On Sept. 18th, American Concrete Institute (ACI) President Richard D. Stehly passed away following a sudden illness. Stehly was the principal of American Engineering Testing, Inc., based in Minneapolis, Minn. A member of ACI since 1980, he was a licensed civil engineer in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Stehly has been a member of numerous ACI technical committees and was chair of the Board Advisory Committee on Sustainable Development and the Strategic Planning Task Group. He also served on ACI committees 130, Sustainability of Concrete; 318 WA, International Workshop - Structural Concrete in the Americas; Financial Advisory Committee; and Seminar Oversight Committee. Stehly was an officer of the ACI Foundation and Creative Association Management, ACI's for-profit subsidiary. He was also involved in fly ash applications. The first ACI committee he served on was ACI committee 226, Fly Ash, Other Pozzolans, and Slag (now discharged). He holds a patent on a process to convert alum waste into a pozzolan.
A Fellow of ACI, Stehly was a past chair of the Chapter Activities Committee and a member of the Task Group on International Strategy, which led to the formation of the International Committee, for which he served as the first chair. Stehly has traveled to more than 25 countries on behalf of ACI, presenting lectures on various concrete topics to ACI chapter members. Stehly received a BS degree in civil engineering from the University of Minnesota. He worked as an intern at Twin City Testing, Minneapolis, Minn., while a college junior and was hired as a field engineer after graduation. He became project engineer, chief engineer, and eventually president of the firm. In 1988, he joined the Anchor Block Co., one of the few block makers using the autoclave process, as president. Stehly returned to the testing business by founding American Engineering Testing with three others in December 1989. He started American Petrographic Services in 1990. The businesses currently have 15 offices and 300 employees.
