News Detail

Making Your Vote Count

2/1/2011

Documents produced by ACI technical committees are hard-fought; carefully wrought; and used internationally to set standards for concrete design, materials, and construction. Given the dynamic nature of our industry, ACI documents are time-sensitive products and must be reapproved at specified intervals or withdrawn. This encourages committees to keep pace with changes in materials, methods, and knowledge. Members of each of our 114 technical committees are constantly at work on the most current, relevant documents. This is what technical committees do!

Committee members propose, revise, edit, and ultimately vote to approve new documents or reapprove existing ones. An approved document is formally submitted to ACI staff for editorial review and review of the voting record to ensure that all negatives have been resolved in accordance with the due process and consensus criteria established by the American National Standards Institute. Then, the ACI Technical Activities Committee reviews the work and prepares a review comment list to which the committee responds.

How are ACI documents written or revised? Word by word, line by line, and paragraph by paragraph. The milestones in the document-development process are logged via multiple rounds of ballots, in which each voting member of the committee has the responsibility to record agreement or disagreement with the proposed wording, organization, or grammatical details. While this can be tedious, the precise choice and order of words and punctuation can make all the difference when the completed committee document is used in the field to assess whether the work is "acceptable under the terms of the contract." Suddenly, the rules of usage and grammar become critical when time, money, and owner satisfaction are on the line.

As an overworked, dedicated voting committee member, YOU are at the heart of all of this activity. You not only volunteer your time and energy to provide the critical information from which our documents are generated, but you also wield the awesome power to formally object. While no ACI committee member has veto power, each individual voter has the opportunity to press the pause button and raise a proposed revision or objection that must be considered by the committee.

Do you think the wording under consideration is confusing or obsolete? Do you think a proposed change needs revision? Does the document contain an error? If so, make your point by formally casting a negative vote. You will then be given the opportunity to express your concerns. Your fellow committee members have the responsibility to listen to and learn from your comments and respond. After multiple viewpoints have been expressed, you might withdraw your negative; agree to defer it to new business; or maintain your position, at which time the question is called and we find out if you've been persuasive. Then, the committee chair will move on to the next item, which is very likely the resolution of another negative vote!

But the right to vote negative comes with the responsibility to make the negative vote a constructive step in the process. First of all, if your concern is editorial or an enhancement that may not be essential, consider an "affirmative with comment" instead of a negative. But if you feel strongly that the effectiveness of the document will be compromised without your input, vote negative but be sure to include your reasons for objecting. Because your ultimate goal is to persuade fellow committee members, the more clearly and succinctly your position is explained, the more persuasive it will be. Your ability to persuade often depends on whether you have provided a proposed revision that will improve the document AND satisfy your objection. Don't make your committee Chair ask, "What would it take to make you happy?" ACI's Technical Committee Manual includes the caveat that "If the negative voter does not provide a reason for the negative vote…" the vote is considered an abstention and requires no further action. So, in ACI, "just saying no" (and only "no") is the same as saying nothing.

Maintaining technical progress as an Institute requires new ideas and fresh perspectives from members like you. But testing the validity of those ideas and perspectives is our mutual responsibility as well. The negative vote— responsibly submitted and effectively handled—is just one of the tools available to you as a voting committee member to craft the high-quality ACI documents the industry has come to expect.

Kenneth C. Hover
American Concrete Institute
kch7@cornell.edu

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