NRMCA Senior National Resource Director Jon Hansen recently teamed with Ken Liescheidt with the Missouri / Kansas chapter of the American Concrete Pavement Association and Evan Bolesta with the Concrete Council of St. Louis for a two-hour luncheon seminar in the St. Louis area. During the meeting, Hansen presented a model for a general parking lot specification using ACI 330 as a guide. The luncheon seminar was held at the office of a civil design firm whose clients include Walmart, Lowe's and Home Depot.

"When the model was developed by NRMCA for a national client customer, we realized the same model was appropriate for a number of clients on our national list," Hansen said. "When you look at traffic for parking lot light duty and heavy duty sections, there is a consistency in like stores for like clients. For example, a model created for a Walmart Super Center is very much like a model created for a Lowe's store. If there can be an ‘off the shelf’ type format for a designer to use, this might be the model."

The second half of the meeting was spent reviewing the Guide to Concrete Overlays of Asphalt Parking Lots. "This firm has designed concrete overlays of asphalt paving in the past, but still had many questions that the guide answered," Hansen added. Copies of the guide were distributed to all engineers, surveyors and field inspectors in the firm.