Sustainability Conference Integrates Cutting Edge Research with Practical Applications

Nearly 200 attendees participated in NRMCA' s 7th annual International Concrete Sustainability Conference held last week in Seattle. Over 60 world-renowned experts presented the latest developments related to design, specifying, manufacturing, testing, construction, maintenance and research of concrete as it relates to sustainability. Examples of key topics presented at the conference include:

• Dave Robison, president and CEO of Delta Industries and chairman of NRMCA, opened the conference with an overview of industry progress toward meeting its sustainability goals.

• Denis Hayes, president and CEO of Bullitt Foundation, national coordinator of the first Earth Day and honorary chairman of the Earth Day Network, presented a comprehensive and visionary view of sustainability coupled with building industry leadership demonstrated by the zero-carbon Cascadia Center in Seattle.

• Dr. Franz-Josef Ulm, PhD, George Macomber Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, discussed model-based life-cycle assessment for sustainable engineering design.

• Dr. Michael Lepech, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, explored "bendable concrete", a new class of high performance fiber reinforced concrete that exhibits mechanical properties similar to ductile metals.

Other topics included life cycle assessment, disaster resilience, low impact development and green concrete. One of the hottest topics at the conference was environmental product declarations, a new concept for building product suppliers to communicate their environmental footprint to decision makers. Examples include:

• Kathrina Simonen, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, presented Concrete Product Category Rules: Technical Details and Industry Implementation.

• Nicholas Santaro, senior consultant at PE International, presented Creating Value from Sustainability: The Role of Environmental Product Declarations.

• Mie Vold, research engineer at Ostfold Research, presented Tool for Generation of Environmental Product Declarations in the Norwegian Concrete Industry.