NRMCA's celebration of the 100th anniversary of ready mixed concrete in the U.S. enters the second half of 2013 with the histories of two of its most longstanding Producer and Associate members. See below for their respective Web site links. This week's industry milestone: Eighty-three years ago this month, NRMCA was formed to improve, protect and expand the ready mixed concrete industry.

Dolese Bros. - Oklahoma-based Dolese Bros. was founded by four brothers - William, John, Henry and Peter. The company originally focused on the construction of streets, sewer facilities and other public projects in and near Chicago. William soon decided to leave the company in the sole ownership of his three younger brothers. They changed the business of the company from contracting to operating railroad-owned ballast plants and quarries in various locations along the main lines in Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Prior to Oklahoma's statehood in 1907, Dolese Bros. Co. was already operating several quarries in the territory, as well as in Colorado and Iowa. As Oklahoma was settled, Dolese provided the many thousands of tons of crushed stone and sand that were needed to construct the young state's roads. Today, the company includes more than 45 ready mixed concrete plants in Oklahoma and seven in Louisiana, more than 330 mixer trucks and more than 15 facilities providing crushed stone, sand and gravel materials to the construction industry. Read more.

An NRMCA Producer member since 1951

Giant Cement Company - The history of Giant Cement Company can be traced to the birthplace of the portland cement industry in the U.S. in the Lehigh Valley of northeastern Pennsylvania. This area not only witnessed the founding of the industry, but it also soon became the greatest cement producing center of the U.S., producing, at its peak, 75% of the output of the country in 1897. Prior to this date, this nation imported most of its cement from Europe. Read more.

An NRMCA Associate Member since 1991

Construction activity around the world will grow by 70%, or $6.3 trillion, by 2025 and will account for 13.5% of world output, according to the Global Construction 2025 report from Global Construction Perspectives and Oxford Economics. Most of the construction will be in China, India and the U.S., although emerging Asian nations will also see some, according to this article.

"Self-healing concrete" may not yet be commercially viable, but various researchers developing these forms of concrete are hoping to reduce the carbon emissions produced by concrete plants around the world. In the United Kingdom, the development of bio-concrete using bacteria is being studied, while researchers in South Korea are creating a concrete coating that contains microcapsules that release sealant materials that react to sunlight and solidify to seal the cracks.

We bet you didn't know that the world's most versatile building material is actually quite chic. It seems that concrete is being "reinvented" by designers inspired by modernist architecture, to create anything from wallpapers to rugs and tables. All well and good, but the dog in the photo slideshow looks a bit skeptical on his new residence.

Two new houses in Victoria, British Columbia, incorporate different building methods to reduce heating costs. One of them is tilt-up concrete, where the author of this article finds out something you knew all along. Some of the best built, most modern, most energy efficient homes are built with concrete - in this case tilt-up.

This is the last week to register for the Design of Concrete Pavements online course to be held July 8 - 11 each day from noon to 1:30 p.m. Eastern time. This course provides an in-depth look at how to design and construct concrete streets and parking lots. Recommendations for concrete reinforcement, thickness and jointing designs will be provided. Construction techniques, inspection, testing, maintenance and repair are discussed. Additional detail will be provided on cost estimating, cost-benefit analysis and life cycle cost. In addition to details of conventional concrete streets and parking lots, this seminar will provide introductions to innovative products such as pervious concrete, concrete overlays and roller compacted concrete.

This course is intended for civil engineers, geotechnical engineers, public works officials and architects involved in the design and layout of concrete streets and parking areas. Concrete contractors and concrete producers will also benefit from the class. Participants who attend all sessions and successfully complete all quizzes will receive 6 Professional Development Hours.

NRMCA Senior National Resource Director Phil Kresge recently met with the sales team from NRMCA Producer member Silvi Concrete at its Fairless Hills, PA, headquarters. Kresge familiarized the group with NRMCA’s National Accounts promotion efforts and reviewed several of the resources available through NRMCA, including the Concrete Pavement Analyst (CPA) software and Design Assistance Program (DAP). Additionally, Kresge discussed the Life Cycle Assessment research conducted by the Concrete Sustainability Hub at MIT and he distributed copies of recent research briefs. He also provided copies of the new Guide to Concrete Overlays for Parking Lots, developed by the National Concrete Pavement Technology Center and the RMC Research & Education Foundation.

President and Co-Owner Laurence Silvi II encouraged his sales team to utilize NRMCA resources whenever possible to support its local efforts. Kresge’s involvement was facilitated by Toby Rich, Silvi’s vice president of sales and marketing. A division of the Silvi Group Companies, Silvi Concrete supplies ready mixed concrete throughout New Jersey and Southeastern Pennsylvania.

NRMCA’s Amanda Hult and Brian Killingsworth will host a free one hour Webinar on Monday, July 29, beginning at noon Eastern time for NRMCA member companies on NRMCA's Design Assistance Program (DAP) for parking lots and streets and local roads. This Webinar will detail the free services provided to these companies through the Design Assistance Program. The pavement engineers will discuss in detail the information provided in the deliverables as well as how to use this information as a part of the promotional effort. Case studies of successful projects will be showcased along with testimonials from individuals that have utilized the program. This Webinar is ideal for member company representatives that are involved in the promotion of concrete parking lots and streets and local roads. 

For more information, contact Amanda Hult at ahult@nrmca.org. Click here to register.

A 60-acre roller-compacted concrete (RCC) pavement, being built for an oil and gas exploration firm in  Victoria, TX, may prove to be the gateway project for RCC in the booming Eagle Ford Shale region. A June open house at Pioneer Natural Resources, organized by the Cement Council of Texas, attracted 70 attendees representing public agencies, consulting engineers, private facility owners and contractors. Rollcon LLC, the RCC contractor, showcased the pavement process, from pug mill mixing, to high-density paver placement, to compaction and curing.

The Pioneer facility is a pipe fabrication/supply yard servicing the Eagle Ford Shale Play in south Texas. The attendees were principally interested in RCC to build similar private facilities or to remediate state and local roads that have been destroyed by oil and gas activity. The Texas legislature recently appropriated $450 million for reconstruction of these roads and local stakeholders are seeking a durable, long-term pavement solution like RCC.

In a panel discussion, facility owner Pioneer noted that RCC offered lower initial cost and maintenance than the planned unsurfaced aggregate base for material storage/handling areas and asphalt pavement for employee parking. The elimination of dust control was a huge motivator and RCC could also take advantage of local aggregate supplies. The general contractor, Weaver & Jacobs, expressed surprise that construction of the concrete is taking considerably less time than the original pavement choices.

As the calendar turns to the second half of 2013, NRMCA's promotion-focused Webinar for July is scheduled for Thursday, July 18: Effectively Communicating Sustainability is an hour-long program that takes what you already know about concrete’s sustainability along with recently-released MIT research results and incorporates that information with a Communications 101 course, geared toward helping attendees understand what it takes to improve our communication skills.

Jeremy Gregory, an engineer who studies the economic and environmental implications of materials, their recycling and end-of-life recovery, has been named executive director of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, effective this past Monday, July 1. Gregory replaces Professor Hamlin Jennings, who is widely known for developing the first fully quantitative model of the nanostructure of the major component of hydrated cement.

Concrete is the most widely used building material on Earth. The production of cement - its basic building block at the nanoscale - accounts for about 5 percent of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions. The Concrete Sustainability Hub was established in 2009 with the goal of accelerating emerging breakthroughs in concrete science and swiftly transferring those research advances into industry.

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology news release. Read more.

Has your company adopted a "no tolerance" attitude toward occupational hearing loss? Has your company developed innovative approaches toward its prevention? If so, your organization may be a great candidate for a Safe-in-Sound Excellence in Hearing Loss Prevention Award™!

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2014 Safe-in-Sound™. The awards are given by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in partnership with the National Hearing Conservation Association to recognize excellence in hearing loss prevention. The deadline for self-nominations is Friday, September 6. The 2014 awards will be presented on March 14 at the 39th NHCA Annual Conference in Las Vegas.

For more information, visit www.safeinsound.us or by e-mail at info@safeinsound.us.

By request of the Ready Mixed Concrete Manufacturers Association (RMCMA) in India, NRMCA engineering staff Karthik Obla and Colin Lobo delivered a modified version of the NRMCA Technical Short Course in Mumbai, India, in June. The goal of RMCMA is to develop a personnel certification program that raises the bar for its members and the overall evolving ready mixed concrete industry in the Subcontinent. The principal members of RMCMA sent higher level technical personnel to the course. This group will determine the changes needed to the program to be consistent with Indian standards.

The course was delivered over four days with an examination on Day 5. With 20 attendees, 17 were successful in obtaining the first certification – NRMCA Concrete Technologist India. Obla and Lobo were also requested to present to the Mumbai Chapter of the Indian Concrete Institute on new developments in the U.S. Lobo presented on the evolution to performance-based specifications in the U.S. and Obla discussed pervious concrete technology as an adoptable technology in India considering the built infrastructure and water shortages. There were about 200 attendees at this event hosted by Ultratech Cement and the presentations were well received with continuing discussion and questions.

For more information, contact Colin Lobo at clobo@nrmca.org or Karthik Obla at kobla@nrmca.org.

NRMCA has launched International Concrete Sustainability Conference Online as a way to extend the reach of its popular conference of the same name. This new delivery offers unique distance learning opportunities on the latest advances, technical knowledge, continuing research, tools and solutions for sustainable concrete manufacturing and construction. This series of free monthly Webinars features world renowned speakers who presented at the International Concrete Sustainability Conference. Upcoming topics include:

 

•Thursday, July 18, noon - 1 p.m. Eastern time. Jacob Sobstyl, researcher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Urban Physics: City Texture Matters, Jacob Michael Sobstyl, Mohammad Javad Abdolhosseini Qomi, Benoit Coasne, Roland Pellenq and Franz-Josef Ulm.

 

•Thursday, August 15, noon - 1 p.m. Eastern time. Dr. Liv Haselbach, PhD, associate professor, Washington State University. Quasi-Steady-State Equilibrium Estimation of Concrete Pavement CO2 Sequestration, Liv Haselbach, Robby Borden and Mylene Gueneron.

•Thursday, September 19, noon - 1 p.m. Eastern time. Dr. Lisa Bradley, PhD, vice president and senior toxicologist/risk asssessor, AECOM. Coal Ash Material Safety - A Health Risk-Based Evaluation of USGS Coal Ash Data from Five US Power Plants, Lisa Bradley.

 

Future topics and dates will be announced soon.

The Maryland Ready Mix Concrete Association, the Maryland Transportation Builders & Materials Association and the Maryland Asphalt Association held a joint conference late last month in Cambridge, MD, titled "Building Maryland Together." The program included a variety of educational, technical, political and industry related seminars as well as a discussion of the economic forecast for the state. NRMCA’s Lionel Lemay and Brian Killingsworth spoke at the conference on topics related to concrete sustainability.

Lemay took audience members through the maze of terminology and development steps for Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). EPDs are third-party verified (certified) reports published by product manufacturers that provide quality assured and comparable information regarding environmental performance of their products. EPDs are starting to appear in the U.S.; the upcoming LEED v4 Rating System and Architecture 2030 Challenge for Products is starting the demand for them. Lemay answered several questions from the audience regarding how EPDs may change the landscape, in a positive way, for concrete products when compared to other building material’s environmental footprint.

Killingsworth updated the activities of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub), specifically addressing utilizing data input variability for assessing risk associated with environmental and economic decisions for both concrete buildings and pavements, among other topics. After completing the overview of work that MIT has conducted, NRMCA Chairman Bill Childs of Chaney Enterprises, Gambrills, MD, discussed how results from MIT have been used to directly affect the concrete paving market in Maryland.

For more information about EPDs or implementing the results from the MIT CSHub, contact NRMCA’s Brian Killingsworth at bkillingsworth@nrmca.org or 830-438-2690.

Lionel Lemay and Brian Killingsworth of NRMCA presented last week at the sixth annual Building Green with Concrete Workshop in Gainesville sponsored by the Northern Virginia Concrete Advisory Council (NVCAC) and Wetland Studies and Solutions, Inc. Organized by Hessam Nabavi of NVCAC, the event attracts nearly 100 decision makers each year. This year’s topics included:

• Methods, impacts and opportunities in the concrete building life cycle (NRMCA)

• Paving 101- concrete vs. asphalt 

• Revitalizing existing asphalt pavements with concrete overlays (whitetopping) 

• The architectural potential of tilt wall design - sustainability and voluminous wall - concrete skins and meaning 

• Effect of paving materials on building energy use and fuel consumption (NRMCA)

Other speakers included Andrew Pinneke of Lafarge USA, Construction and Building Specialist Lori Tiefenthaler of Lehigh Hanson, Inc., and Jeffrey Brown of Powers Brown Architecture. The NRMCA presentations included results of MIT research. A panel discussion was moderated by NRMCA’s Phil Kresge.

NRMCA professionals are available to speak at events like this organized by NRMCA state affiliates or members. For more information ,contact NRMCA's Lionel Lemay at LLemay@nrmca.org or 847-918-7101.

NRMCA’s Lionel Lemay, senior vice president of sustainability, provided an industry update to members of the Oregon Concrete and Aggregate Producers Association during its annual meeting last week in Redmond, OR. Lemay presented on overview of NRMCA programs and focused on developments in the areas of sustainability, resilience and concrete pavements. Other topics on the program from other industry experts included MSHA updates, health care reform and new Oregon Department of Transportation safety rules.

NRMCA professionals are available for speaking engagements at industry meetings on a wide range of topics. For more information, contact NRMCA's Lionel Lemay at LLemay@nrmca.org or 847-918-7101.

Media articles on Congress, transportation infrastructure, regulation, taxes and other subjects, each of which relate to the ready mixed concrete industry, are updated each week by NRMCA's Government Affairs staff. To access the most recent compilation of articles for the Week of June 24 - 28, please click here.

NRMCA's July Internet Spotlight, good through Tuesday, August 6, is the Hot Weather Package. Now that the hot weather is here, help front line staff brush up on tips to help make the job go easier and get better results with a DVD copy of the How to Keep It Cool: a driver training video that offers tips for placing concrete during hot weather; and 50 copies of the two page Concrete In Practice, Topic #12 Hot Weather Concreting. Each is an easy to understand, informative and comprehensive source of timely and important information.

July 8-11, Online Course

Design of Concrete Pavements

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154

 

July 15–19, Skokie, IL

2013 Professors Workshop: Teaching Buildings, Bridges, Materials, and Pavements

Email: Lionel Lemay, 847-918-7101

 

July 18, Free Webinar

Urban Physics: City Texture Matters

Email: Lionel Lemay, 847-918-7101

 

July 18, Webinar

Effectively Communicating Sustainability

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154

 

July 30, Webinar

Behind the Wood First Initiatives 

Email: Tien Peng, 206-913-8535

 

August 11-15, Montreal

ISARC 2013: 30th International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction, Mining & Petroleum Industries

Email: Chantal Murphy, 514-939-2710, ext. 1309

 

August 12-15 Online Course

Pervious Concrete: A Stormwater Solution

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154

 

August 13-16, Silver Spring, MD 

Plant Manager Certification Course

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154

 

August 15, Free Webinar

Quasi-Steady-State Equilibrium Estimation of Concrete Pavement CO2 Sequestration

Email: Lionel Lemay, 847-918-7101

 

August 22, Webinar

Effectively Communicating Sustainability

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154

 

August 27, Webinar 

Concrete Pavement Jointing Plans

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154

 

August 27-29, San Jose, CA

Concrete Durability Course

Email: Jessica Walgenbach, 888-84-NRMCA, x1152

 

August 30, Webinar

ACI 330 R-08 – The Gold Standard of Concrete Parking Lot Design

Email: Jessica Walgenbach, 888-84-NRMCA, x1152

 

September 12, Webinar

Effectively Communicating Sustainability

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154

 

September 19, Free Webinar

Coal Ash Material Safety—A Health Risk-Based Evaluation of USGS Coal Ash Data from Five US Power Plants

Email: Lionel Lemay, 847-918-7101

 

September 22-24, Las Vegas

ConcreteWorks & Board of Directors' Meeting

Email: Jessica Walgenbach, 888-84-NRMCA, x1152

 

October 1-4, Silver Spring, MD

CCSP I: Introduction to Concrete Fundamentals—Concrete 101

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154

 

November 8, Webinar

ACI 330 R-08 – The Gold Standard of Concrete Parking Lot Design

Email: Jessica Walgenbach, 888-84-NRMCA, x1152

 

November 19-21, Silver Spring, MD

The Effective RMC Supervisor Course

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154

 

December 3-5, Silver Spring, MD

CCSP II: Customer Business Knowledge

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154

 

December 4-6, Orlando, FL

Environmental Professional Certification Course

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154

 

December 10-13, Orlando, FL 

Plant Manager Certification Course

Email: Shawnita Dickens, 888-84-NRMCA, x1154