A concrete construction executive said in a meeting with superintendents and foremen, "Fifteen percent of our dollars spent for labor are actually spent to correct mistakes." The contractor who spent 15 percent of his labor dollars to correct mistakes was doing so partly because of a failure to recognize that the process itself was invalid. Consider some of the things he may have had to put up with. Contractors are all too often faced with reinforcing steel details that make it impossible to set the forms to the prescribed dimensions. Specifications require the use of tremies but the largest size tremie feasible would be about the size of a soda fountain straw. The concrete construction industry has a problem. It is practically devoid of people who have the professional expertise to evaluate the concrete process that involves all steps in the transformation of raw material which meets the characteristics and qualities prescribed by the architects and structural engineers. We do not have people who can develop the needed construction practice standards. Neither do we have people who can analyze the concreting process to verify that what is proposed is feasible. The concrete construction industry must get the cooperation of universities to introduce a program geared to produce concrete process professionals. Progress in concrete construction technology will be slow as long as there are no professionals who concern themselves with making the concrete construction process work. With the help of the concrete process professional, contractors will be able to improve their profits, accelerate construction and build better structures without concern for how their concrete will behave. When professionally developed, the results of the concrete construction process are predictable.
