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Charting the Future

6/1/2018

Isaac Asimov led a new wave of science fiction in the post-war era. His books were immensely popular and fitting for the emerging space-age generation. Asimov was in the business of imagining a bold and exciting future as he wrote about space, aliens, and time travel. He was so good at it that a new term was coined for him—futurist. He was a futurist who not only predicted the future but who gave the future life through his books and short stories. His avid readers marveled to think that Asimov’s world might someday become their reality. Now that time has passed, it is interesting to consider what Asimov predicted in 1964 about the year 2014. He foresaw gadgetry to relieve people of tedious jobs, kitchen units to make automeals, huge 3-D televisions, nuclear power, solar arrays, self-driving cars, video telephones, cell phones, and road-building factories. All came to be.

Futurists like Isaac Asimov may be rare, but I see many future-oriented leaders making impacts in our industry. ACI has been profoundly affected by a 10-year run of planning activities that have challenged ACI members to think about changes in the world around. The ACI Strategic Plan in place today dates from 2013, and it led to a task group that produced the Outlook 2030 report. This report contemplates societal megatrends that affect ACI. As it identified these external forces, the task group articulated a vision for ACI in the year 2030, along with an action plan to reach that vision.

Strategic planning has created a proliferation of like-named reports that draw our attention to challenges of the future. ACI produced Outlook 2030; NAE came up with The Engineer of 2020; ASCE has The Vision for Civil Engineering in 2025; and the American Society of Concrete Contractors is leading the Concrete 2029 initiative, with the assistance of the ACI Foundation’s Strategic Development Council. These reports are profound and insightful, and you should expect to read more about them in my upcoming President’s Memos.

Our friends at the American Institute of Architects (AIA) sponsored an exercise that produced A Vision for Future Buildings. This effort interests me because I have always admired how architects bring such creativity to the built environment. The AIA team envisions that future buildings will emphasize customizable and personalized spaces. Highly adaptable and reconfigurable space allows for schemes where offices turn into restaurants and then into residential housing with ease. The AIA foresees that the future of buildings will be led by advances in materials science and manufacturing technologies that feature modularity and adaptive components. Buildings of the future will bring transportation into the urban setting more effectively, and we will see multimodal transportation integrated into the building envelope. Buildings will be more resilient and resistant to earthquakes and terror threats. ACI needs to position itself to thrive in this future.

Predicting the future is an engaging parlor game—anyone can play! In that spirit, I would like to offer up predictions for 50 years from now. Some of these calls are easy. In 50 years, self-driving electric cars will dominate and drones will be common for delivery of goods and services. Trends underway today suggest that urban areas will be denser and more efficient. Beyond that, research groups are working the kinks out of 3-D printing of concrete structures, and so I would predict that a great amount of construction will be accomplished with robots.

Durability will be a relentless focus throughout the next 50 years, and so concrete with a 100-year service life will be the norm. The expansion of wealth in society and advances in materials and methods will cause construction to be effectively less expensive than at any point in history. Resource depletion may still be debated, but it will not limit us because we will be masters of recycling, efficiency, and sustainable building practices. Structural health monitoring will be incorporated into every building and bridge, with an exciting generation of sensors far beyond our experience today.

ACI codes for building and construction must keep pace with these advances, supporting improved materials and form factors increasingly free of rectilinear constraints. Shell structures and organic forms will give rise to new possibilities for architectural expression. Structural designers will seamlessly harmonize a wide array of material classes using ever more powerful design tools.

What is your vision for the future? How can ACI change to achieve your vision?

David A. Lange