Decorative Concrete and ACI

The American Concrete Institute has long treated decorative concrete as if it were the quirky long-haired grandson of the concrete family. You know, the one who sits in the back of the room listening to his headphones; the one you chuckle about—flamboyant and immature but basically harmless. Now perhaps the institute is realizing the impact the decorative business is having on concrete and the public’s perception of it.

The August issue of Concrete International, ACI’s member magazine, focuses on decorative concrete, with several feature articles and a buyer’s guide. Further evidence of ACI’s shift is the founding of a new decorative concrete committee earlier this year. Committee 310, chaired by Michael Smith with Concrete Artisans in Prospect Park, Pa., has a mission to “develop and report information on the application of artistic finishes of non-structural, cast-in-place concrete.” Knowing how ACI committees work, though, and the rapid pace of change in the decorative industry, any report from this group will be out of date before it ever gets published. Perhaps they will focus on educational sessions at ACI convention, which would be a welcome relief from some of the technical presentations.

In other news, Builder magazine reports that the big public homebuilders are taking it on the chin with some huge losses. Editor Boyce Thompson says that $2 billion in losses were posted during the second quarter; D.R. Horton took the biggest hit at $852 million—mostly in write offs of land and options. This deep correction in housing is expected to reduce cement consumption by 4.4% in 2007, according to Ed Sullivan at the Portland Cement Association. How is this impacting the decorative concrete business? Send me a reply to tell me how your business is going and what you see coming over the next year.

Cracking up

We’ve all heard the jokes about concrete slabs and cracking. There are only two kinds of concrete—concrete that’s already cracked and concrete that’s about to crack. My beef with this is that it makes people feel that we aren’t in control of the material. It’s as if the slab is going to do whatever it feels like and we can only stand idly by and watch. The truth is that we can indeed make concrete slabs that don’t crack. At least, we can make concrete that only cracks where we want it to. The notion that concrete always has lots of random cracks is one that I’d like to see dispelled.

Of course, that means we need to actually place lots of concrete that does not end up cracked. If, as I insist, we know how to do that, then why is there still so much cracked concrete around? In most cases, it’s simply ignorance. The guy who designed the concrete or the guy who produced the concrete or the guy who placed the concrete simply didn’t know enough to prevent random cracking.

Now, in most cases random cracks do not impair a concrete slab’s serviceability. Cracks in flatwork are only detrimental to performance when there is lots of traffic that breaks down the edges. Nonetheless, it looks bad and justifiably leads the public to feel something is wrong. If we can keep the cracks inside the control joints, everyone feels we have things under control. In fact most people don’t even think a joint is a crack when of course that’s all it really is. But it’s a crack where we want it, a controlled crack—thus the term control joint.

Today we can even build concrete slabs that actually don’t crack—or that have such thin cracks that they can’t even be seen when the concrete is dry. Jerry Holland has shown that post tensioning or high doses of steel or synthetic fibers can result in crack-free slabs even with geometries that would normally be sure to crack.

So tell the world! Concrete doesn’t crack! Then go out and prove it to them.

Participating in associations: Be in the center

My standard pitch for why it’s important to be involved in associations runs along the lines of networking, learning from others, giving back to the industry, credibility from your involvement, and so on. Some buy into this, some don’t. But wait—what’s important here is that I REALLY, REALLY believe in this and so do a lot of other people who are much smarter than me. Clay Fischer, a very successful tilt-up contractor in Florida, talking about his association work, once told me that “The wealth of knowledge you get from all these people is powerful and they are willing to share it.” That alone should convince you to sign up.

But I understand that there is only so much time and money to devote to this sort of activity, so you’ll need to make choices. Do you focus on your particular niche or look for an organization with a broader perspective? Do you get involved with a local group or a national group? I recommend starting with the narrowest focus you can find locally, then expand into the broader-based national groups. For contractors, it’s hard to beat the American Society of Concrete Contractors, and it’s Decorative Concrete Council, although that does require some national travel.

When you’ve made that decision, jump in with both feet. I never thought of myself as much of a joiner—I was deathly shy growing up and would do anything to stay out of the limelight. Working for the American Concrete Institute as an editor on Concrete International, though, forced me in front of people. It was painful at first, but what I soon discovered was that it can be incredibly exciting to be directly involved in decisions that affect the entire concrete business. And when you’re learning about and influencing things that directly affect your business, it’s even more exciting.

Committee work can, of course, be incredibly dull and slow. I’m on one ACI committee that has been trying to revise a 50-page report for the past 10 years. If you get involved with one of those, dump it. Or, better yet, if you think it’s important, see what you can do to push it to a conclusion.

So here’s what I recommend: give it a chance, but give it a real chance. Be in the center. That’s the key. Watching from the sidelines is boring and provides fewer benefits. Be in the center. Accept some responsibility and then follow through. Before you know it, you’ll be put in charge of something—next step is chairman then president. And I’m really not kidding. Anyone willing to contribute will be pushed up the line in a hurry. I’ve seen people join a committee only to end up as chairman within a couple of years.

Here’s a list of associations by state (http://www.concretenetwork.com/associations.htm). Look through this and decide what to do--or let me know and I can steer you to a group that would be beneficial for you. And tell me about your experience with associations. Did you get sufficient return on the time and expense? Did you feel welcome or out of place?

My Favorite Products

Machine Technologies' pumps are ideal for applying concrete
to vertical surfaces.

A new feature on the Concrete Network is what we are calling My Favorite Products. Whenever I talk with a contractor, I ask him or her what products they find particularly useful or handy, whether it be tools or materials or equipment. There’s nothing scientific in this approach—in fact it is completely biased towards one person’s opinion. But that one person may be doing work similar to what you are doing and could have found a better way. It always pays off to be open to new ideas and it’s at least as valuable as listening to a manufacturer’s sales pitch.

The incredible variety of products used in concrete construction has always fascinated me. But if you go to the World of Concrete and try to see everything that’s out there, the task is overwhelming. A few years ago at WOC, when I was editor of Concrete Construction, a product manufacturer caught me and asked why we didn’t have a contest for the show’s most innovative products. Obviously he thought his product would win, but this struck a chord. People come to WOC year after year and can’t find the pearls in the sea of products—that led to the Most Innovative Products competition.

With the My Favorite Products approach on the Concrete Network, we are doing something similar--not restricting it to innovation, though, but to things that simply work well and provide value. So, for example, when Wayne Sellon tells me that he really loves his new Machine Technologies mortar pump you can be assured that there is at least one guy out there who has used this equipment successfully and feels it is valuable.

So here’s your assignment: Post a comment to this blog and tell me about your one or two favorite products--whether it’s an innovative new tool or an old favorite, a big piece of equipment or a handy little gadget. I will get in touch to fill in the details. Helping others makes our whole industry better and will, in the long term, mean more work for everyone.

They only want to work

Photo by Michael Robinson-Chavez -- The Washington Post

Our so-called leaders in Washington are failing us again. It now appears that the immigration policy of this country is going to drag along in its current unworkable form for the foreseeable future. It really doesn’t matter whether you are blue or red, it’s hard to see how these guys can be so incapable of coming to any sort of agreement or compromise.

My concern is for the U.S. construction industry. The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC, which represents the nation’s open-shop contractors) estimates that the construction industry alone will need to fill one million new jobs over the next seven years. “There are 150,000 to 250,000 new workers per year being added to the construction industry,” said John Meyers, ABC’s national chairman, according to PBF News Briefs. “Our statistics show that two-thirds of the new workers that are being added now are Hispanic, so that shows that most of our needs are being met through the immigrants that are coming into the country.”

So we need a way to control this influx of workers. But it’s like drugs—as long as the demand is there, someone will figure out a way to meet it. Building big fences has proven only marginally effective, so why not take another approach? But making employers liable for enforcing the policy isn’t the answer. Do you want to be arrested because you hired someone on the basis of what looked like a perfectly valid ID? Are you telling me that the United States of America can’t set up a system so that we can quickly and efficiently determine if someone is legally eligible to work?

There needs to be some common sense brought to bear on this situation. We need workers. They want to work. There’s no one else willing to do the work. If we pay them fairly and treat them right and they obey our laws and support their families, how can that be bad?

But it seems that Congress listens to every interest group and hardens their stand on one piece of the issue so that compromise becomes impossible. Maybe we shouldn’t let them listen and they would have to simply look into their own hearts for what’s right.

The meaning of life

Flowers & Butterflies by Florian Kleinefenn

Over the past few weeks I have been working on a project that caused me to learn about life cycle assessment. Excuse me for a few minutes—I’m going to go a bit technical on you here, but I think you’ll find it worthwhile to understand a little about this.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique for evaluating the overall impact that something has on the environment (such as a building). We evaluate the impact for specific things—like greenhouse gases (global warming), acidification (acid rain), smog, and toxicity to humans. Each substance emitted is weighted for each impact—so CO2 gets a 1 for greenhouse gases but a zero for ozone depletion, acidification, and toxicity. Sulfur dioxide, on the other hand, gets a zero for greenhouse gases but a 1.2 for acidification. Dioxin gets a zero for smog but a very high number for toxicity—and so on.

To look at the life cycle impact of a building, first you figure out everything that is emitted from the construction, operation, and maintenance of the building over its lifetime—including mining the aggregate, growing the trees, transporting everything to the site, keeping the building heated or cooled, operating the lights. Then you multiply the amount emitted times the weighting factor to come up with the impact of that particular material. Do that for everything emitted and add it all up and you get the overall impact of the building.

LCA can be applied to almost anything, not just buildings—from motor vehicles to banking to the United States’ immigration policy. To do this in a comprehensive way is very time consuming and complicated. Interpreting the results is even more complicated and eventually, as seems true of everything, comes down to some biases and political choices—which is worse, cancer or global warming?

If we bring this back to the matter at hand—building with concrete—LCA is generally favorable to our cause. Although cement manufacturing has a rather high initial impact (in terms of energy used, CO2 release, mining, and transportation) the concrete it produces lasts a very long time with low maintenance so the impact is spread over many years. And at the end of its life, recycled concrete is a very useful material, unlike recycled wood.

With all the talk about green building, it would seem logical that the green points systems (LEED or Green Globes or NAHB’s guidelines) would include LCA, but at this time none of them do—at least not directly. All of the points systems do plan to bring LCA into the evaluation process in their next versions, so you’ll probably be hearing more soon. In the meantime, concrete still makes significant contributions to green building, especially in terms of its thermal mass, so we have a good story to tell that we can only hope will get better.

Pass the monkey

Ever since I was 16 years old, I’ve had a job working for someone else. This usually included paid time off if I was sick and paid holidays and vacations. It meant that if I was having a bad day, feeling a bit unmotivated or tired, I still got paid. Of course it also meant that the next day when I had to work like a dog to catch up I got paid the same amount as on the slow day. Sounds almost like communism.

I am learning a few things from this experience—things that I suppose I’ve always known but that were never quite so in my face. Like the need to reach out to others for help when things become overwhelming. And the need to maintain focus on the truly important things when there are so many other important but nonpaying things clamoring for attention.

But the scariest thing, is that there’s no safety net. If I make a decision on how to run my business, it’s all mine. Sure, I can ask for advice, but in the end I have to make up my own mind and live with the results. When you work for a larger company, it’s very easy to push difficult issues up the chain of command and then complain about how frustrating it is that no one will make a decision. But when you’re “self employed” the only person to blame is the one looking back at you in the mirror. Put my future and my family’s livelihood into the hands of that joker!? What are you crazy!

One of the new things I have started doing is some structural design work on additions and rehabs for local homebuilders. The fact that I’m on my own is seldom more stark. If I recommend a beam size or how much rebar to put into a slab, the builder is going to do it that way. If it falls down, then I’m responsible. No more pushing the buck!

Many years ago I had a boss who only half jokingly told me that the objective of working for a company was to get rid of the monkey. His metaphor was that every task that came along was like a monkey on your back. The idea was to find a way to get that monkey off your back and onto someone else’s. If you had to do some work to get the monkey to go elsewhere, fine, but just be sure he’s gone and can’t find his way back.

Most of you are self-employed, too, so you know what I’m talking about. Tell me how you cope with the pain and pleasure of business ownership. How do you get the monkey off your back? Or does he just hang around no matter what you do, smoking your cigars and generally making a mess?