The Western New York Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) along with the Association of Bridge Construction and Design (ABCD) recently held a joint meeting in Buffalo dedicated to advances in concrete technology. NRMCA’s Senior Director, National Resources, Doug O’Neill was the keynote speaker and provided the attendees with an overview of some applications for concrete that while not new are seeing tremendous growth due to advances in newer mix designs.

"The real success of this presentation was the fact that within the crowd we had representatives from admix, cement, fiber and local ready mixed concrete companies," said O’Neill. The 50+ engineers learned about how advances in concrete technology have helped bring the use of SCC, RCC and pervious concrete along with Tilt-Up and ICF construction into mainstream construction practices. "Having our industry partners right there to provide their valuable insight not only made our industry look on top of our game, but also afforded these reps access to engineers who freely admit to not being experts on concrete but are willing to learn more."

Industry partners are a key ingredient to developing the relationships within the design community necessary to advance the ready mix industry's message, emphasized O'Neill.