NRMCA e-news

National Ready Mixed Concrete Association

PAVEMENTS

Taxpayers, Agencies and Concrete Industry Benefit Through "Competition Paves"

State and local officials are under great pressure to demonstrate good stewardship of roadway infrastructure investments. PCA, ACPA and NRMCA have worked together with member support to put in place an ongoing program for the benefit of public officials, taxpayers and the traveling public to help move pavement selection guidelines in a direction that enhances competition. States, counties and municipalities can expect to see an increasing "bang for the buck" as market share moves away from dominance by a single paving material. The three national associations have collaborated to create an ongoing "Competition Paves" campaign, including a Web site with many articles and documents. Also available are a variety of support materials on the benefits of increased competition to carry the message to specifiers.

For more information on support for paving material competition, contact Glenn Ochsenreiter at glenn@nrmca.org.

Variety of Topics to be Featured During "What Works" Session at ConcreteWorks

Each year at ConcreteWorks, the promotion staff invites industry promotion partners to share their ideas and concepts of "What Works" for them in their regions. "It’s always a fast-paced, interesting session that provides promoters a glimpse into what’s working for other promoters out in the marketplace," said NRMCA Senior Director, Local Paving, Doug O’Neill. Similar to a TED Talk, each speaker at "What Works" is given just a few minutes to share a particular promotional effort which in some cases has inspired other promoters to duplicate the endeavor in their home region. "Why re-invent the wheel, when someone has already thought out the details of a particular promotion campaign." O’Neill said.

This year’s lineup includes Dan Degraaf with the Michigan Concrete Association speaking on an unconventional approach to workforce development; Finley Messick and Brett Ruffing with the Kentucky Ready-Mixed Concrete Association who will share details of their aggressive marketing and advertising campaign entitled "Concrete Lasts a Lifetime"; Tom Evans with the Maryland Ready Mix Concrete Association who will showcase his efforts with "Pervious Palooza," a pervious educational demonstration; Dave Gray with GCC will be offering insight into how it produced a video on concrete overlays that can be seen here and Jim Mack with CEMEX will share an Excel worksheet that allows engineers and promoters to show the impact that material inflation has on a LCCA and how to account for them using the procedures developed at MIT. And that’s not all!

Make sure you attend this year’s "What Works" session at ConcreteWorks, Monday, September 21, at 7:30 a.m. For more information, contact Doug O’Neill at doneill@nrmca.org.

NRMCA Pervious Promotion Subcommittee Schedules Meeting for Early October

The NRMCA’s Pervious Concrete Promotion Subcommittee will meet Friday, October 2, at 2 p.m. at CalPortland’s Henderson, NV, facility. The meeting is being held in conjunction with the annual Bunyan Pervious Concrete Roast, October 1 - 2. Agenda topics include a draft review of the initial "Pervious in Practice: The Do’s and Don’t’s of Specifying Pervious Concrete" technical brief, as well as discussion on development of future Pervious in Practice (PIP) articles. Additionally, there will be an update of the ongoing pervious concrete durability research being conducted by Bruce Cody of the Pennsylvania Aggregates and Concrete Association (PACA).

The Pervious Concrete Promotion Subcommittee meeting is open to all NRMCA members and invited guests. For more information, contact Phil Kresge at pkresge@nrmca.org. For additional information on the Pervious Concrete Roast, contact Nathan Mitchell at nathanm@bunyanusa.com.

BUILDINGS

NRMCA Seeks Abstracts for 2016 Sustainability Conference, Deadline is October 30

NRMCA is seeking abstracts for the 2016 International Concrete Sustainability Conference (2016 ICSC) scheduled for May 15-18 in Washington, DC. Engineers, architects, public works officials, material suppliers, researchers, academics, students, contractors and concrete industry professionals are invited to share their research, experiences and accomplishments in advancing sustainable concrete design, manufacturing and construction by submitting abstracts.

The 11th annual International Concrete Sustainability Conference makes its way to the U.S. capital for the first time and will again feature a wide range of topics related to innovations in concrete sustainability. Abstracts are encouraged on topics ranging from resilience and low impact development to life cycle assessment and material science. Topics related to corporate social responsibility are also encouraged. Accepted abstracts, both papers and presentations, will be published online.

This is the first time the International Concrete Sustainability Conference will be co-located with the International Self-Consolidating Concrete (SCC) Conference. The primary sponsors, NRMCA and Missouri S&T, hope that combining these important conferences will provide learning and networking opportunities on the latest advances, technical knowledge, continuing research, tools and solutions for sustainable concrete and SCC design, manufacturing and construction.

Submit online at www.2016icsc.org by Friday, October 30. For more information, contact Lionel Lemay at LLemay@nrmca.org or 847-918-7101.

LEED Platinum Building in Kentucky Includes Insulating Concrete Forms

It is commonly held that the very best leaders are those that lead by example. And so it comes as no surprise that CMTA Engineers recently completed its new office in Lexington, KY, to LEED Platinum standards using insulating concrete forms (ICFs). CMTA secured all 35 of the available Energy & Atmosphere related credits with its design for the new building. To anyone who has directly pursued LEED certification on a project, there is keen awareness of the magnitude of this accomplishment.

NRMCA Senior Director, Building Innovations, Gregg Lewis explains that, "installing state of the art mechanical systems like CMTA did with its geothermal wells and heat pump makes sense when you have a building envelope that performs the way ICFs do. The thermal bridging and otherwise leaky envelope that a wood frame building typically results in make the investment in systems like geothermal far less effective."

CMTA is one of the leading proponents for Net Zero Energy Schools – a trend that the Kentucky school systems appear to be leading. Its work is noteworthy in its "system approach" where multiple elements of a building work together seamlessly toward a stated goal; in this case: the highest possible energy performance. Lewis explains that "CMTA’s example is one worth emulating and points the way for our industry to show off the strength of concrete systems on the way toward the next generation of high performance buildings." Lewis emphasizes that "if NRMCA’s members and affiliates want to address the loss of market share we have seen over the past 8-10 years in the low to mid-rise construction market, we are going to have to identify the parties that default to building with wood and show them a credible path toward designing and building better and more cost-effective concrete structures."

For more information, contact Gregg Lewis at glewis@nrmca.org.

New School in Colorado Uses ICF Construction

Students returning to the South Conejos PK-12 School in Antonito, CO, are enjoying a new energy efficient, disaster resistant building thanks to concrete and insulated concrete form (ICF) construction, reports NRMCA Senior Vice President, Local Paving, Jon Hansen.

The combination of ICF filled with local concrete was used on over 35,000 square feet of exterior wall, with heights varying from 16 feet to 24 feet. One outstanding feature of the project is the 30 foot diameter "kiva room" that has walls 24 feet tall, all formed and cast using the versatility of the concrete/ICF construction.

The general contractor for the project was Alcon Construction Inc. with the ICF portion built by SLV Quality Concrete Inc. of Colorado. As many will remember, SLV Quality Concrete was the contractor that paved the concrete overlay at the Pinehurst Country Club in Denver.

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

ASSOCIATION & INDUSTRY NEWS

NRMCA Continues to Highlight ConcreteWorks Exhibitors

NRMCA continues to highlight companies that have chosen to exhibit at the annual ConcreteWorks conference in San Antonio, TX, from September 20-22. The conference is one of the industry's best opportunities for ready mix producers to interact with companies that provide goods and services to the concrete industry. This week, our spotlight continue with the companies listed below:

Beck Industrial - Beck Industrial is the manufacturing division of Beck Steel, Inc. In 1999, Beck Industrial introduced its first truck mixers into the Mexican and U.S. markets. Beck invested four years in testing its equipment before introducing it directly to producers. Sixteen years later, there are thousands of Beck mixers working under extreme conditions all over the world. Beck Industrial equipment has proven itself and earned the right to be considered among the toughest truck mixers available.

An NRMCA member since 2002, Beck Industrial will be located in Booth 45.

Stonemont Solutions, Inc. - Stonemont Solutions develops quality control, plant flow modeling and mix design software for the construction materials industry. Its integrated software product for aggregate, asphalt and concrete is used at over 2,500 plants in North America. Stoneont Solutions offers desktop, server, enterprise and hosted editions that easily scale from the single plant operator to the largest producers. Its centrally managed editions provide real-time data access and analysis of your products. Please register or login to our web site or contact us directly to request a software demonstration.

Stonemont Solutions joined NRMCA in 2013 and will be located in Booth 12.

Want to get into ConcreteWorks? Click here for more information, including registration and exhibition options or contact Jessica Walgenbach at jwalgenbach@nrmca.org.

OPERATIONS, ENVIRONMENTAL, SAFETY & HR

NRMCA Signs Joint Comments on DOL Overtime Rule

Last Friday, comments opposing the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) overtime overhaul proposal were submitted by the Partnership to Protect Workplace Opportunity (PPWO), which included NRMCA. The comments, signed onto by NRMCA and over 130 other industry groups stated, "The PPWO’s members believe that employees and employers alike are best served with a system that promotes maximum flexibility in structuring employee hours, career advancement opportunities for employees, and clarity for employers when classifying employees. Unfortunately... if implemented as proposed, the Department of Labor’s (DOL) proposal would result in large numbers of employees being reclassified as non-exempt." The comments continued by asking that DOL withdraw its flawed proposal.

As stated in the PPWO comments, in its current form, the DOL’s proposal "fails to account for regional, economic and market differences... will negatively impact the ability of employees to work in part-time capacities... [and] will negatively impact employee compensation, flexibility and morale." Furthermore, the proposal should phase in any salary increases over time, should not adopt any automatic increases and should not increase the "highly compensated employee" salary minimum. As well, the PPWO sums up the comments, in part, by urging the DOL to "not make revisions to the duties test" and that DOL’s economic analysis is flawed.

Click here to view the DOL overtime proposal. Click here to view the PPWO comments. For more information, contact Kevin Walgenbach at kwalgenbach@nrmca.org.

ConcreteWorks Features Wide Range of OES Seminars

At this year’s ConcreteWorks, the NRMCA Operations, Environmental and Safety (OES) Committee will host a series of six educational seminars, ranging from environmental third-party lawsuits, to National Labor Relations Board activities, to a detailed rundown of this year’s Fleet Benchmarking & Costs Survey.

Click here for a full listing of OES education seminars and those from other departments, along with dates and times. Links for registration options and staff contacts can also be found on this Web page.

GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS

NRMCA Advocacy News Roundup Updated Through September 4

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 August 31 - September 4, 2015, please click here.

If you would like to receive this weekly updated link in a separate e-mail, or if you have questions or comments about the roundup, contact NRMCA’s Jill Landry at jlandry@nrmca.org.

EDUCATION &TRAINING

MMC Materials, Inc./Bayou Concrete, LLC Wins 2015 NRMCA Innovation-in-Training Award

The Educational Activities Committee has awarded the 2015 Innovation in Training Award to MMC Materials, Inc./Bayou Concrete, LLC, for its "Professional Concrete Mixer Truck Driver program". According to the judges, " MMC provided a thorough, all-encompassing driver training program that an employee could benefit from at various levels in his or her career. The level of detail and effort showed in the submittal documents allowed the judges to truly capture what it would be like to sit through some of the developed training courses."

The award will be presented at NRMCA’s ConcreteWorks awards luncheon held in San Antonio later this month. As the winning entry, the program will be featured in an upcoming edition of NRMCA’s Concrete InFocus quarterly magazine.

For more information, contact NRMCA's Eileen Dickson at edickson@nrmca.org.

Registration Continues for Annual Concrete 101 Class

Between October 13-16, NRMCA's Engineering Department will teach its annual introduction to concrete fundamentals at the RMC Research & Education Foundation Center in Silver Spring, MD. The class is appropriate for those who need a broad overview of technical and operations essential, typically sales reps, dispatchers, administrative/home office and mid-level staff as well as those in an executive function whose jobs do not relate to concrete per se, but who should have knowledge of the industry. This class is NOT appropriate for technical ready mixed concrete personnel.

For those working toward their NRMCA STEPS® CCPf certification in Sales and Marketing Track, this is a required class. For others working toward CCPf certification in other STEPS tracks, the class is the qualifying prerequisite or acts as an elective. As a result, this class can quickly fill to capacity – it is NOT too early to register.

Click here for more information, including registration options and staff contact.

CALENDAR

A Look Ahead

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

September 14, Webinar

The Quantifiable Advantages of Concrete Parking Lots