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ACI Derives Integrity from Its Technical Committees

6/1/2002

For this memo, I’d like to focus on several issues related to ACI’s technical committees. First and foremost, ACI is a technical organization. For almost 100 years, ACI has provided technical information and documents to the industry. These documents provide unbiased, consensus-based information that is widely acknowledged to be the standard of practice for nearly everything that is done with concrete. To protect the integrity of the document development process, we have established a consensus procedure that is burdensome but effective.

It is the technical integrity that ACI has established through its technical committee operations that has allowed us to expand into the other areas of seminars, educational documents, and certification, and to attract the best manuscripts to our Journals and CI for publication.

Currently, there is a perception that there are problems with our technical committee process. Several of the areas where concerns have been raised, and some possible ways to address these issues are:

It simply takes too long to develop committee documents. It appears that the most effective way to speed up the process is to make additional staff support available to assist committees. Doing so may require cutbacks in other areas of Institute activities.

The pool of volunteers available to serve on committees is shrinking, and individual volunteers have less time to devote to committee work. The Student Fellowship Program will address part of this issue, but the impact will take years to be felt. TAC, at the Spring 2002 Convention in Detroit, took a major step to help here by relaxing attendance requirements for voting members of technical committees. The emphasis in the future will be on contributing to the committee and returning ballots rather than attending one meeting per year. This will open up voting membership for volunteers who simply cannot travel to our conventions on a routine basis.

ACI is risking its reputation for being unbiased. To speed up the introduction of new technology, we are now reviewing and writing documents covering proprietary technology. Some, or all, of this work may be financed by the owner of the technology. The answer here is to be absolutely honest with the readers of our documents. TAC and the ACI Board have approved this type of work with the provision that the circumstances of the production of such documents be clearly explained to the readers.

The consensus process is simply too complicated. For those of you who have not been active in the technical committee activities, just go to the ACI Web site and take a look at the Technical Committee Manual if you have any doubts about the complexity of the process. A clear vision of how to streamline the process and still meet our internal and external requirements for consensus has not yet emerged.

Management of ACI specification development has not been satisfactory. There are overlaps with different committees printing different opinions and there are gaps in our coverage. The TAC Specifications Committee is now working to develop an overall plan for specifications for the Institute.

Efficient technical committee operations are the heart of the Institute. To ensure the viability of all programs of the Institute, we must address these issues, and others, while maintaining the integrity of our documents. Let me hear your thoughts!

Terry Holland
President,
American Concrete Institute

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