Prizio Construction Inc

The Tilt-up Concrete Association (TCA) has just released their new brochure entitled, Take Pride in Your Structure.  It is the latest edition of their effort to familiarize builders, owners, and designer with the advantages of tilt-up construction.  The focus is on the creating a building you can be proud of, as demonstrated through a selection of sharp pictures of interesting projects.   Text that hits the high points is kept to a minimum.

California builders may find the idea that you must sell tilt-up as slightly amusing, but I can assure you that much of the rest of the country still needs to be convinced that tilt-up is the best way to go for many commercial low-rise applications.

Over the years, the tireless efforts of the TCA have made real progress in spreading the word about tilt-up to much of the country, but the effort needs to be sustained and greater expertise developed nationwide to bring this durable and flexible construction method to all markets.

You can get copies of this attractive brochure for $2.00 each through their web site.

The first results from the field test showcased at World of Concrete this year are now available from Concrete Construction magazine.  This is an ongoing effort to evaluate shrinkage and curling in a 60,000 square foot industrial floor employing a number of different mixes.  Fiber reinforcement received special attention in this test conducted by Scurto Cement and Concrete Construction magazine.

It is worth mentioning that the mix with 7.5 pounds of fiber per cubic yard of concrete did not produce any normal curling to speak of. The typical pattern of raised slab edges at construction joints is clearly visible with many of the other mixed, however.  All of us whose business it is to place large industrial slabs await further test results anxiously.  Next to cracking, curling is probably the biggest complaint we deal with related to industrial floors, and of course, curling and cracking are related in that curling often leads to cracking and joint spalling.

We commend Scurto and Concrete Construction magazine for their efforts.

A Reed Construction Data article released today says that non-residential construction increased in January 1020 by 20% compared to January 2009. This is encouraging news indeed. However, further into the article it notes the continuing problems that commercial developers face in obtaining funding.  Institutional buildings also face tough times as construction funding becomes mired in the financial problems of many states and cities.

Working in favor of commercial builders is the veritable mountain of cash that many banks are sitting on right now.  Banks are loath to take risks on commercial projects when the economy is still weak, but they are facing the prospect of very low returns if they continue to hoard their cash.  This pressure will eventually become serious enough to get banks to spring loose with some of that money.  The timing of all of this is very much in question, but the fundamentals are undeniable.  Banks cannot continue to survive on the miniscule returns available on super-safe investments.

Locally (Southern California) we are seeing a significant decline in the amount of work there is to bid.  There is some activity in the commercial remodel segment and hospital work continues at a reasonable pace.  But new public works projects seem to be declining, and larger private commercial projects are few and far between.

Today’s AGC Smart Brief featured an article touting the benefits to the construction industry of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) more commonly known as stimulus spending. Significant money, whatever that is these days, has been spent on infrastructure improvements with more on the way.  There is no doubt that parts of the construction industry have benefitted from this spending, but at some unknown cost to the rest of the economy.

A Wall Street Journal article mentioned later in the same brief takes a broader and more skeptical look at the same spending, mentioning the debate over how many jobs have really been created. The other problem with all of these claimed jobs saved is that the unemployment statistics have stubbornly refused to cooperate with the rosy projection and pronouncements of the White House and certain industry experts.

I would recommend reading Amity Schlae’s book, The Forgotten Man, to all who think that stimulus spending is really helping the overall economy.  I am as anxious as anyone to see the construction industry recover from this devastating downturn, but doing so at the expense of the rest of the economy is bound to be ineffective in the long run.

A meeting between the Carpenters’ Union and SoCal tilt-up contractors is set for March 3^rd, to discuss “issues of concern to both labor and management.” Needless to say, there is only one issue of concern, and that is the acute lack of work in general and tilt-up projects in particular for union signatory tilt-up contractors.

Tilt-up work in SoCal is, or rather was, so common that tilt-up contractors have their own agreement with the Carpenters’ Union.  Their wage rates for private work have traditionally been set at about 80% of the so-called prevailing wage rate.  When times were good this allowed union contractors to be reasonably competitive on private projects and still enjoy the benefits of being with the Union.  This reasonable accommodation made it fairly easy for the Union to organize contractors, which, for the most part, they successfully did. Harmony between the Union and contractors reigned for several years. However, that was in the good times.

Today work is scarce and the gap between the union carpenter under the tilt-up agreement and non-union carpenters is pretty big.  A union journeyman carpenter under the tilt-up agreement costs $37.95 for wages and benefits, not counting taxes, insurance, and other overhead items. A typical non-union carpenter can today be hired for $20 per hour with no benefits, making a gap of roughly $18 per hour. It is, as the old college professors like to say, intuitively obvious to even a casual observer that this is an unworkable situation for the union contractors.

Last year a $5 per hour wage cut was quickly dismissed by the Carpenters’ union as unsellable to the rank and file.  That issue is likely to come up again.  Also, last year there was a great deal of vitriol unleashed on the Union for allowing a Dr. Pepper facility to go to a non-union tilt-up contractor without even so much as a picket line being set up.  This year there will most likely be even more outrage about a huge 1.8 million square foot facility for Sketchers going non-union.

It promises to be a rather unpleasant meeting. Check back on March 4^th to see what happened.

An article today at ENR.com clarifies this year’s World of Concrete attendance numbers.  It appears that my previously speculation of a 30% decline is off a bit.  The drop from last year was 16% according to this article, but the decline from the peak year of 2007 was 40%.  That is a pretty big hit, to say the least.

Vendor attendance was also off, as many opted to not come, and many others scaled down their presence.  This made for a lot more elbow room in the convention halls, which I didn’t mind at all.

In the midst of this the mood was at least moderately upbeat.  Certainly I did not see the widespread “you look like your dog just died” kind of thing that is so prevalent in southern California. Maybe it was just because the most pessimistic people didn’t even bother to come, but it was nice to change the tone of the conversation to “how are we going to do things better,” from “I wonder if we will ever get any more work?”

Ed Sullivan of the Portland Cement Association is anticipating a 5% increase in cement consumption for this year, largely driven by stimulus (American recovery and Reinvestment Act) spending according to a recent article.  The prime beneficiaries will be highway and infrastructure work.  Housing and non-residential build construction are expected to remain slow for this year.

With construction unemployment running at about double the overall national average, this is welcome news, but hardly enough to heal the deep wounds of this current recession.  Proposed additional stimulus spending of around $80 billion is likewise unlikely to provide the needed cure.  With commercial lending still almost impossible to secure, it seems that we are in for a long, hard slog out of this situation.

A  Wall Street Journal article today tells of the woes of banks and their commercial loan portfolios, but one wonders, as the article does, how the banks’ problems are going to get better if the unemployment situation does not improve, and, on the other hand, how unemployment can get better if the banks will not or cannot make commercial loans.

I think that the answer is that banks are not going to save us, but will themselves need to be saved.  The money to jumpstart the economy must come from somewhere else, namely capital infusions from investors.  They, however, will remain on the sidelines until the expected return on investment improves, and the quickest and most effective way to do that is to cut taxes. Too bad too few people in Washington DC understand that.

Now that everyone is back from this year’s WOC, it’s time to sum it all up.

WOC, as always, is an amazing source of information about concrete and construction in general. There are so many people there who know so much; it never ceases to amaze me what knowledge is available there just for the asking.

The big theme this year seemed to be sustainability and everything related to it. This is really becoming an important topic. Concrete contractors need to get educated about it or be prepared to get run over by those who have.

Polished concrete floors and the equipment needed to produce them seemed to be everywhere this year. With the new equipment now on the market it is possible to make some really attractive floors at reasonable costs. I’m not so sure I’d want to try and walk across a wet polished concrete floor, though.

Attendance was down as expected. I have not seen official numbers, but rumors hint at a drop-off of about 30% compared to last year in both attendees and vendors. Clearly many of the usual vendors were missing and many others had scaled back. Bucking the trend were Hilti and Wacker Neuson. They both had large displays set up and were attracting a lot of attention. I liked a number of Hilti’s new products, including a cordless drill that could be used to replace a tilt-up favorite, the TE-2.

Ford showcased their new Work Force options for the F-series trucks. These include a built-in computer, a tool tracking system, a locking cable system, and fleet management software, all priced very reasonably. Their relationship with their customers has also benefitted considerably from not having taken bailout money. The emotional impact of that will help Ford and hurt GM and Chrysler for years to come. My prediction is that in 5 years it will no longer be Ford vs. Chevy. It will be Ford vs. Toyota.

Thursday morning at World of Concrete I had to chose between the Slab Shrinkage and Curling breakfast of the Tilt-up Concrete Association breakfast. Tough choice, but since I have been to many TCA events, I decided to try something new in hopes of learning how to construct better slabs.
The breakfast was a presentation of the preliminary results of a large field test conducted by Scurto Cement Construction and Concrete Construction magazine. Many others participated, but those were the main players. The purpose was to test a large number of different mixes on a real life floor and see which ones produced the least amount of shrinkage and curling.
Many pieces of useful information came out of the event, but it really ended up trying to do too much with too many people in too little time. The promised results were not really presented in a coherent and complete way, leaving us all a bit confused as we headed home. We perhaps expected too much in that regard. Concrete Construction magazine will be running a series of articles in the coming months going into depth on the many things learned from this important project. So in all fairness to them, I think we should be patient and wait for the promised articles.
Some early takeaways from the breakfast include these thoughts.
• The easiest and least expensive thing to do to reduce shrinkage is to use larger aggregate.
• Reducing the total water in a mix design is much more important and not at all the same as decreasing the water/cement ratio.
• Larger doses (around 7.5 pounds per cubic yard) of synthetic fibers seem to be very helpful in reducing curling. More on this coming up in the promised articles.
• Curling is essentially shrinkage of the top portion of the slab due to the uneven distribution of moisture in the slab. Thus a slab that shrinks less will likely curl less, all other things being equal.
• A burnished finish will help to reduce curling by reducing the amount of moisture coming out of the top surface of the slab and thus leading to a more even distribution of moisture in the slab.
• And finally, concrete slabs crack, shrink and curl. It really comes down to controlling these things to produce acceptable results, and to creating realistic expectations in our customers.

World of Concrete kicked off on Monday (2/1/10) with a number of seminars.  Appropriately, the day began with a session on green or sustainable construction.  Sustainability is the new buzzword in construction these days. Everyone wants to learn more about it, and those already in the know are in big demand. It is not that builders have suddenly become ardent tree huggers, it is much more that they can see an emerging trend in business and would rather find a way to make money off of it than get run over by it. We are, if anything, a pragmatic bunch.

Seminar presenter, Richard Szecsy, gave us a good introduction to the world of sustainability. His presentations are available online at his company web site and may be downloaded for no charge. www.lattimorematerials.com He defines Sustainability as Performance exceeding Function over Time. To put a little more flesh on what looks like a rather boney definition, let’s look at each term.

Performance is the measurable performance of a building in regards to energy use, emissions, water use, water runoff, and overall impact on the environment. These items all have costs associated with them either directly to the building owner or to the surrounding community.  If the desired performance is achieved, then money is saved over the life of the building.

Every building has a purpose, a Function that is the minimum level of usability that the structure must possess.  This is defined by the owner and designed by the architect.

Time becomes vitally important in evaluating the performance of the building, because the whole point of sustainability is to achieve a superior level of performance over time – the life of the building.  Building green generally involves investing more up front to save more over the life of the project. Thus time is what redeems the extra investment.

Finally, let’s not get diverted by some of the more dubious claims about anthropogenic global warming. Sustainability is still mostly about the efficient use of resources. It is about saving money in the long run through smart design and construction.  Because of that, it is not going away like some passing fad.  It is here to stay.