NRMCA's celebration of the 100th anniversary of ready mixed concrete in the U.S. concludes its submissions for September with another Producer and Associate member - see below for their respective Web site links. This week's industry milestone: The Kelly ball test, measuring the consistency of fresh concrete, was developed at the University of California - Berkeley in 1956.

Elmer’s, Inc. - In 1956, Elmer Schaub and his wife, Edna, opened "Conservation Ponds," digging conservation ponds with a dragline crane. Soon after he dug his first pond, he noticed that he needed to level off the "spoil" created by the pond digging, so he purchased a D-4 Cat bulldozer. His wife named the company "ELMER'S CRANE AND DOZER," a name that still holds true today. Elmer Schaub ran the business until 1977 when he decided to retire and offered Russell "Butch" Broad the chance to buy the business. Read more.

An NRMCA Producer member since 2004

Buckeye Technologies Inc. - Buckeye was established in the early 1900's as the Buckeye Cottonseed Oil Company, a cottonseed crushing division of Procter and Gamble. The name dates to those early years and P&G's original headquarters in the Buckeye State of Ohio. Today, headquartered in Memphis, TN, Buckeye Technologies has six manufacturing sites, approaching $1 billion in sales. Here is a timeline of important events in company history.

An NRMCA Associate member since 2004

Urban mining is increasingly being taken seriously by industry because it gives access to materials that are buried in waste tips and landfills. However, there is a new kid on the block - literally. Concrete buildings, when demolished, can serve as an excellent source of new building materials. "Instead of transporting aggregates from far away, we can use local buildings as a source for aggregates," says Francesco Di Maio, a researcher in waste separation and recycling technology at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands.

NRMCA Producer member Central Concrete Supply Company, San Jose, CA, will supply low-CO2 concrete mixes for the San Jose Earthquakes Stadium. The stadium will be the new home for San Jose’s Major League Soccer team, the San Jose Earthquakes. The company will be supplying an estimated 12,000 cubic yards of its concrete, including low CO2 mixes, for the stadium’s foundations and walls, interior and exterior slabs, and other applications. Central Concrete’s low-CO2 mixes significantly cut the portland cement content of the concrete mix (a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions) and will result in an estimated net savings of one million pounds in CO2 emissions from embodied carbon, compared to traditional concrete mixes.

Source: Company news release.

The U.S. is the third largest consumer of concrete in the world, behind India and China. It's a simple mix of water, sand, aggregate, sometimes small amounts of additives or air, and typically 10 to 15% cement. One of the waste streams that results from this production is empty cement bags. In the U.S., that waste amounts to 39 million empty bags per year. Concrete Mode is a small craft company that has found a way to repurpose some of those bags.

The MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) is focused on Building for LIFE through life cycle thinking, innovation, fiscal responsibility and environmental leadership, reports NRMCA Vice President, Pavement Structures Brian Killingsworth who attended last week's MIT CSHub Showcase held on the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA. During the event, participants were updated by students and researchers on the latest research from the concrete science, buildings and pavements groups through a poster session and other interactive breakouts. At the poster session, participants were able to engage MIT researchers on nearly 20 topics in a one-on-one setting, allowing for Q&A and a deeper understanding of how the research may impact the attendees in their business.

The following day participants heard a keynote address from former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood who called for a "big bold vision" for infrastructure and transportation in America that would bring the country back to number one again by improving roads and bridges. LaHood believed that this can be accomplished by utilizing all funding mechanisms available, including raising the gas tax and indexing to inflation.

The final sessions allowed participants to choose their area of interest and attend a breakout session either on concrete science, buildings or pavements. Killingsworth attended the session on life cycle assessment and economics related to pavement. At this breakout session, attendees discussed, among other things, how MIT will implement the environmental life cycle assessment research that has been conducted, specifically focusing on the pavement-vehicle interaction model improvements. With the latest version of this model, the speed of the vehicle and the visco-elastic effects of paving materials are incorporated, which significantly improves the ability of the model to predict the fuel consumption differences for a vehicle traveling on various pavement surfaces.

New York Concrete Promotion Council Executive Director Greg Novitzki recently discussed with NRMCA Senior Director, National Resources Doug O'Neill a pervious concrete project for a place of worship that sought a solution for its stormwater management issues. "The story of how this meeting came about is an example of how our promotion partnerships are supposed to work," Novitzki said.

 

It started with New Jersey-based Ken Justice, promotion director for the Portland Cement Association's Northeast region and a pervious concrete expert, calling Novitzki to discuss a project. Novitzki followed up with the engineer who called him about the project and learned that the project's owners had worked with pervious concrete successfully in the past, but needed help to convince them of its durability. With the help of Jerry Keahon of NRMCA Producer member Eastern Concrete and their admixture representative Mike Allen with BASF, Novitzki and his team were able to convince the owners' representative and general contractor that a pervious parking lot the engineer had designed for them would work in the often harsh Northeast environment. As a result, the producer is working on touring projects with them this week so they will know that they are not "the first" to try pervious.

At about that same time, O’Neill received a call from the engineer looking to submit the project assistance under Design Assistance Program (DAP) on this project since he’d had good results with a previous submission last year in Connecticut. O’Neill then spoke with his frequent promotion collaborator Jim Langlois at the Connecticut Concrete Promotion Council who had referred the engineer to NRMCA. Langlois explained the project was actually located in New York, but made suggestions on potential contractors being considered for the project. O’Neill then made the call to Novitzki to discuss the DAP submission. The DAP is now being processed; it also includes the option of using conventional concrete where there had been asphalt proposed.

"Seems that everyone had some input/contact with one or more of the players in this project which helped spread the feeling of confidence to our owner and his representative," Novitzki said. "It is a truly great example of how promotion works. We didn’t have any territory fights, nor procedural disagreements, nor grandstanding, nor ego problems. When we met on site last Friday, behind us we had experts from New Jersey, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania along with national representation from PCA Northeast, BASF and NRMCA. That’s power in promotion!"

For more information, contact Doug O'Neill at doneill@nrmca.org.

Concrete overlay applications for streets, local roads and parking lots were featured topics delivered by NRMCA Vice President, National Resources Jon Hansen at the recent Concrete Council of St Louis annual Professional Engineers Seminar. Over 80 engineers from the Missouri Department of Transportation, consulting firms, city public works, county agencies and contractors attended the event. Hansen’s presentation ended with a segment on the NRMCA Design Assistance Program (DAP) and how attendees could tap into using this service.

For more information, contact Jon Hansen at jhansen@nrmca.org.

NRMCA is now offering a new and valuable analytical tool – monthly real-time reporting of key metrics. This new reporting process will allow your organization to make key financial and operational decisions based on information that is provided by you and other NRMCA members in real-time on a monthly basis. The information you provide will be aggregated with all other respondents, normalized for monthly comparative analysis and reported to you within days of your submission. It will help you build a database of key information that will become more valuable over time.

The new reporting process includes four key metrics:

• Total cubic yards of ready mix produced during the reporting month;
• Average selling price per cubic yard of concrete during the reporting month;
• Total materials cost per cubic yard of concrete during the reporting month; and
• Total licensed and insured ready mix trucks during the reporting month.

NRMCA may add to these four key metrics as organizations begin to appreciate them, come to rely on their value and seek even more information. Information you submit is sent directly to an outside certified public accounting firm to ensure that confidentiality of your data is maintained.

For more information, contact NRMCA's Michael Olivarri at molivarri@nrmca.org or 301-587-1400, ext. 1130.

The Fall edition of NRMCA's quarterly magazine, Concrete InFocus, has a number of timely and informative articles available only online, including this article by NRMCA Vice President, National Resources John Hansen in the Corporate Suite section titled Maybe It's Time to Adopt, which details the vital importance of contractors to ready mix producers. Look for more highlights of online articles in upcoming editions of E-NEWS.

Last week, the RMC Research & Education Foundation held a highly-successful Walk for Wellness, raising $5,000 from walkers, walker supporters, sponsors and those who chose to "Sleep In" for the Foundation instead of rising early to participate in the 5K, early-morning Walk.

We thank all those who helped to make this event such a success. We would particularly like to thank Bill Roy and Nicole Maher for raising additional funds for their efforts. We would also like to thank the event sponsors: Sysdyne Corporation for its water bottle sponsorship, BASF Corp. and Command Alkon for their pre-walk coffee sponsorships and Ozinga Bros. for its general sponsorship.

For more information about the RMC Research & Education Foundation, please click here.

The American Concrete Pavement Association in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area is seeking a director of engineering with industry advocacy and business development experience. The position is primarily focused on working with the Maryland DOT and getting it to realize that concrete's 2% market share is costing them millions. From the job description... "Successful performance in this position will be measured by the increase in the market share of concrete pavements in the highway, airport, military and streets & local roads markets."

A full description and contact information is linked from Steven Tripp of NRMCA Producer member Chaney Enterprises and can be found here.

Concrete mixer truck driver Jason Nelson from Cleveland, MS, earned top honors at this year’s NRMCA National Mixer Driver Championship. The event was held last week at Red Rock Casino resort outside Las Vegas in conjunction with NRMCA’s ConcreteWorks. Nelson of NRMCA Producer member MMC Materials also earned the champion’s check of $2,500. Nelson has been driving a ready mixed concrete truck for MMC Materials, Inc. for 10 years. He is an NRMCA Certified Concrete Delivery Professional, a MMC Materials driver trainer and currently drives a Mack Granite truck with a Beck rear discharge mixer. He is the 2012 winner and 2013 runner-up of the MMC/Bayou Concrete Annual Truck Rodeo.

Now in its eighth year, this year’s national contest "was an extremely close competition," according to NRMCA’s Senior Vice President of Operations and Compliance Gary Mullings. Forty drivers, which included state rodeo champions as well as NRMCA member company champions from around the nation, competed to be the "Best of the Best". The champion was selected based on a cumulative score derived from competitions that included a driving challenge course, visual vehicle inspection, reaction-time-test, delivery ticket station and two-hour written examination. Awards were presented for the top three finishers, with all other drivers tied for fourth (see www.nrmca.org to view a video of this year's event).

Second place and a check for $1,000 went to Billy Byrd of Wanatah, IN, and NRMCA Producer member VCNA Prairie Material in Bridgeville, IL. He has driven for the company for 12 years, currently driving an Advance quad-axle truck with a front discharge Phoenix mixer. Billy is the reigning two-time champion of the Prairie Material Driver Rodeo. Third place and a check for $500 went to Todd Brown of Grinnell, IA. He has been driving for NRMCA Producer member Manatts, Inc. for 13 years and is currently driving a Western Star, five axle truck with a McNeilus rear discharge mixer. Brown is an NRMCA Certified Delivery Professional and is the reigning three-time Manatts Inc. Company Rodeo Champion.

Also honored at the awards dinner were drivers who distinguished themselves at various stages of the competition. The top scorer of the "Closest to the Egg" station was Harvey Harmon, Concrete Supply Company, Charlotte, NC. Tied for the top score at the Delivery Ticket Station were Chris Harrison, Mobley Concrete, Russellville, AR; Todd Brown, Manatts Inc., Newton, IA; Elvis Reyes, Ferrara Bros. Building Materials, Brooklyn, NY; Jay Seevers, Shelly Company, Marietta, OH and Mark Hall, CalPortland, Las Vegas.

The popular bowling station returned to the competition for the second year. Scoring a spare was Eddie Rieper, Eastern Concrete Materials (a US Concrete Company) and scoring a strike was Todd Brown, Manatts Inc. Newton, IA. Drivers were also tested to determine who had the fastest reaction time in trough computerized testing. The title of "Fastest in the Nation" went to Arthur Johnson, Argos Ready Mix, Southlake, TX. The highest score on the written exam title "Smartest Boy in the Room" went to Eric Brood, CalPortland, Portland, OR. Finally, taking the top spot on the Driving Challenge Course by outscoring all others was the eventual champion Jason Nelson, MMC Materials, Cleveland, MS.

For more information, contact NRMCA's Gary Mullings at gmullings@nrmca.org or 301-587-1400, ext. 1161.

The NRMCA Sustainability Committee met just before the NRMCA Board of Directors meeting last week outside Las Vegas to address opportunities and challenges facing the concrete industry. Key initiatives undertaken by the committee include:

• NRMCA has submitted a pilot credit on resilient design that would provide design teams with points for designing and building to resiliency and durability requirements. 

• NRMCA is now an EPD Program Operator in order to assist its members meet new reporting requirements in LEED v4 and has verified its first concrete EPD with others in the process.

• A proposal to the RMC Research & Education Foundation to develop an Industry Average EPD and industry baselines in order to increase concrete’s competitiveness in LEED v4.

• A motion that directs NRMCA to promote the NRMCA Sustainable Concrete Plant Certification program as a responsible sourcing scheme in LEED v4 was unanimously approved by the Board.

• NRMCA is soliciting proposals to develop a guide to meeting the Materials Ingredient disclosure requirements in LEED v4.

State and Local Advocacy:

• Model legislation that would require insurance companies to provided insurance rate discounts to building and home owners who build to FORTIFIED standards.

• Model legislation that would require states and local jurisdictions to adopt life cycle cost analysis when contemplating investment in transportation infrastructure.

• A guide to streets and local roads that could be adopted by state departments of transportation as a guide for local jurisdictions.

• Model legislation that would require state and local jurisdictions to consider environmental life cycle assessment when considering investment in infrastructure projects.

• Strategies and tools to combat the Wood First initiative that proposes to legislate the use of wood in state funded projects essentially circumventing the free market system.

This is an exceptional year for NRMCA’s Government Affairs program because for the first time, two outstanding champions have been presented the 2012 Grassroots Activists of the Year Award for advancing our industry’s advocacy initiatives. This year’s award was presented last week during NRMCA's ConcreteWorks outside Las Vegas to Bill Childs, CEO, Chaney Enterprises, Gambrills, MD, and John Carew, Carew Concrete, Appleton, WI, for their outstanding participation in NRMCA’s Government Affairs, CONCRETEPAC and grassroots programs.

Mr. Childs has repeatedly demonstrated his commitment to the success of NRMCA’s advocacy initiatives by regularly attending and participating in meetings, conference calls and Webinars.  He frequently travels to Washington, DC, to participate in Capitol Hill meetings as well as represent the ready mixed concrete industry during the Transportation Construction Coalition Fly-In. Most notably, he and his team at Chaney Enterprises encouraged their employees, customers and vendors to attend the annual RALLY for ROADS of which NRMCA is a primary organizer.

Mr. Carew has also repeatedly demonstrated his commitment to the success of NRMCA’s advocacy program by regularly attending and participating in meetings, conference calls and Webinars. He has conducted countless plant tours with his Members of Congress and regularly engages in grassroots alerts sent by NRMCA Government Affairs staff. Most notably, Mr. Carew provided a great service to the industry while testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Education and the Workforce regarding "Rushing Union Elections: Protecting the Interests of Big Labor at the Expense of Workers’ Free Choice."

Congratulation goes to Niel Poulsen, regional vice president and general manager, US Concrete, for winning the CONCRETEPAC Apple iPad with Retina Display 128 GB Wi-Fi + Cellular door prize during NRMCA’s ConcreteWorks held last week at the Red Rock Casino outside Las Vegas. CONCRETEPAC is the ready mixed concrete industry’s leading Political Action Committee that supports federal candidates running for election who will champion a pro-ready mixed concrete, pro-business legislative agenda. We thank all our supporters and sponsors of CONCRETEPAC events during the meeting.

The October 2013 issue of Concrete Capitol Connection is now available online, with updates on legislation, regulation and case law from the previous month. If you would like to receive this monthly newsletter in a separate e-mail, or if you have questions or comments, please contact NRMCA’s Kevin Walgenbach at kwalgenbach@nrmca.org.

NRMCA’s Educational Activities Committee (EAC) met last week at ConcreteWorks outside Las Vegas. Minutes from the meeting are available on the EAC’s Web site, including new, short driver training lessons and revisions in the Certified Concrete Sales Professional (CCSP) program. Additionally, EAC will offer a Webinar on how to select staff for training programs.

If you or someone on your staff would enjoy contributing your insight to help with the Webinar, CCSP revision and other issues, please contact EAC liaison Eileen Dickson at edickson@nrmca.org or 240-485-1164.

As the industry begins to see light at the end of the tunnel, now is the best time for sales reps to really concentrate on mastering how their customers' businesses work. No rock should be left unturned for possible quick orders or to tactically plan for 2014. To help, NRMCA will offer a hands-on, updated workshop, CCSP Module II, Understanding Your Concrete Contractor's Business, December 3-5 in Silver Spring, MD, at the RMC Research & Education Foundation Center.

Topics tie directly into what a sales rep should know that impacts business, including learning about contactors’ estimating methods, bidding, design, procurement, project planning and scheduling. Those that pass the optional exam receive credit toward CCSP Module II certification (please note that this is a required class for STEPS recognition).

 

NRMCA's October Internet Spotlight, good through Tuesday, November 5, is the new Hazard Communication for the Ready Mixed Concrete Industry Guide.  The new Hazard Communication Standards (HCS) from OSHA requires chemical manufacturers, distributors or importers (including ready mixed concrete producers) to make adjustments to their Hazard Communication Plan; NRMCA wants to make sure our members are ready for these new OSHA requirements taking effect on Sunday, December 1. As another vital addition to the NRMCA Safety Series, this CD-based PowerPoint training guide provides the ready mixed concrete producer with the tools to train employees on OSHA's new Hazard Communication Standard changes.

*Please note that e-mail and direct links to each event listed below can be accessed from NRMCA's Web site.