11. Photocatalytic Concrete: Italcementi’s TX Active cement reacts with air pollutants and also keeps white cement structures their whitest.
12. Essential: “There is no suitable or viable replacement for concrete,” says Rich Szecsy, TACA. “In other words, what would our life be like without concrete?
13. Concrete Cares: Mike Murray’s pink concrete campaign is only one of the many community-building efforts made by companies in the concrete industry in their local communities.
14. Self-Consolidating Concrete: Contractors find placing concrete in heavily reinforced columns and beams, especially for high-rise construction or in high-seismic zones, to be ever more diffiicult. Factor in the labor costs for two or more workers to operate a vibrator and wrangle its hoses on the jobsite. Then consider the risks of “white finger” injuries that vibrator operators face, and the liability those risks impose on contractors. Self-consolidating concrete (SCC) is a product that addresses all these concerns. By eliminating the need to vibrate concrete placed in crowded forms, SCC saves time, reduces labor costs, and helps preserve worker health and safety. No wonder Bill Phelan of Euclid Chemical compares it to an automatic transmission, and notes how few people use a stick shift these days.
15. Life-Cycle Approach: “We should be proud of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub’s focus on a life-cycle approach with research and tools to support competition and longer term decisionmaking, which is changing the rules of the game.” — Julie Garbini, RMC Foundation.
16. Codes and standards: “Sure we complain about them—how they are hide-bound and slow to change. But people who participate in the process are steadfast in their dedication to ensuring life-safety while still accommodating innovation.” — Jay Shilstone.
17. Robotic Stations and Laser Scanners for Site Layout: Site layout used to be done with optical transits, levels, and 100-foot tapes. Today’s total stations have the entire layout entered as a CAD file and use laser point clouds to verify as-built conditions.
18. Lean Construction Management Techniques and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD): It’s really just a matter of working together and constant improvement.
19. Concrete 2029: Most organizations and companies within the concrete industry have some sort of strategic plan but never before has the entire community come together to create a plan to improve the industry, said Peter Emmons to open the initial Concrete 2029 planning session in May. The objective is no less than to save the concrete industry for future generations.
20. Onboard Measurement of Slump, Water-Cement Ratio, and Air Content: New technology allows concrete workability and air to be tested during transit and to have continuous water additions.
