NRMCA, in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Aggregates and Concrete Association, is presenting the one-day course, Improving Concrete Quality, intended for concrete producers, ingredient material suppliers, engineers, testing labs and contractors. The course will be offered on Tuesday, February 28, in Harrisburg, PA. Improving Concrete Quality, a book authored by one of the instructors, and other NRMCA resources provide the basic content for the course.

Improved concrete quality can benefit all stakeholders in a concrete construction project. This course will answer some of the following questions: 

• How do you know if you have good quality? What should be your quality metric?
• How to become more profitable through better quality?
• What are all the key statistical calculations you need to know in concrete?
• How to control the mixing water content in concrete?
• How to deal with temperature and delivery time variations?
• What is the most effective way to ensure that your materials ingredients are of good quality?
• How to improve batching accuracy, mixing uniformity?
• How to identify non standard testing and curing? How to improve testing quality?
• Tests a producer should do, internal audits and many more.

Course instructors are Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D., FACI, Beton Consulting Engineers LLC, and Karthik Obla, Ph.D., P.E. at NRMCA. Producers will learn readily-implementable steps to manage variability and attain a more consistent product; ingredient suppliers will learn how material variation affects concrete variation; engineers will learn the opportunity for improving quality through specifications and testing lab professionals will learn to measure and improve testing quality. Upon successful completion of the course, attendees will earn 8 professional development hours, a certificate of completion and credits toward NRMCA’s STEPS program.