News Detail

ACI's Website - A Great Resource!

6/1/2007

Have you checked out ACI's website lately? If you haven't, you'll be pleasantly surprised at all that's available. It's a prime source for many of ACI's member benefits and, over the years, our website has become progressively more user-friendly, offering more practical content.

So what can you find on the website? Well, there is so much that I can't cover it in one President's Memo, but I can give you a good idea of some of the prime areas. If you go to the website today, one of the first things you'll see is a banner proclaiming "Now offering more value to members!" and under that banner you'll see such things as the Concrete Knowledge Center, Free CEUs Online, Membership Directory, and Free Downloads.

The Concrete Knowledge Center is an amazing place. It includes sections on design, repair, and materials, along with special sections on troubleshooting. Some portions of the Knowledge Center are available to the general public-the majority, however, represent a special benefit to ACI members. Under Design, you'll find one of the most exciting resources, "ACI 318 Design Case Studies." Currently, two studies are available, a multi-story parking garage and a 16-story hotel. Each includes project information, the structural analysis, member (and miscellaneous) design and detailing, and building drawings, and provides a step-by-step description with specific citations to the appropriate sections within ACI 318. The case studies should be especially useful to new engineers, but also provide useful guidance for some of us "old hands." Additional case studies are under development, and new case studies will be posted as new versions of the ACI code are published.

A special resource available to ACI members is the ability to earn free continuing education units (CEUs) online. At no cost, ACI members are eligible to earn up to 0.8 CEUs, the equivalent of eight professional development hours (PDHs), annually, which can be used to satisfy the requirements of state licensing agencies. The site provides a summary of the PDH requirements by state. Each unit of study (there are currently 19 available and more are being added all the time), includes a reading assignment, such as Chapter 3 of ACI 224R, "Control of Cracking in Concrete Structures." After reading the chapter, you take a short test (as many times as necessary to pass) and receive the 0.1 CEU/1.0 PDH. At a very competitive price of $25 per PDH (to the general public), the eight free PDHs available to a member each year essentially cover the cost of membership. If needed, additional PDHs can be purchased at a reduced member price.

Another useful resource is the membership directory, which allows you to look up the personal contact information for every member and member organization or company in ACI. The directory can even be searched for companies in specific business categories, such as contractors that specialize in forming and shoring, demolition, and high-rise construction, just to name a few.

Finally (for this Memo, not for the website), one of my favorites is found under Bookstore and Publications. Titled "Search Abstracts Archive," it's designed to locate articles covering specific areas of interest, searching by author, volume, issue, title, or document name. You can even search using an exact phrase. For example, if you wanted to find an article covering the benefits of entrained air on the sulfate resistance of concrete, the words "air," "sulfate," and "resistance" produce 39 articles on the subject. An abstract is provided for each, and ACI members who have an online subscription to the publication, for example the ACI Materials Journal, can download the document for free. If you are not a subscriber, you can still download up to three documents free per year, a new benefit for ACI members, and if you use up your three free "tokens," documents are available at a reduced member price. More than 100 years of ACI publications are now searchable and available for download online.

This may seem like a lot, but I've just scratched the surface. As a longtime user of the website, I've been especially impressed by how it has continued to improve. Check it out and take advantage of this great resource!

David Darwin
American Concrete Institute
daved@ku.edu

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