News Detail

Become an Active Technical Committee Member

8/1/2002

In my June memo, I discussed technical-committee issues, one of which was related to attendance requirements for voting members of technical committees. This month’s memo expands that discussion.

ACI has approximately 16,000 members in more than 100 countries. Some 2700 members are active on our technical committees. With a few exceptions, those who are active are from the membership in North America. This preponderance of activity from North America stems largely from a long-standing requirement that voting members on technical committees must attend one committee meeting per year. This rule presumes that there is no substitute for a face-to-face exchange of information in developing consensus. But the expense of traveling to one meeting per year has prevented significant numbers of international members from participating on our committees. I also believe this rule has prevented many other members from participating because their employers make travel difficult or impossible.

While the rationale for this attendance rule is clear, the effects on our documents may not be as clear. No one country has an exclusive “lock” on concrete technology. If attendance rules discourage international participation in ACI committees, we may also delay the entry into our documents of technology developed outside of North America. Two examples—silica fume and self-consolidating concrete—come to mind.

Uses for silica fume in concrete were largely developed in Norway and the other Scandinavian countries. There were documents already available in these countries when ACI Committee 234 was developing its first document on the subject. Self-consolidating concrete (SCC) has been under development in Japan and Europe for many years. Documents have been developed to cover this material. At the Detroit convention, TAC assigned the responsibility for producing ACI’s first document on SCC to ACI Committee 236. Could we have shortened the introduction of these two technologies into North American practice if international members had been better represented on our technical committees?

Our attendance rule was developed long before the communications revolution that is currently underway. Given the widespread accessibility to the Internet, TAC has now relaxed the meeting attendance rule. If a member is actively involved in a committee’s work, the chair can waive the attendance requirement, thus allowing greater access to voting memberships on our technical committees.

If you want to join a technical committee, here’s how:

• Visit the ACI web site and review the listing of technical committees. Select a committee that covers a topic of interest to you;
• On the ACI home page, click on the “Committees” button, then click on “Join” in the dropdown menu;
• Complete the committee-membership application form, and click on the “Submit Application” button at the bottom of the form. You can also obtain a printed version of this form and submit it via fax (248-848-3720) or mail it to ACI International headquarters;
• When selecting voting members, the committee chair considers technical-committee applicants’ personal knowledge and expertise. The chair may also consider balance of interest to ensure that a committee has the broad-based membership needed to ensure balanced coverage of the committee’s area of interest; and
• You’ll be notified that you have been appointed to the committee as either an associate member (ACI membership is required) or a voting member. Then it’s your task to actively participate on the committee.

Relaxing the rules for meeting attendance also requires a comment to current technical-committee chairs. We will be doing business in a new way with the implementation of the new rule regarding attendance. As new members are added to your committees, it will be up to you to ensure that the business of the committee is conducted such that all committee members, whether they attend meetings or not, are able to participate. In most cases, this change will require keeping and distributing much better minutes, and regularly communicating with all committee members between meetings.

One major reason for not becoming active on ACI’s technical committees has now been removed. Why don’t you become active on a technical committee?

Terry Holland
President,
American Concrete Institute

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