News Detail

ACI and Asia

7/1/2017

Two years ago, the Washington Post reported a striking statistic: China used more cement in 3 years than the United States used in the entire twentieth century. Even some of the people furthest from concrete, like Microsoft Founder Bill Gates, tweeted their shock at the significance of this data. The numbers are truly staggering. From 2011 to 2013, 6.6 gigatons (1 gigaton is 1000 billion tons) of cement were consumed in China, whereas 4.5 gigatons of cement were used between 1901 and 2000 in the United States.

There is no doubt that the Chinese economic growth has been hinging on infrastructure development and more precisely on cement and concrete. But this is not just about China. The whole Asian continent has been witnessing an unprecedented growth in concrete construction.

Questions immediately come to mind:

• What is ACI doing in Asia?
• How is ACI capturing the knowledge developed there?
• How is the Institute communicating the value of the information it has been building over the years?

The immediate answers: First, ACI is already doing a lot. Second, the Institute can still do much more.

Before I list ACI's ongoing endeavors in Asia, it's important to be aware that Asia is not a single region—it's a collection of sub-regions. The most common division, adopted by economists, includes five main regions:

• East Asia, which principally includes China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Mongolia;
• Southeast Asia, known as the ASEAN region, comprising mainly Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam;
• South Asia, including essentially India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka;
• Central Asia, also known as the Central Independent States (CIS), with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan; and
• The Middle East, which includes all the Gulf states, plus Iran, Iraq, and Yemen as well the countries of the Near East: Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

The good news is that ACI has been active in all these regions. Still, the opportunity to improve ACI engagement in each of them is tremendous.

In East Asia, the Institute has at least one partnership agreement in each of the countries. ACI has excellent ties and active cooperation with the Japan Concrete Institute (JCI) and the Korean Concrete Institute (KCI). In fact, after two very successful events, ACI will be holding its next joint seminar with JCI on October 18, 2017, during The ACI Concrete Convention and Exposition, taking place in Anaheim, CA, from October 15-19. The theme of the session will be "Challenges and Developments in the Life Cycle Management of Existing Concrete Structures."

ACI also has one chapter and three partnership agreements in China, a partner in Mongolia, and a chapter and a partner in Taiwan.

Similarly, ACI has, in each of the ASEAN countries, at least one partnership agreement or a chapter.

In South Asia, there are ACI chapters in both India and in Pakistan. The Institute also recently witnessed increased student activity. ACI now has a total of eight student chapters there, and all chapters are planning ACI student competitions.

Out of all Asian regions, the Middle East has the highest regional adoption of the ACI 318 Building Code. During a meeting in Qatar last May, ACI representatives signed an agreement with the Gulf Standards Organization (GSO) to allow access to ACI 318 for all countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The Middle East is also one of the most active regions in ACI certification. Further, it has great levels of chapter activity—there are eight ACI chapters and four student chapters in the Middle East, and all have either organized or are planning to launch ACI student competitions.

In Central Asia, many large projects in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan cite ACI 318 as a reference. ACI also recently organized the first Concrete Field Testing Technician – Grade I certification session in Kazakhstan.

It is clear ACI has been omnipresent in Asia and has very solid cooperation platforms throughout the continent. ACI's challenge is to further capitalize on and engage with the concrete community in this region to advance concrete construction and learn about and codify the best practices used there to cope with the exceptional and unparalleled growth in concrete use and production.

Khaled W. Awad