A Kansas City industry group organized a seminar titled "Is Your Concrete Chemically Dependent" for designers and contractors to address some of the restrictive specifications and the associated problems with construction. The seminar provided three professional Development Hours to Architects and Engineers through the AIA-CES, with NRMCA member Ash Grove Materials as the education provider. The seminar was attended by 75 designers, contractors and industry members, along with NRMCA Senior Vice President of Engineering Colin Lobo.

 

Rusty Owings with Hunt Martin Materials discussed the topic of minimum water content required for appropriate consistency and the restrictions caused by conservative water-cement ratio limits in project specifications. He illustrated several projects in the region where problems occurred. Lobo presented on the requirements in industry standards and the need to avoid unnecessary prescriptive provisions. He discussed options of evolving toward performance-based specifications and provided NRMCA documents that were resources to designers to change their specifications.

Pat Harrison with SSI discussed the requirements for successful interior slab on grade construction in terms of having adequate mix water, paste content, aggregate size distribution and other aspects of placing and finishing floors for a wide range of project needs. 

The session concluded with a panel discussion that included a general contractor and owner/developer. There was good participation from the audience during this discussion session.

For more information, contact Colin Lobo at clobo@nrmca.org.