News Detail

Delivering State-of-the-Art Publications in Record Time

1/1/2007

In keeping with this year's Presidential theme of "not doing things because that is the way we have always done them," we have made significant progress in producing and delivering needed technical documents to the industry in record time. This trend is a direct result of real collaboration between several ACI committees and the Strategic Development Council (SDC), a phenomenon not thought possible only a few years ago.

Recently, ACI's SDC, whose primary function is to assist in the timely adoption of innovative technologies, problem resolution, and best practices, discussed with the Technical Activities Committee (TAC), ACI's "technical watchdog" consensus review committee, how best to produce ACI documents needed by our industry today, not some years in the future. In November 2004, the SDC initiated an effort to deliver a state-of-the-art guide to the concrete, construction, and flooring industries to avert adhesive failures of floor covering materials placed on new concrete slabs. The new ACI 302.2R-06, produced in less than 2 years, is a testament to the commitment of the SDC, ACI Committee 302, and TAC to accelerate dissemination of critical industry technical information. With the SDC's initial assistance and close coordination with ACI 302 and TAC, the document was drafted, balloted, reviewed, re-balloted, and published in 23 months. Throughout, the critical ACI consensus process was strictly adhered to and no special concessions were made in the approval process or schedule.

ACI's mission is to develop, share, and disseminate knowledge and information needed to use concrete to its fullest potential. To this end, volunteer members contribute their time and energies on over 120 technical and educational committees. Thanks to approximately 3,000 volunteers who fill 4,500 technical committee seats, each contributing 20 to 30 hours per year to their technical committee work (an extremely conservative estimate), the concrete industry annually provides $10 to $15 million in human resource capital support to ACI technical committee activities. One could easily argue that the industry's annual volunteer resource contribution is twice that amount.

When the concrete industry identifies "critical industry technologies," some of this resource can be directed to accelerate its acceptance. As an example, when the industry identified self-consolidating concrete and pervious concrete as important technologies that would benefit from ACI documentation, ACI formed Committees 237 and 522 on those topics. With industry leadership emphasizing the importance of these technologies, ACI committee members responded by focusing their resources and developing the pertinent documents in a remarkable 24-month period, including TAC review.

The SDC seeks to: 1) identify critical industry technologies; 2) identify barriers to technology acceptance; and 3) act as a catalyst to remove the barriers. The SDC consists of organizations represented by top-level executives seeking to bring the concrete industry together, along with government, academia, and customers, to focus on collaborative problem solving to accelerate technology transfer and acceptance. Key to the SDC's activities is its facilitation of industry forums and strategic planning to accelerate the reporting of industry critical technologies.

SDC and TAC share the same goal-to provide technically accurate and credible information to the industry for use by owners, architects, engineers, manufacturers, and contractors. It's easy to imagine that friction could develop between SDC's desire for rapid change and TAC's desire to maintain the quality of ACI's disseminated information through a comprehensive consensus and methodical review process. Since fall 2005, however, the SDC and TAC have engaged in successful and productive dialog and collaborative efforts. SDC identifies the industry's priority list of technologies, issues, and problems to be solved, and TAC provides the technical guidance and suggestions on the most efficient and effective approach to maneuver through the ACI consensus process. While a priority and goal of the SDC is to accelerate technology acceptance, it's in the concrete industry's interest to maintain the integrity of ACI's TAC consensus process-the output of which is universally acknowledged as of the highest standard and credibility.

This positive paradigm shift to partnerships and teamwork is permeating throughout all areas of ACI activities, the potential of which is far greater than the sum of all the individual parts involved.

The SDC is a council of the ACI Foundation, a wholly owned subsidiary of ACI, formerly called the Concrete Research and Education Foundation (ConREF). My next Memo will highlight the new and exciting initiatives of the ACI Foundation.

Thomas D. Verti, President
American Concrete Institute
tverti@pankow.com

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