this month in Las Vegas as part of NRMCA's Annual Convention was chaired by Alberto Romanach with Cemex and attended by about 60 people. The committee discussed various technical issues, including quality benchmarks and a concept of a quality dashboard; factors of portland limestone cement that can impact concrete properties; developments in industry standards at ACI and ASTM, including ACI 318, 301 and ASTM C94; demonstration of a spreadsheet tool for selecting durability exposure classes and requirements for concrete; proposed revisions to section 033000 of MasterSpec for cast in place concrete; NRMCA research on natural pozzolans and developing concrete mixtures with lower embodied carbon; plant certification; technical publications with revisions to four CIP topics and a draft of a new topic on EPDs, and developing new TIP topics; NRMCA technical education and certification programs; and other technical issues.

The committee received a presentation from a Developing Industry Leaders (DIL) group on performance and financial impacts of poorly managed cementitious batching systems. Reports from the Portland Cement Association and the newly named Concrete Advancement Foundation (previously the RMC Research & Education Foundation) were received by the committee. The committee began the process of selecting topics for four technical sessions to be offered at the 2023 NRMCA ConcreteWorks event to be held this fall in Nashville, TN.

The RES Committee selected Bruce Blair, recently retired president and CEO of Consumers Concrete in Michigan, as the recipient of the 2023 Richard D. Gaynor Award for lifetime achievement in the technical area – the award was presented to Mr. Blair at the awards ceremony during the NRMCA convention.

For more information contact Colin Lobo or Karthik Obla.