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Association & Industry News
NRMCA is seeking to add two new promotion professionals to increase the effectiveness of the Build With Strength initiative in Texas and California, the two largest states in terms of construction volume and concrete production. These director, building innovations, positions combine consultative sales and business development skills along with significant knowledge of the building construction industry. Successful applicants will be required to offer innovative and economical concrete building solutions for concrete buildings to key decision makers – building owners, developers, architects, engineers and contractors. The successful candidates will engage with key developers who primarily build low- to mid-rise multi-family residential and non-residential buildings. They will use their strong analytical skills and technical knowledge to work with developers to determine which types of concrete systems are best suited for the building type and location. They will leverage the robust construction markets in Texas and California to host informative roundtable education discussions and deliver training for architects and engineers on optimal concrete systems. They will connect with NRMCA's in-house design resources to recommend innovative and economical concrete building systems that include structural and envelope design recommendations along with first cost, energy cost, life cycle cost and sustainable concrete solutions. Click here for the full job description and details. For more information, contact Lionel Lemay at LLemay@nrmca.org or 847-922-7995. On Thursday, February 11, at 11 a.m. Eastern time, the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) will present its first public webinar of 2021, Challenges and Opportunities of Using Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) in Environmental Performance Comparisons of Concrete presented by CSHub Executive Director Jeremy Gregory and Postdoctoral Associate Hessam AzariJafari. In this webinar, the information existing in the current and past concrete EPDs will be discussed and the challenges of using these documents for assessing the environmental embodied emissions of concrete mix designs will be detailed. Furthermore, recommendations and opportunities for improving the product category rules and framework development for comparative analysis of concrete embodied emissions will be provided in order to improve the power of decision-making without compromising the robustness of the decision. Please note that while registration for this webinar is free, it is required. For more information, contact Andrew Logan at alogan@mit.edu. 
Engineering
The 100th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) was held virtually between January 5-29. The theme of the event was Launching a New Century of Mobility and Quality of Life. More than 19,000 were registered, 30% above last year's total. The meeting brought together transportation professionals, academics and industry officials for committee meetings, presentations and workshops. Several NCHRP projects in concrete materials are in progress and are expected to be completed by 2022, including Revision of AASHTO M 295 Standard Specification to Include Marginal and Unconventional Source Coal Fly Ashes, Improving Guidance of AASHTO R 80/ASTM C 1778 for Alkali-Silica Reactivity (ASR) Potential and Mitigation and Rating Concrete Water Permeability Based on Resistivity Measurements. NRMCA’s Karthik Obla is a panelist for the first two National Cooperative Highway Research Program projects. The CP Tech Center has completed a tech brief on harvested fly ash. AASHTO has developed a new Guide Specification for Service Life Design of Highway Bridges. The guide specification adopts various exposure classes for chlorides and detailed concrete requirements. More details can be found in the NCHRP 12-108 research report. This is the first TRB meeting with the reorganized committee structure. The number of concrete materials committees has decreased to three: Advanced Concrete Materials and Characterization Committee, Properties of Concrete and Constituent Materials Committee, and Durability of Concrete Committee. There were discussions on modifying the scope of the committees to ensure relevant aspects are addressed. The concrete, asphalt and aggregate committees come under the Highway Infrastructure Group. TRB committees organize technical sessions and workshops at the annual meeting, develop research needs statements and research synthesis topics. These are listed on the committee website and, from time to time, some projects are funded by NCHRP and other agencies. The 2022 TRB meeting will be held January 9-13. For more information, contact Karthik Obla at kobla@nrmca.org. SEO
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, NRMCA moved quickly to create a clearinghouse website of all COVID-19 resources that may impact the ready mixed concrete industry or that may be useful for managing the pandemic. It is updated regularly with new information that covers educational items, voluntary guidance and even new mandates for industry operations. Federal agencies following direction from President Biden last week issued two such items which are now accessible on the site; the first is new voluntary guidance issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the second is a new public transportation mask mandate issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Please click here for NRMCA’s COVID-19 website, here for OSHA’s new COVID-19 guidance and here for the CDC’s new mask mandate. Please don’t forget to check back regularly for new updates. For more information, contact Kevin Walgenbach at kwalgenbach@nrmca.org.
Click here to view this month’s and all previous issues. For more information, contact Gary Mullings at gmullings@nrmca.org or Kevin Walgenbach at kwalgenbach@nrmca.org.
The 2021 Fleet Benchmarking Survey is filled out by industry fleet managers and/or financial managers early each year, based on data gathered from the previous calendar year’s performance. This year’s form includes a new section on automation, including the use of video-based driver safety, GPS tracking, slump control and proximity sensors. The Fleet Benchmarking Survey is used to establish industry benchmarking norms and procedures. Information gathered from the survey is published in a full report in Concrete InFocus magazine each autumn. A shorter Executive Summary of the survey is also made available to all. Entries must be e-mailed to fleetbenchmark@nrmca.org by Friday, April 23. Click here for more details and to download the survey entry form. For more information, contact Gary Mullings at gmullings@nrmca.org. The NRMCA Safety Contest & Benchmarking Survey has for years been a safety performance and incentive/award program aimed to foster safe practices at ready mixed concrete plants across the nation. It is a per-plant contest open to facilities operated by NRMCA member companies in good standing in 2021. Companies with more than one division are encouraged to distribute entry blanks to individuals responsible for keeping safety records at each plant location. Entries must be e-mailed to safetycontest@nrmca.org by April 23. Click here for more details and to download the entry form. For more information, contact Gary Mullings at gmullings@nrmca.org. 
NRMCA Member News
NRMCA members now have free access to all of the case studies, educational materials and articles published by Hanley Wood (now known as Zonda) from the last two years. This information is yours to use and can be accessed here. This material was published with Build With Strength funding provided by you, our NRMCA members. The path to maximizing your return on that investment is to make use of these available materials. The catalogued material is part of NRMCA's ongoing effort to provide you with great content for sharing on your social media channels and also to print and use for leave-behinds for architects, contractors, developers and others. Much of this new material was originally published in Architect, Builder and Multi Family Executive magazines. If you share this content on social media, we hope you will tag NRMCA, Pave Ahead and Build With Strength whether on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. Social media is a communication tool that costs very little to use and offers our industry a way to build a following, and helps project stakeholders to understand why concrete should be their material of choice for all building and paving projects. Be on the lookout at the link above for more great content featuring concrete projects around the country. We welcome your suggestions for new case studies and projects that we can post on our Concrete Tracker website. For more information, contact Gregg Lewis at glewis@nrmca.org. Registration is now open for NRMCA’s 2021 Annual Convention, scheduled for Tuesday, March 2 – Wednesday, March 3, with some Board and committee activities taking place in the days before and after the event. The convention will be comprised of high-level general sessions focusing on the topics of leadership and resiliency with breakout sessions that highlight how the concrete industry is innovative and essential. It will also highlight these attributes of our industry. In addition, we will hold a virtual awards ceremony and virtual Board of Directors’ meeting. On behalf of NRMCA, thank you for your understanding, patience and continued support as we continue to navigate the world of virtual events and remember: We are Innovative, We are Resilient, We are Essential, We are CONCRETE! Sponsorship opportunities for this year’s event are available by clicking here. Please click here to register for the convention and for more details. For more information, please contact Senior Director of Meetings Jessica Walgenbach at jwalgenbach@nrmca.org. 
Buildings
NRMCA Senior Vice President, Structures and Codes, Scott Campbell, is writing a new column on resilience and security for Engineered Systems magazine. In this column, he will address various aspects of both topics and bring a rigorous view of resilience to the engineering community. Ensuring that resilience and security maintain a solid technical basis will help to enhance the natural advantages concrete has in both areas. Click here to read Campbell's first article. You may contact him at scampbell@nrmca.org for more information. As a leading Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) program operator for the concrete industry, NRMCA recently verified another EPD by Lehigh Cement. The EPD reports the impacts for five different cement products produced at Lehigh’s cement plant and terminal in Edmonton, Alberta. Verified cement products include:
The trend in reporting environmental, social and governance practices is growing and, with environmental impact criteria being discovered in green building construction documents and specifications, procurement decisions are leaning beyond price and performance. By demonstrating a lower embodied carbon for their customers, raw material suppliers will see increased future business opportunities. Lehigh’s EPD was developed by Climate Earth and independently reviewed by Athena Sustainable Materials Institute. To date, the North American ready mixed concrete industry, including material suppliers, have invested into more than 80 verified EPDs with more than 35,000 products/mixes; it is the leading material industry that reports environmental impacts. NRMCA-verified EPDs can be found here. Integral to the Build With Strength campaign, NRMCA promotes Strength Through Transparency for member and industry competitiveness in the green building marketplace and the trends toward product and company transparency. For support, training, sustainability strategy planning or program development, please contact James Bogdan at jbogdan@nrmca.org or 412-420-4138.
Pavement
NRMCA provided the opening presentations at the Nebraska Quality Pavement, Parking Lot & Flatwork Conference, sponsored by the American Council of Engineering Companies - Nebraska, Nebraska Chapter of American Concrete Institute, and the Nebraska Concrete & Aggregates Association (NCAA). The virtual conference drew over 75 industry professionals, including NRMCA Vice President, Local Paving, Don Clem, who discussed concrete overlays, and NRMCA Senior Director, Building Innovations, Donn Thompson, who presented Emerging Technologies: Improving the Carbon Footprint of Concrete. Jeff Mulder, promotions director for NCAA, served as the master of ceremonies for the conference, and assisted NRMCA with presentation preparation. For more information, contact Don Clem at dclem@nrmca.org or Donn Thompson at dthompson@nrmca.org. Part of the wrapup for NRMCA Pave Ahead team’s Parking Lot Boot Camp is always the statement, “This is the beginning, not the end of our road to success together. We are available to help, anytime, anyway we can,” said NRMCA Senior Vice President, Local Paving, Jon Hansen. A recent Parking Lot Boot Camp attendee took instructors Hansen and his colleague Phil Kresge up on the offer. When attempting to sort information regarding the use of different control joint sawing equipment and methods, attendee Harold sent a note asking for industry clarification on the depth of cut difference in ACI 330 and the depth of cut allowed with early entry type of saws. Information included Integrated Materials and Construction Practices for Concrete Pavement: A State-Of-The-Practice Manual from the Pave Ahead web page was sent to Harold to better explain the differences. In a return e-mail, Harold wrote, "Thanks for digging a little deeper into this for me. I’m certainly going to download the manual so that I can reference it in the future and share this knowledge on to others as well. It’s nice to know that that we in the paving field have a Team dedicated to helping us.” For more information on this story or how to host a virtual Parking Lot Boot Camp, contact Jon Hansen at jhansen@nrmca.org or Phil Kresge at pkresge@nrmca.org. And you can click here to download a free PDF copy of Integrated Materials and Construction Practices for Concrete Pavement: A State-Of-The-Practice Manual. Government Affairs
Working with the business community through the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, NRMCA is meeting with Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to urge opposition to the PRO Act. This legislation has yet to be introduced in the 117th Congress, but it was passed by the House last year and is expected to be reintroduced shortly as a priority for Democrats. The legislation is a cornucopia of anti-business policies that NRMCA has long opposed, including the Joint Employer standard, micro unions, blacklisting, ambush elections and card check – in addition to policies that infringe on employees’ privacy, employers’ attorney-client privilege and states’ right to work laws. President Biden is an outspoken advocate for organized labor. While campaigning for president, he promised to be the strongest labor president unions had ever had. His campaign website featured his support for the PRO Act. During the last Congress, despite passing the House, the Senate’s pro-business majority did not consider the legislation. The PRO Act is just one of a raft of anti-business policies we expect from a Democratic Congress and the Biden Administration. Just days into his administration, President Biden’s COVID relief bill includes increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour and his nominee for secretary of labor, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, is a former president of his union. Click here for more information on the PRO Act. For more information, contact Andrew Tyrrell at atyrrell@nrmca.org. On Monday, NRMCA and a coalition led by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) sent a letter urging Congress to reject attempts to increase the minimum insurance for heavy trucks. This provision was originally included the House-passed surface transportation bill last year as an amendment during committee consideration. NRMCA, the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association (NSSGA) and allied associations opposed the provision, along with other anti-truck policies wrapped into the legislation, including a roll back of last year’s Hours of Service rule and new rules on underride protection and sleep apnea testing. Last year, NRMCA and NSSGA conducted meetings with members of the Senate Commerce Committee opposing inclusion of the provision in the Senate’s surface reauthorization bill. NRMCA is joining the effort led by OOIDA to oppose similar provisions in the 117th Congress and will be conducting meetings with congressional offices. You can read about the effort here and see the letter here. For more information, contact Andrew Tyrrell at atyrrell@nrmca.org. 
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Calendar
*Please note that e-mail and direct links to each event listed below can be accessed from NRMCA's Web site. February 19 – March 1, Online Course *Sold Out February 22 – 26, Online Course *Sold Out March 2-3, Virtual Conference March 11 – 19, Online Course March 19 – 26, Online Course March 23 – 26, Online Course May 4 – 7 , Smyrna, TN June 15 – 17, Smyrna, TN November 9 – 11, Dallas 
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