News Detail

Focus on Research

8/1/2018

One of the pleasures of serving as ACI President has been my role as ambassador to our friends and partners around the world. I am an enthusiastic advocate for ACI and its work that is so vital to the concrete industry and society at large. People have responded well to my emphasis of research as an ACI core value.

Research is essential to improve our understanding of structural mechanics, materials, and construction practices that lie at the heart of the ACI Collection as illustrated by the pyramid infographic taken from the ACI Outlook 2030 Report. Beyond that, research is one aspect of training university students who represent the next generation of leaders for the concrete industry.

I want to reflect on recent visits to two national laboratories. At the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, MD, I met with NIST Director Walter Copan, who shared with me that NIST is known as "Industry's National Lab" with a mission to accelerate innovation and economic growth. Copan explained, "We want to maximize the transfer of federal investments in science and technology into value for America. Our vision is quite simple. Unleash the amazing innovation power of America into our economy." NIST researchers Chiara Ferraris, Steven Feldman, Jeffrey Bullard, Dale Bentz, and Scott Jones are active within ACI, and they joined me for a roundtable discussion about research directions. We identified sustainability, resilience, and durability as key themes in the concrete community today. The pressing challenge is how to measure these things! Concepts such as life cycle cost are compelling, but more work is needed to understand how real concrete in real environments performs and endures. Several ACI committees are addressing these issues, including ACI Committee 201, Durability of Concrete, which aspires to develop practical code provisions for durability performance.

My visit to the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC) in McLean, VA, was highlighted by laboratory tours and a discussion with ACI member Rick Meininger. The TFHRC staff is engaged in a broad range of research, including studies of autonomous vehicles, signal and sensor technology, and nondestructive testing. The facility includes laboratories for concrete materials research, where staff members work with a wide network of university and industry partners.

These visits to national labs give me a better sense of the research landscape. As a professor at the University of Illinois since 1992, I was not surprised to hear familiar concerns about declining research funding over the years. Overall, federal research funding peaked with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), and most observers see that federal sources are in a relative decline even as industry research increases. I think one of our challenges is to compete for funding against topics that are more successfully marketed as drivers of economic growth. High technology, medicine, and big data capture headlines even as concrete structures and materials can seem old news. So, our challenge is to better communicate the value proposition of concrete and position concrete infrastructure as key to societal benefits and quality of life. ACI is caretaker of a large body of knowledge that needs continuous investment to drive innovation and higher quality. We need to cultivate champions who can influence research investment, and help them to be persuasive in the fight for research dollars.

My message for our friends at NIST, FHWA, and elsewhere is simple: ACI stands with you as a partner to discover new knowledge about concrete structures that will help us deliver improved standards and higher-quality infrastructure. We have an open-door policy at ACI—all are invited to join our committees and advocate for better materials and methods.

I would be remiss not to mention ACI's increased commitment to research funding through the ACI Foundation (ACIF). The ACIF is one of the most exciting parts of ACI these days. A streamlined structure and a growing community of support leads me to see that we are only at the beginning of a new era of growth and vitality. I encourage you all to read more about ACIF and view the new video at acifoundation.org.

David A. Lange