NRMCA's celebration of the 100th anniversary of ready mixed concrete in the U.S. continues its submissions for December - see below for this week's Producer and Associate member Web site links. This week's industry milestone: In 1992, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville developed concrete kits for elementary schools to demonstrate the science of concrete and to introduce basic engineering principles.

Rohrer’s Quarry Inc. - Thomas H. Erb opened a limekiln on his farm just southwest of Lititz, PA, in the middle of rich deposits of limestone. This site remains the location of what is now Rohrer’s Quarry. Many kilns served Lancaster County, which was almost entirely agricultural at that time. They supplied farmers with lime for their fields and whitewash for their barns and fences. There were no paved roads or buildings constructed of concrete at that time. These two developments will eventually change the operation’s focus. Limestone was quarried by hand from a small pit and loaded into the kiln’s funnel-shaped interior alternated with layers of wood. The contents were burned for one to three weeks and then left to smolder. When cooled, the white, soft chunks of lime could be removed and pulverized for spreading on neighboring farms. Read more.

An NRMCA producer member since 2009

Marcotte Systems - Marcotte Systems was founded in 1975 in Alberta, Canada, by Denis Marcotte. The construction industry was booming and the company established its foothold in programming and optimization of industrial process control for ready mixed concrete. Read more.

An NRMCA Associate Member since 2000

As roller-compacted concrete (RCC) inexorably penetrates existing asphalt pavement markets, research into its composition and performance is ramping up as specifications are being fine-tuned by ASTM. Up to the past decade, RCC mixes principally were used in a variety of heavy-duty applications such as logging yards, loading docks, intermodal port facilities, large parking areas and dams. But as highway agencies and contractors followed in the wake of early adopters, it has started to move into pavements in the past 10 years.

"Roller-compacted concrete is gaining popularity as a paving alternative for a number of roadway applications," says Stacy G. Williams, Ph.D., P.E., research associate professor in Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville.

After losing all their possessions in the tornadoes that struck Oklahoma this past May, a Moore, OK, couple has decided to build their new home with concrete. "Cost was a factor," said Jasper Warden. "I had to find out how much extra was this going to cost. Really, for safety, it’s negligible. Almost nothing." Warden, who works for NRMCA Producer member Dolese Bros. in Oklahoma City, said he and his wife, Amanda, did their research before starting construction. The shell of the home costs about 15 percent more than traditional construction. However, heat and air units cost about 50-percent less because the home is so energy-efficient. After construction, utility bills are 40 to 60 percent smaller each month than bills in an average home.

A Michigan man's bad driving decision caused $40,000 in damage to a city road. The driver ignored warning signs and drove onto wet pavement where a major construction project was going on. The incident in Holland, MI, delayed the project for a week and left a $40,000 bill for the man's insurance company to pay. The city attorney says the driver initially faced potential criminal charges because of a city ordinance that makes it illegal to drive on wet pavement, but those charges were dropped and the city focused on getting its money back.

In pursuit of concrete as the design of choice, the Kentucky Ready-Mixed Concrete Association (KRMCA) and the Kentucky Concrete Pavement Association (KCPA) recently invited NRMCA Vice President, National Resources, Amy Miller to speak to QK4, a design firm headquartered in Louisville. KRMCA/KCPA had recently met with a client of QK4 regarding a large planned project. The client was very interested in hearing about all the benefits of concrete and felt the presented message was so strong, it insisted KRMCA/KCPA meet with QK4 to discuss design. Miller spoke to the firm about designing concrete parking lots the right way and also discussed why engineers should always be including a concrete section for the entire pavement.

"Designers leave the decision to owners who aren’t always informed on the immediate and long-term benefits of bidding and owning a complete concrete section," Miller said. "As representatives of the owner’s best interests, designers should always include concrete designed appropriately. An appropriate design includes not only a proper concrete thickness, but also addresses the details of a concrete section that are often poorly designed and make concrete less economically viable. QK4 received the message loud and clear and were appreciative of a new perspective to their thought process of forging through the pavement design process with an owner."

QK4 is headquartered in Louisville. It started in 1974 and now maintains offices in Frankfort, KY; New Albany, IN; Atlanta and Bristol, TN.

For more information, contact Amy Miller at amiller@nrmca.org.

NRMCA Producer member Silvi Concrete of Fairless Hills, PA, has been able to convert and deliver more than 20,000 cubic yards and 1 million square feet of concrete pavement over the past six months. Zach Rich, Silvi Concrete’s New Jersey regional sales manager, provided one example of the company's success: Silvi approached the owner of Campbell Freight which was building an 80,000 square foot facility in South Brunswick, NJ, along the busy corridor of the New Jersey Turnpike. Silvi wanted to help put together a concrete parking lot bid package that would compete against the asphalt lot Campbell Freight specified. The building was design/build, so it allowed for value engineering as the project progressed. Campbell Freight wanted the best product it could get for its money. Campbell absolutely wanted concrete, but thought it wasn’t financially feasible, Rich said.

The Concrete Industry Management's (CIM) ninth annual fundraising auction will be held at the World of Concrete on Wednesday, January 22, at the Las Vegas Convention Center in the North Hall Room N262. The silent auction will be held from 11 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. and the live auction begins at 1 p.m. Internet bidding will again be available on the Ritchie Bros. Web site. To participate in the Auction, bidders must register one week in advance.

The signature item for their ninth annual auction at World of Concrete is a Mack Granite® Axle Forward model mounted with a McNeilus 11-cubic-yard Bridgemaster® concrete transit mixer, donated by Mack Trucks, Inc. and McNeilus Co., a Division of Oshkosh Truck. 

 

"The truck chassis donated by Mack Trucks and the concrete mixer donated by McNeilus Company is the strong foundation we need to help ensure a successful CIM Auction at the 2014 World of Concrete," said Mike Philipps, CIM Auction Committee Chairman. "We are very appreciative that, over the past many years, these two industry leading manufacturers have collaborated on a significant donation to our auction. It speaks volumes of their commitment to the concrete industry and the importance they place on the CIM program."

 

There is a call for papers for the International Symposium on Pavement PCA (Pavement LCA 2014) taking place on October 14-16, 2014. This TRB and FHWA-sponsored workshop, hosted by the University of California, Davis, and the University of California, Berkeley, will focus on the implementation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for pavements. The workshop will be coordinated with activities of the FWHA Sustainable Pavement Technical Working Group. The workshop subject is implementation of LCA in pavement operations, at network and project levels. The purpose of the workshop is to review current status, identify the extent of consensus and discuss future developments for implementation of pavement LCA in North America. This workshop will be a follow up to the 2010 Pavement LCA workshop held at UC Davis and the 2012 RILEM meeting on LCA for pavement materials held in Nantes, France.

Please note that there is a particular interest on the part of the Young Professionals Committee. Those who will be 35 and younger at the time of the conference are encouraged to submit a paper. A cash prize will be awarded to the best paper submitted by a young professional.

Last week, NRMCA’s 2013 Environmental Certification Course was held in Orlando, FL, with 22 attendees. Course attendees were educated on industry-specific environmental issues that affect ready mixed concrete production, including the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, discharge permits, stormwater management, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, solids management, hazardous materials, dust control, recycling, spill prevention plans, air quality management, noise management and environmental auditing.

Because this week's NRMCA Plant Manager Certification class in Orlando sold out, NRMCA has scheduled an extra class to be held March 25-28, 2014 in Oklahoma City. Registration will open for that class later this month. Until then, NRMCA will establish a list of names for the March class.

NRMCA’s annual Dispatcher Forum Workshop will be held February 18-20, 2014 in Silver Spring, MD, (metro Washington, DC) at the RMC Research & Education Foundation Center. The seminar includes concrete technical topics as they relate to the dispatcher's job, the latest update on drivers' hours of service regulations, scheduling, order taking and customer service-phone skill building exercises. Special care is taken to address dispatchers’ challenges in today’s difficult environment.

Transex Concrete, a ready mixed concrete company located in Chile, has become the second concrete company in the world to produce a third-party verified Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for concrete using the Carbon Leadership Forum Product Category Rule (PCR) for concrete. The announcement was made in November during the 19th Chilean Conference on Sustainable Concrete in Santiago. The voluntary declaration provides quantified environmental impacts for 120 different concrete products manufactured by Transex at three different plants in the greater Santiago metropolitan region. The EPD was verified under the DAPCO EPD Program in Chile. This follows the first EPD published last April by San Francisco Bay Area-based and NRMCA Producer member Central Concrete, a U.S. Concrete Company, in which it declared nearly 1,500 concrete products manufactured at eight concrete plants. The Central Concrete EPD was third-party verified under NRMCA' EPD Program.

Environmental Product Declarations, or EPDs for short, are third-party verified reports published by product manufacturers that provide information regarding the environmental impacts of their products, including global warming potential, smog formation potential and ozone depletion potential, among others. They are intended to assist specifiers, purchasers and users of products to compare environmental impacts of different products. EPDs are developed in accordance with strict international standards that include a transparent verification process through an EPD Program Operator. To produce an EPD, a company must perform a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on its product and report the results in the EPD. The LCA and EPD are conducted under the strict guidance of a Product Category Rule, most often abbreviated as PCR. The PCR for concrete, published in November 2012, was developed by the Carbon Leadership Forum, an industry-academic collaborative research effort hosted by the University of Washington’s College of Built Environment.

More details about EPDs and links to the Central Concrete and Transex EPDs can be found on NRMCA’s EPD Web site. For more information, contact NRMCA's Lionel Lemay at LLemay@nrmca.org or 847-918-7101.

Last week, Tien Peng, NRMCA vice president of sustainability, presented "Concrete Building Systems: Disaster Resilient Solutions" at the 2013 American Institute of Architects' (AIA) New York Chapter Procrastinator Days. The AIA conference allows architects to obtain continuing education credits while allowing sponsors the opportunity to deliver up-to-date topics. The Resiliency Track also featured sessions by NRMCA Associate member BASF Corporation, Hycrete and the Brick Industry Association. Approximately 80 architects and design professionals attended the conference at the AIA-NY office in New York City. With New York and New Jersey is in the mist of rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy, the AIA-NY's Committee on Design for Risk and Reconstruction (DfRR) sought a few select speakers who share a commitment to mitigating and adapting to natural and man-made disasters through the thoughtful design of the built environment.

NRMCA encourages its members to participate in local professional groups, such as AIA, ASCE or USGBC local chapters, and offer topics and speakers for education programs. For those who feel comfortable presenting, NRMCA also has a number of prescribed presentations ranging from specifying sustainable concrete to LCA of concrete structures. For the most complex topics, NRMCA can also provide technical staff to present at local events.

NRMCA has long advocated for increased stringency of building codes as a strategy for disaster resilience. Now, the New York City Council recently approved building requirements based on changes suggested by a task force formed after Hurricane Sandy. New residential projects are required to comply immediately with the building codes and existing structures will be given eight years to do so.
 

The following are some changes in the NYC Administrative Code that directly affect material decisions for adopted or proposed construction projects:

• Law 82/2013 directs the NYC Department of Buildings to create a flood protection manual;

• Introductory Number 1056 will update the reference for flood-damage resistant interior and exterior finishes, as well other building materials;

• Introductory Number 1088 requires a study and pilot program on use of permeable materials on roadways and sidewalks;

• Introductory Number 1090-A requires a a study on the effects of wind on existing buildings;

• Introductory Number 1095-A requires the creation of a manual on flood construction and protection standards; and

• Introductory Number 1087 (proposed) requires roof coverings shall have: (1) a minimum initial solar reflectance of 0.7 or (2) a minimum SRI of 78.

Building codes are effective for reducing disaster risk. Building codes sets standards that guide the construction of new buildings and, in some cases, the rehabilitation of existing structures. Instead of setting minimum construction standards for life safety, these "code-plus" updates increase the functionality of structures after a hazard event.