Good afternoon. Welcome to PCI's webinar series. Today's presentation is Architectural Certification Program, Survey Guide, and Status Report. My name is Nicole Clout, Marketing Manager at PCI, and I will be your moderator for this session. Before I turn the controls over to your presenters for today, I have a few introductory items to note. Earlier today, we sent a reminder email to all registered attendees that included the handouts of today's presentation. The handouts for this webinar can be found in the Handouts section of your Webinar Toolbox pane. If you cannot download the handouts, please email pcimarketing at marketing at pci.org. Note that all attending lines are muted. The GoToWebinar Toolbox has an area for you to raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you will receive a private chat message from me. If you have a question, please type it into the Questions pane where I will be keeping track of them and will read the questions to the presenters during the 30-minute Q&A period. Also, a pop-up survey will appear after the webinar ends. Today's presentation will be recorded and uploaded to the PCI eLearning Center. Questions related to specific products or publications will be addressed at the end of the presentation. Today's presentation is non-CEU and not endorsed by AIA. Our presenters for today are Randy Wilson, Director of Architectural Precast Systems at PCI, and Noel Morales, Certification Coordinator at PCI. I will now hand the controls over so we can begin our presentation. Thank you, Nicole, and thanks, everybody, for attending this webinar today. I'll start by apologizing in advance if it sounds like we are reading a script. It's because we are. The reason is because those who helped put this presentation together wanted to make sure that the messaging is clear, concise, and we address many of the questions PCI staff and Ross Bryant Associates has encountered over the last few years. Additionally, as Nicole mentioned, we will have a 30-minute or longer Q&A session at the end of this program, so please send over your questions via the chat. If we don't get to your question today, then please send your question to projectsurveysatpci.org, and we will address your questions individually. So today's agenda is as follows. First, we're going to speak about the current status of the Architectural Certification Program, the timeline from 2018 through 2024, interpretations of that program, key features in the ACRB, AA and AB surcharges. Noelle will go through the entire project survey process step-by-step, how to request a survey, your survey dashboard, and survey results. I'll get back on the line to speak about the site evaluation process, and then we'll have that 30-minute summary and question session at the end. Most everything we'll discuss is rooted in the PCI Architectural Certification Program Supplemental Requirements document, and it's intended for precast producer members only. It may be helpful to download a copy as we go through this presentation. You can quickly download the document at pci.org slash arc cert. The document is available to the general public, and we encourage you to provide a copy for your internal sales, estimators, project managers, plant managers, and quality control managers. In the dark blue box is the link to the document. When you hear me say Supplemental Requirement or the document, this is what I'm referring to. So let's start by reviewing the overall timeline of this program. The reason we're reviewing this is to define the every two-year language included in the document. The goal is not to audit a plant every two years. The goal is for each plant to earn key feature points during each audit cycle and maintain the required total key feature points after every audit cycle, which we call the rolling audit process. The rolling audit process began after the program's first two years of existence. But let's go back and start at the beginning. The Supplemental Requirements were jointly developed by the Architectural Certification Committee, the Architectural Committee, and the Quality Activities Council. The concept of the new category started in 2017. The writing began in 2018 and final approval via these committees along with the Plant Certification Committee and the Quality Activities Council occurred in late 2019. So the point in that is that the program was a two and a half year effort involving multiple committees and councils. The document was published in 2019. The first milestone was April 1st, 2020, where the precast plants were to declare their Group A category. Remember, each plant declared their category. The category is not based on the auditor declaring the plant's capabilities. Therefore, the categories AA, AB, AC, AD, and AT are not good, better, best. They were not determined by the auditor. They were determined by each individual plant. Referring to the chart on the screen, the initial audits were to be conducted between July 2020 and June 2021 with the intent of the program beginning on July 1st, 2021. The chart on the screen shows the initial audit timeline. This is the period where plants were to make three mock-ups. The first audit period was predicted to occur the last half of 2021. The chart also shows the audit cycles from July 2021 until today, June 2024. Each plant should have six audits from the program go live date until June 30th, 2024. However, we had this funny thing called COVID. The pandemic limited the auditing company from traveling to certain parts of North America and therefore could not audit all plants. This caused the great delay of 2021. So, the program did not officially start until October of 2021. And then because of this great delay, the first full four audit cycles for the program were actually from January 2022 to December 31st of 2023. Starting the program in October of 21 meant that some plants had their first audit before the program quote unquote officially began and others did not have received their first audit until January or February of 2022. In an attempt to get all the plants into a regular cycle, the quote unquote first two years, the committee instituted the Great Extension. Okay, so the Great Extension gave every plant one additional cycle to obtain the key feature points without scheduling and paying for a special audit. The additional cycle extension did a few good things. One, it gets every plant back onto a regular audit cycle. Second, it gave all the plants an opportunity to see how the key feature point system works. And third, it uncovered areas of the program that need to be modified. The bad things, it exposed the fact that the market is not adopting the program in the specifications. And frankly, the plants as a whole are not being insistent on the change. But we'll cover that in future slides. So, with the great delay and the Great Extension, the initial two-year cycle actually turned out to be a three-year cycle or six audits, six full audits. So, the program has been part of the committee discussion since 2017 or before. That is over six plus years and 12 full committee meetings. So, the information we're going to cover today should not be new. It is just to clarify a lot of the questions we have been receiving and fill in some of the unanticipated blanks the process did not receive. So, let's get into those details. So, referring back to the Supplemental Requirement document, specifically page 1-5 and section 1.3.2 recertification, the program's goal was not to remake mock-ups every two years. The vision is an ongoing rolling audit process. This was clarified in several of the Architectural Certification Committee meetings we have every year. The rolling audit process aligns with the architect's desire to ensure that the producers bidding a job possess the capabilities to produce the project-specific aesthetic features. The producer should be demonstrating these capabilities continually, not just a mock-up every two years. From the producer's side, the practical approach is to earn key feature points as projects naturally flow through your plant during your regular auditing visits. In the case where this does not occur, a producer can provide mock-ups. And the mock-ups are the exception, they are not the rule. So, taking highlights from this section 1.3.2 recertification from the document, proficiency in a certification category must be verified every two years. The committee used the term proficiency as a catch-all term for categories that are evaluated on more than just the key features, specifically the AB category for surveys, the AA category for surveys and site evaluation requirements. Second quote here is, a requisite number of key features must be demonstrated over the course of a two-year period to maintain certification in the category. And if the plant demonstrates compliance with the requirements of key features, recertification in the category can occur earlier than the two years. So, I think we all can see that as time passes, key feature points are dropped from the past audit cycles, others are earned during the current audit cycles. Therefore, every plant will be on a different calendar cycle. But every plant is on a four audit cycle. Hence why we will be striking the two-year language from future revisions of this document. In discussions with some of our plants, they have shared some of their strategies to maintain their points. First is to continually monitor your points. At least one person within your plant should be responsible for understanding the process and know where you stand regarding the rolling auditing process at all times. Second, as new projects are awarded, it is recommended to cross-reference the aesthetic requirements with the key features on your audit report. You should know the general time frame when the auditors will be coming around. Will the next project with the key feature be in production when they are predicted to arrive? If you predict that the auditors will arrive before the project is producing, then maybe make a mock-up for the project and include the key features you need for the points. Mock-ups should be part of your process to establish realistic expectations with your architect on every single project anyway. So this allows you to kill two birds with one stone. But if you predict a project will ship before the auditor arrives, then it is suggested to make an extra piece. Typically an 8-foot by 12-foot piece showing the key features will be acceptable. If you have any questions, then send a drawing to the PCI Quality Department and they will give you some guidance. Now this may begin a little bit too far down into the weeds, but since I have had this discussion with a few producers, I thought I would attempt to give an example of the four rolling audit cycle process and how it affects the entire program. I hope this helps and doesn't confuse, but if I do confuse you, then send over a clarifying question in the chat. So let's follow the bouncing ball. So on the screen it states, each audit cycle the auditors only provide credit for points earned during the current cycle plus the previous three audits. You can only earn a point for a specific key feature one time in four cycles. So let's look at the example. Looking at the chart, a plant earns their points during the initial mock-up. In this case, nine points to be an AV producer between 720 and 621. Using the great delay and the great extension, the producer can pass their audits without achieving any key feature points until their first audit in 2024. If the producer makes a new set of mock-ups and gets all nine points during their first audit of 2024, they retain their points, they retain their certification for another four cycles, which is, quote-unquote, two years. However, that's not the program's intent. The intent is to get points at every audit using actual production pieces and only making a mock-up when needed to maintain point totals on that rolling four audit cycle process. So what does the scenario look like? When the auditor arrives, the plant should inform the auditor of the Group A products in the plant and identify key feature demonstrated on those products. Use the example on the screen. During cycle two, the auditor observed two mixes and a large return. The plant earned two points. The original nine points are still in play. On cycle three, the auditor verified four points. However, in this scenario, two of the points were the same as cycle two, which were two mixes and a large return. You only get credit for key features that were not verified in previous audits. Now, the process continues until audit six, the great extension. At that time, the plant only gets credit for four audits. That is the current audit, cycle six, and the three previous cycles, three, four, and five. In the scenario depicted, the plant predicted a point deficit. Therefore, they proactively made a mock-up for cycle six to get the required points. So how does that make sense? Well, in my scenario, a plant had nine points, but are losing two from cycle two. They predicted that the product in the plant was going to give them one point, but that point is the same as the one that they earned in cycle three, four, or five. Therefore, they actually needed two points. So they made a mock-up that included the two key features not previously earned in the last three cycles. And that got them up to the total of nine. Now, some of you followed this hypothetical and some did not, but that's okay. The purpose of the example is to reinforce that missing the required key feature points by one or two points can happen to the best of us. And that is why it's crucial to fully understand the process and stay ahead of the process. So what happens if you don't achieve the required points for the supplemental requirements? Well, we have established the Architectural Certification Review Board. What is that? Well, the ACRB, Architectural Certification Review Board, is fully described on page 1-6, section 1.4. And their role and responsibilities are defined on page 1-9 in the Architectural Plant Certification Process Overview. So what are the highlights of the ACRB? Well, the ACRB includes five individuals, an architect, a producer representative, a site evaluator, an auditing organization representative, and PCI's Director of Architectural Precast Systems. But the ACRB's responsibilities are limited. They are limited to the following. They review the results of the plant audits, including the summary of demonstrated key features. They also review the results of surveys and site evaluations if applicable. And they make a certification recommendation to PCI staff who will make the final certification decision in accordance with PCI Policy 20. So again, what does this mean exactly and what can a producer expect? So a plant can expect one of the following most likely scenarios. Number one, pass your audit and achieve all key feature points. Unless some unusual circumstances define, the ACRB will recommend the plant to maintain current certification. Obviously, this is where you want to be. Passing your audit with all key feature points, it hands the control back in your own destiny. Otherwise, the ACRB will be forced to decide on your behalf. Second is pass your audit, but you do not achieve all key feature points. The ACRB will make a recommendation per the supplemental requirements. For the majority of plants, the ACRB will recommend two options. One is to maintain your current category by making a mock-up that demonstrates the required key feature points and schedule for and pay for a special audit. The other is to voluntarily move to a less complex certification category. Now we have had plants request a voluntary category change. So when a plant requests to move from a more complex to a less complex category, the ACRB will recommend one or two paths forward. One is to make the mock-ups for the new category per the original certification process. The other is to move seamlessly. That would mean the rolling four audit key features move forward and the plant will be audited with the new category criteria. When a plant requests to move from a less complex category to a more complex category, there could be some extenuating circumstances, but the most likely recommendation from the ACRB will be to make the original three mock-ups for the new category. Now there's always the case where a plant could fail the plant audit. In that case, PCI staff will follow the process as outlined in policy 20. But wait, there's more. What happens if the plant does not agree and objects with the ACRB recommendation? Well, the plant can request an administrative appeal and follow the program's appeal process as outlined on page 1-7, section 1.5 of the Supplemental Requirements and figure 2 on page 2-4. The appeals process culminates with a final decision from PCI's Director of Quality Programs. The timeline for the appeals starts from the time the ACRB makes their recommendation. Remember, the ACRB meets once a month, so a plant should be fully aware of their current audit results and key feature status before PCI does. It is suggested that a plant use this time to determine a path forward and share that decision with PCI Quality Department. They will include that decision in their report to the ACRB. If you decide to appeal the ACRB recommendation, the appeals timeline is as follows. You'll have 30 days to submit a written appeal to the PCI Director of Quality Programs. That person will have 15 days for the reply to the producer. If the producer does not agree with that person's reply, a hearing request can be submitted. Then we have 30 days for the Certification Appeal Board to hear the appeal and another 15 days for the final ruling. So we realize that the entire process could take upwards to 120 days from your audit date to final appeal decision. This process should not be used as a grace period, but as a process to address a genuine objection to the audit or ACRB's recommendation. The plant does not lose their plant certification or current Group A category certification until the process has concluded. I will read that again. The plant does not lose their plant certification or current Group A category certification until the process has concluded. If you are an AA or AB producer, but appeal their recommendation to move to AC or AD, you retain your AA or AB until the Certification Appeals process makes their final ruling. The intent is a plant has plenty of time to proactively determine their own path. A plant may declare on their own they would like to move to an AC or AD category, and that's fine. We can definitely accommodate that. The last two subjects that I would like to address before Noelle explains the step-by-step survey process is the AA and AB category surcharges and the fact that few projects are being specified with the new categories. So the reason for AA and AB, as best as I can gather from those instituting the program and the architects who are insistent on a revision, is to better understand a precast producer's capabilities and to minimize the architect's risk in specifying precast. Some architects even stated that they were not going to use precast anymore unless we develop a method of differentiating producers. So don't shoot the messenger, but a producer that delivers warehouses possesses a completely different skill set than one who's focusing on parking garages or highly complex architectural enclosures. This isn't a good, better, best. It's not better. It's just different. So one of the program initiatives that the architects insisted on is customer feedback. Therefore, the program includes a project survey component and a site evaluation component. The committee realized that these features were extremely beneficial to the industry and a vital part of the new certification program. So much so, they were willing to self-fund this program. The committee task group defined the cost of being $4,000 to $5,000 for the survey and an additional $4,000 to $5,000 for the site evaluation. The exact language in the document from 2019 reads, this surcharge will be assessed to category AA and AB certified plants, beginning with the 2021-2022 fiscal certification year, which begins July 1st, 2021. Although the exact surcharge has not been finalized, it will be in the range of $8,000 to $10,000 for each category AA plant and $4,000 to $5,000 for each category AB plant. There are no annual surcharges applicable to plants certified in the AC, AD, or AD categories beyond the standard PCI certification fees. So to better understand these costs, first, the amounts were defined and presented at the October 11th, 2018 committee meeting. They were clearly defined in the document, voted upon by your peers, and was agreed to when you declared your category. The costs include all expenses required to execute the AA and AB program without knowing the actual time required or the specific duties to accomplish the task. I can attest that PCI staff has done a fantastic job of developing an automated process, which Noelle will explain here in just a couple of moments, and will save your staff countless hours requesting, monitoring, and collating surveys. Remember, these are critical to prove your proficiency and to maintain your AA and AB certification. I'm sure some of you have attempted to survey your customers on your own. Unless you have a very large marketing budget and most likely discovered the cost to be prohibitive, the survey is a great tool to garner valuable feedback from your immediate customers and improve your quality and management processes. Furthermore, positive results will provide you and our industry with some wonderful marketing collateral to share with future customers. So it is important that we speak about the program execution process. As earlier mentioned, the market is very slow in adopting change. The new certification program is a very big and somewhat confusing the change needed. Slow adoption is an ongoing challenge of all things we have to overcome. We do that by implementing new internal processes, providing tools for our frontline personnel. Yes, I'm talking about sales, estimating, project managers, contract managers, et cetera, and measure against past performances. So the process starts and ends with you, the producer. It's your program. So here are things that the producer should be incorporating into their day-to-day lives. Local promotion. Being in sales all or most of my career, it's always nice to have something new and meaningful to get in front of the customer. Proactively educating your customer is a great marketing and sales tactic. Design assist. Another reason a customer should call you early in a design is to ensure they are specifying the proper category and what does that really mean. The key feature checklist can be used as a great design guide. Accurate categorization. This shows a high level of professionalism and great example of how flat precast with simple detailing can yield a very attractive finished product. Not every job has to be AA and AB. Price for information. This is the perfect time to get the customer's attention. It's when they are asking you for a price. Clarifying the category should be part of every project bidding process. Include clarification on quotes. If it's too late for an RFI or if it wasn't defined, include the category clarification on the quote. If you can make clarifications, then do it. Include accurate category on contracts. If the project still doesn't have a category other than A1, this is the last attempt to get it right. And then request a survey at job closeout. All projects have closeout processes. At least if you want to get paid, you're going to have a closeout process. So if you're an AA or AB producer, the survey request process should be part of your everyday closeout project. You're probably saying, well, what is PCI doing? We're a producer. We have to do it all. What's PCI doing? And a few producers have asked me that question, point blank, and in not a very happy tone. Well, PCI is limited exposure to your customer. The ones designing the project and writing the spec, in fact, most producers do not want PCI staff or regional directors talking to your customers. For some obvious and some not so obvious reasons, the best people to consult with your customer is you. With the understanding, let's look at what PCI can execute. National and regional promotion, internal and external clarification and support, managing the auditing process, manage the certification and recertification process, manage the survey process, manage the site evaluation process, and oversee and facilitate committee work. And I will add to the, and I will add to update the body of knowledge and support of the program as to ensure we have written support to you, your customers, and the industry at large. So basically, PCI creates the awareness. We manage the process. So some more facts. The producer benefits the most from this program. Therefore, you should be the ones utilizing the tools provided by PCI to develop the relationships, educate the customers, and create more opportunities. So all of these tools we just talked about that PCI has generated, and when I say PCI, I mean committees, task groups, and PCI staff. These tools are all located at pci.org slash arccert. We have producer resources and designer resources. I won't read through all of them today, but I suggest that your staff spend the time to review and determine the best way to use those to promote the use of architectural precast in your market. So as I stated before, I trust that my presentation has given you some background on the program, some insights on what we are seeing from PCI's perspective, and has reinforced the process's long-term goals. We are all going to be better off if we embrace this program and make it part of our everyday world, or as some say, our new normal. So to summarize the current status, number one, we are mining the gaps. Over the past few years, we have uncovered some unanticipated activities. Additionally, committee members, PCI staff, RBA, and others have had to collaborate to address these events. The obvious one is COVID, and the others include defining plant-specific circumstances that were not foreseen in the document. Second, we're now in the trenches, folks. It's up to you to discuss the program with your customers when they have a project in hand. Accepting projects with the A1 spec or just a PCI-certified spec will undermine this entire process. As such, AA and AB producers will either continue to pay the surcharge with no return, or they will drop to AC where there is no surcharge. Third, updating the requirement documents. The current subliminal requirement document for 2019 focuses on the program rollout primarily. PCI staff and the committees will be working on reviewing the document to reflect the active program. So this seems like a lot of work, but being eyeball deep in this and having 35 years of in-the-trenches experience, I'm confident that this program, worked to its fullest, will differentiate PCI-certified plants from our direct competition, which is other enclosure systems. So with that, I'll turn the controls over to Noel Morales, who will walk you through the automated survey process and your plant-specific survey dashboard. Thank you, Randy. Hello, my name is Noel Morales, the certification coordinator for PCI. If you have any questions about PCI's quality programs, the best contact is to email qualityprograms at pci.org. Your email will be routed to the most appropriate PCI staff member and is the quickest way to get your questions answered. Today I will be taking you through the step-by-step project survey process. If you have any questions specific to the project survey, you can email them to projectsurveys at pci.org. If you have any questions that we can answer today, please place in the chat box. We will stay online until all questions are answered. PCI has developed three tools to help you through the project survey process. This webinar, which will be recorded and posted on PCI's eLearning Center for members only, a project survey user guide for plant contacts, and a project survey program FAQ sheet. The latter two will be posted to the website and are included as a handout for today's webinar. Please download now and make available to your plant survey contact person. Let's start by defining what projects need to be surveyed. To maintain compliance with certification requirements, all AA and AB certified plants are mandated to complete project survey requests for projects specified in the AA or AB category with more than 5,000 square feet of wall panel. You can read more about this in the Supplemental Requirements document, specifically sections 2.1 and 3.1. Before we get into the details of the procedure, I felt it was best to provide an overview of the process. Of course, there are many variables to the procedure, but if everything goes right, the following will happen. Step 1. The plant is to designate an architectural survey contact. That is an internal term that just means the plant-specific precast producer contact or producer contact. Each plant can have more than one producer contact and one individual can be a contact to be more than one plant. We will dive into each of these steps next. Step 2. Is when the producer contact will need to set up a PCI account via PCI.org, review the survey process, and test the system. At this point, there is nothing to do until a project reaches the substantial completion stage. Step 3. When a project is completed, it is time to submit a survey. The producer contact submits a request for survey via your personal account page. Step 4. PCI staff reviews a request for survey for accuracy. We are looking for the complete contact information that the project meets the AAB 5000 square foot criteria. If the criteria is met, then PCI staff releases this request for survey to the architect and GCCM. Step 6. In the ideal world, the architect and the GC and CM will receive an email notification from PCI to complete the survey and they stop everything to complete the survey. When the survey is completed, PCI staff review the survey results, send the survey results to the producer, contact, and post it to the producer's dashboard. As stated, there are a lot of variables to the process. So let's go through the various scenarios step by step to address the possibilities. The first step in the process is for the precast producer to identify one or more individuals who will have access to the producer's plant-specific dashboard. The obvious question is, how does someone become the survey contact? The only PCI staff can assign the contacts to the system and accept designations only from the plant's PCI administrator or administrators. Plants should email projectsurveys at pci.org with the person or individuals they would like to be the contact to complete the survey request and review survey results. There is no limit to the number of survey contacts a plant can assign. This may be sensitive information and it is recommended that each plant strategically choose their architectural survey contacts. Strategies may include a project executive or general manager, an administrative person who has access to sensitive information, project managers, personnel who provide final closeout documentation. The only person at the plant that can add or delete an architectural survey contact is the plant's designated PCI administrator. Currently all survey activity will be accessible on your dashboard indefinitely. Please submit these names by July 15 so we can get them set up in the system. You can submit names or email me at projectsurveys at pci.org. Be certain to include the following information when submitting the contact. First and last name, title, company, plant address, email, phone, preferably cell. Remember you can have more than one architectural survey contact, but they will have access to all surveys and they must be submitted by your plant's PCI administrator. If you don't know who that is, contact membership at pci.org. Once the architectural survey contacts for your plant are identified, PCI staff will do the following. Send the producer contact an email which provides them with the steps to set up an account if they don't have one and provide links to the user guide and survey FAQ. Add a blue button to the producer contacts PCI account page. We will show you a screenshot here in a second. That button gives you access to your plant's project survey dashboard and gives you the ability to submit a survey. The producer contact should set up their account and make sure the blue button is present and is operational. If you have any questions, then please contact PCI. We will want to proactively ensure that the software is working for everyone. If we do not find a glitch that needs attention, we want to resolve it now and not wait until surveys are flying in from everywhere. At this point, you are ready to submit a survey and there is nothing more for you to do. All you have to do is sit and wait for the AA or AB project to reach substantial completion. When you are ready to submit a survey and you forgot what to do, you can refer to the User Guide and FAQ. We will update those from time to time. To access Project Surveys, the survey contact will log into www.pci.org slash sign in, then click on My Account. Once logged into your account, then click on the Project Survey Dashboard button. After you click on the Project Survey Dashboard button, it will bring you to the List of Member Plans for Surveys screen. If you have access to multiple plans, all of those plans will be listed here. Most producer contacts will only have one plan to choose from. Click on the plan that is requesting the survey. This will then bring you to the dashboard. In the dashboard, you will see several sections. One section will show surveys pending PCI staff review. These are surveys requested but not yet been reviewed by PCI staff and released to the architect and GC. Another section shows your survey will still be in process. These are surveys requested that have been released to the architect and GC but not have yet been completed. And the last section will show you surveys that have been closed. These are surveys requested that have been either completed or not completed. If the survey request was completed by both the architect and GC, then the survey results are available. Notice the blue button, Project Survey Request Form. Click on this to begin initiating your survey request. The Project Survey Request Form allows the producer contact to enter relevant information for PCI staff to review and release the request for survey to the architect and the GC. The user guide has a list of all the required information to be included in the request for survey. So, before you start the process, refer to the user guide and have the information ready. On the next few slides, we'll walk through the survey form. Where you see MCPL test, you will see your company and the plant name. For example, if your company is Major Concrete and you have three plants, you will see Major Concrete Plant 1 or Major Concrete-City-State. Under producer information, enter producer contact name and email into the appropriate white box. If multiple plants supply food products to this project, enter the plant name and location here. If not, then leave the plant blank. Next is to complete the information under project information, including the project certification category. This is the category in which the project was specified. It should be either AA or AB. The next box is to list any other certification categories specified on the project. For example, stairs would not be a Group A category. Or if there were interior shear walls, those may be category AC, AD, or Group C spec. Input the project name. We know that a lot of project change names or have a nickname during construction that we refer to. Insert the name from the drawing title page or cover of the specification book. Same with the address lines. You may not have a building or street number, but you will have a city, state, and postal code to include. Continuing with the form, as you scroll down, you will see information for the architect and GCCM. The contact names for each of these should be the firm's manager for the project. For the architect, it should be the designer or project architect, preferably the individual that approved the samples, mock-ups, and visited your plant from time to time to inspect panels. For the GCCM, the contact person is the individual who holds the highest position for the project, typically a project executive or project manager on site. The assumption is that the contact person will either complete the survey or refer to the most appropriate person in their company. If you are in doubt, proactively inform your contact person at these firms about the need for a survey. Have them identify the person to complete the survey and encourage them to honestly evaluate the process. You will need to enter the company and the contact person's name along with the company address and the person's email to submit a survey request. When you continue to scroll down the survey request page, you will see the last few questions that include the erector information. You will be asked if the erection scope was in your work, what the erector, a PCI certified erector, and was the PCI certified erector required by the project specifications. These are all simple yes-no questions. Regardless of the answers, please include the name of the erector. If the precast erector was not in your scope and you don't know who erected, then you can leave the box blank. However, you must most likely know who erected the precast and it is helpful to the process if you can enter the name of the company or the entity who installed the precast. The last few questions pertain to the non-PCI certified erectors. Why was a non-PCI certified erector used and who made the decision to use the non-PCI certified erector? Remember, the survey is for AA and AB certified producers. One of the requirements is to use the PCI certified erector. If the erector is not PCI certified and that the decision was not under your control, this is the place to share the reason behind the decision. That is all. You can type in the security code and submit. So you have submitted a survey. What happens next? When a survey is submitted by the producer contact, PCI staff will review the information provided. If we see any abnormalities or missing information, we will contact you for clarification. If all information is correct and in line with the requirements, the survey is released to the architect and GCCM contacts. If the survey is not completed after one week, a reminder is sent to the contacts, including the producer contact. This process repeats itself two more times. Any survey not returned after the third week, then the survey is closed. The plant contact is informed that the survey is closed with no response and the project is posted to the dashboard as it closed with no response. This is where a lot of different scenarios can take place. Instead of going through all of the scenarios, I will just share that PCI staff has considered most of these scenarios and have contingencies plans to resolve. The most common contingency plan includes PCI staff overriding the process, extending the survey timeline, or reopening the project-specific survey to accommodate your customers. To close the process, PCI staff will review the survey results and physically close the survey. If the survey results are favorable, meaning you passed, then PCI staff will send the producer's survey contact the survey results via email from PCI's system. If the survey results are unfavorable, then PCI staff will email the results to the survey contacts with further instructions. Survey contacts can log in to the project survey dashboard and navigate to the closed surveys to view the completed survey results at any time. Before I turn the controls back to Randy, I wanted to do a quick review of some of the highlights. Number one, the process from a precaster's perspective is very simple. If a project contains over 5,000 square foot of AA or AB specified products per the supplemental requirements, the project requires a survey. If you are an AA or AB producer, I would recommend that you review the document for the specific requirements and review the sample survey from in Chapter 7 of this document. The survey process is all automatic, so don't use that form. The key for you, the producer, is to gather the required survey information, ensure that you have the correct contact person at the architect firm and the GCCM firm are listed and submit the request. PCI does the rest. If you have any questions, we have resources for you. Those include this webinar that will be recorded and posted at PCI.org eLearningCenter, a PDF user guide and FAQ page. If you cannot find your answer in there, then contact us at projectsurveys at PCI.org. I will now hand the controls back to Randy. Thank you. Thank you, Noel. Before we go to the question and answer period, I wanted to outline the certification program site evaluation component. The site evaluation process is for Category AA producers only and is clearly defined in the Supplement Requirements on page 2-3, Section 2.6, Site Evaluation Process. The requirement is for an independent evaluator to visit a completed project and assess the project's conformance to PCI Manual 117 Acceptability of Appearance Criteria. The assessment is for one project per year. It is not for every AA project produced by an AA producer. I state that because an architect may request a site survey. Site surveys for a specific project cannot be requested at this time. The project selected will be based on the project survey results and selected by the ACRB. This is a requirement of the program and will be a critical component five plus years from now. So let me give you another hypothetical. Let's start with Producer X in the year 2029. They've passed 25 surveys over the past five years. They've had five site evaluations all passed, and their key feature points have been maintained with actual production pieces. Now let's move to Producer Y in 2029. Over the last five years, they've only had three surveys. They've had three site evaluations, granted, all been passed with flying colors, and their key feature points have been maintained with periodic mock-ups. Now we have Producer Z in 2029. In the past five years, they've had zero surveys, zero site evaluations, and their key feature points have been maintained with mock-ups only. Yet based on the current document, all producers still maintain their AA category. So if you were an architect, would you perceive these plants will equally deliver an aesthetic quality product? Should the committee anticipate this and other scenarios to improve the certification process? What if Producers Y and Z decide to move to the AC category and leave only one A producer in a specific market? Will any of these scenarios increase or reduce precast consideration? Well, I provide these scenarios for several reasons. I personally think, one man, a non-producer's suggestion, that the Architectural Certification Committee should consider what the program will look like in five to 10 years. This scenario shines the light on how, if the plants don't influence the market to adopt the program, and if the plants don't follow the process, will we walk the program backwards? And the program will only work if we all work it. Over time, the surveys and site evaluations will lift all boats with the tide. The vessel is our customers. They will tell us where we need to improve. So if you collectively decide to improve your daily quality processes using your customers' The survey site evaluations, specifically, the demand for architectural precast concrete will continue to grow because architects will be able to rely on PCI certified plants to deliver every time, every job. Now with that inspirational plea, we'll open up the chat box and attempt to answer all of your questions. The first question is, do we have to do a survey if the project is not certified AA or AB? It's kind of a loaded question, but the black and white answer is no. If you are an AA or AB producer and you take a contract and manufacture a project, even if it has AA, AB features and should have been specified AA or AB, but it's specified A1 or just PCI certified plant, then no, you do not have to produce a survey, go through the survey process. So hopefully I answered that question. So when is the next committee meeting? Well, the next committee meeting is Wednesday, September 25th at 8 o'clock AM in Nashville, Tennessee, committee days. Committee day registration is open. You can go to pci.org on the first blue box on the left-hand side of the homepage, you'll see several events coming up and the bottom one currently today, the bottom one says committee days. Click on that, register, procure your hotel, and we'll see you in Nashville in September. Let's see, another question. How does the ACRB use the surveys for recertification? Well, currently there's not very many surveys to look at, but over time the vision and based on the way we interpret the document and the discussions we've had with the certification committee and the ACRB members is that every survey gets graded. So we get a grade for a survey. So that grade will be included in your plant review every six months. So if you have all your key features and you have passing grades on the survey, then there's really nothing for the ACRB to look at. It's check the box and recommend the plant maintains their certification. If the survey comes back with a not so favorable result, then the ACRB will analyze the project survey responses from the architect and general contractor, and then look at the history of the plant, look at the key feature points of the plant, and then the ACRB at that point will make a recommendation for further action. I don't read in the document that there's double secret probation anywhere, but at the same time we really need to have the conversation with the architectural certification committee on what those next steps are. Another reason why you should attend the committee meetings. There's only a couple more questions here. I think the chat box screen is very small as I scroll down. So how do we know who our plant administration, plant administrator is? Well, you can email membership at pci.org and when you email that, ask specifically who is my plant administrator and specifically state what your plant is. I'm plant XYZ in this city, this state, because some plants have multiple locations and some have multiple administrators. Let's see, let's see. Access to the surveys. Can you explain that a bit? So access to the surveys, it's very important to understand that the survey information coming back from your customers could be 100% positive. You were the greatest thing since sliced bread. The project manager was fantastic. Your salesman was the most handsome person ever and your salesman was great. That's what most of my surveys were when I got surveyed, but there may be some negative information on those surveys. I personally would not want to have that information readily accessible to everybody in my plant. I would want that to be confidential information. So it's very important in my opinion, and I think part of what we've discussed at committee, it's very important that you fully understand that the way the software works is that everybody that has access to your, everybody at your plant that can ask for a survey is going to get the information from the survey. So it's a very, it's a very selective thing, I think, in your plant. That's all the questions that I had, I anticipated more, but that's all the questions we have. So with that, thank you for your time today. Hopefully we helped clarify some things for everybody, and if you have any more questions, you can definitely contact me, you can contact Noel, or you can contact projectsurveysatpci.org. We're around. So thanks very much. Back to you, Nicole. Thank you, Randy. So on behalf of PCI, like Randy said, I'd like to thank Randy and Noel for a great informative presentation. If you do have any further questions about today's presentation, please email marketingatpci.org. Thank you again. Have a great day and please stay safe.

PCI webinar series

Architectural Certification Program

Survey Guide

Status Report

Marketing Manager

Nicole Clout

Randy Wilson

Noel Morales

Category AA producers