Lionel Lemay, NRMCA’s senior vice president of sustainability, was keynote speaker at last week’s at 19th annual concrete conference of IDIEM, a unit of the University of Chile in Santiago. The topic of the conference was concrete sustainability; Lemay presented twice, first on the business transition to environmental product declarations (EPD) and the second on the role of performance-based specifications on concrete sustainability.

IDIEM supports the construction industry in Chile through research, education and certifications and recently launched its own EPD program. Lemay met with key people within the organization to establish potential partnering opportunities with regard to NRMCA education and certification programs, including NRMCA's EPD program. IDIEM’s EPD program, operating as DAPCO, has recently verified a concrete EPD, making it the second concrete EPD in the world after the Central Concrete EPD verified earlier this year under the NRMCA EPD program.