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Celebrating 70 Years of Precast Concrete Knowledge
Celebrating 70 Years of Precast Concrete Webinar
Celebrating 70 Years of Precast Concrete Webinar
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Good afternoon. Welcome to PCI's webinar series. Today's presentation is celebrating 70 years of precast concrete knowledge. I'm Becky, the education manager at PCI, and I'll be your moderator for this session. Before I turn the controls over to your presenter for today, I have a few introductory items to note. Earlier today, we sent a reminder email to all registered attendees. The email contained a webinar attendance sheet, a guide to downloading your certificate, and a PDF of today's presentation. The handouts are also available right now in the handout section of your GoToWebinar toolbox. If there are multiple listeners at your location, please circulate the attendance sheet and send the completed sign-in sheet back to PCI per the instructions on the form. The attendance sheet is only for use at locations with multiple listeners. If you're the only person watching on your computer, there's no need to complete the attendance sheet. We have your information from your registration. If you cannot download any of the handouts, please email marketing at pci.org as shown on your screen. Note that all attendee 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 we'll be keeping track of them to read it to the presenter during our Q&A period at the end of the presentation. Also, a pop-up survey will appear after the webinar ends. Today's presentation is being recorded and will be uploaded to the PCI eLearning Center. PCI has met the standards and requirements of the Registered Continuing Education Program, RCEP. We can offer one personal development hour for this presentation. Credit earned on completion of this program will be reported to rcep.net. A certificate of completion will be issued to each participant. As such, it does not include content that may be deemed or construed to be an approval or endorsement by RCEP. AIA credit is not being offered for this presentation. Our presenter for today is Jared Brew, Vice President of Technical Services at PCI. So without further ado, I will now hand the controls over to our presenters so we can begin the presentation. Thank you. All right, thank you, Becky. Let's see if I can click, show my screen. Oh, you're in presenter view. We're seeing the presenter. All right, so let's swap. Perfect. Perfect, all right. So welcome, everybody. Thank you, Becky, for the introduction. We're just gonna get right into it. So a little outline of what we're gonna talk about today. I'm going to just give you a little brief history of the Institute, why 70 years, why we're having this presentation today. Just a little background and context about PCI. Most of the presentation today is going to be on, of course, our body of knowledge that we've developed over those 70 years. And then we're gonna wrap up a little bit with some of our newly developed standards and some of our work that's gone on related to standards development. I'll note here on the outset that I think trying to cover 70 years of the body of knowledge in a 60-minute webinar was impossible as I got into it. We published a large number of documents over our years, a very comprehensive and complete body of knowledge. And I think I've tried to distill it down into some interesting and important topics that we're gonna go through here today. Hopefully, some of those of you that have been around the Institute for a while appreciate some of the trip down memory lane on some of the things that we've published in the past, and then some of the younger folks that maybe haven't been around as much. Hopefully, you can gain a better appreciation of how the body of knowledge has developed over the years. So first, a little history of the Institute. Of course, precast concrete's been around since, I don't know, around the early 1900s. It was generally used as a timeframe for precast. Pre-stressed concrete here in the US has been used since about 1950. Of course, our first structure, pre-stressed concrete, was the Walnut Lane Memorial Bridge, completed at that time. It wasn't pre-tensioned concrete like we're familiar with. It was actually a post-tensioned concrete, but it was the first application of pre-stressed concrete here in the United States. If you'd like to learn a little bit more about the Walnut Lane Memorial Bridge, there's a little discussion in chapter one of the PCI Design Handbook, or I'd also encourage you to review the research corner that was in the November-December issue of the 2023 PCI Journal, where Andy Osborne and Helm Wolden provided some background on the Walnut Lane Memorial Bridge if you'd like to learn more about that history. So what is PCI? The first version of the PCI Journal, first edition, had this page included in it. And as you can see, PCI is a non-for-profit organized under Florida Chapter 617, so recognized as a scientific, charitable, and benevolent association. Generally around for the mutual exchange of information and ideas, anything beneficial for its members in the pre-stressing business. So if you kind of look at that, you'll maybe think about what PCI is today and wonder a few things about what changed from PCI when it was originally chartered on June 18th in 1954 to today. So the first one, we relocated, of course, here to Chicago. That happened in December of 1959, is when that relocation occurred. So while we were originally organized down there in Florida, we transitioned into a more national organization, the headquarters of PCA, CRSI, and a number of other industry institutes were organized here in the Chicagoland area. And so PCI moved up here to kind of follow that lead. The other thing that we'll touch on a little is we weren't originally organized to be a certifying entity. We're really for that exchange of information and ideas so that we could all improve each other's businesses in the precast and pre-stressed concrete industry at large. So as we'll see as I go through some of the presentations today, we adjusted our focus, we added some programs to really transition into what PCI has become here in the 21st century. So currently, what do we convey as our role in the industry? So our core purpose is to provide that value to members, maintain and protect the technical integrity of pre-stressed concrete and precast concrete. So that's the body of knowledge, generating that knowledge, disseminating that knowledge. We promote its increased use as a high-quality construction material. And so we're out there advocating for the benefits of precast concrete. And then we're enhancing our members' businesses. So we're helping them improve their quality production practices, efficiency practices, anything related to our members' business. Our mission, so as a collaborative group of stakeholders, we're really promoting the broader use of precast and pre-stressed concrete. So we do that through standards development, certification, research, marketing, education, and other types of collaboration. So when we were first formed, we were just those six member plants. Now we've grown to, I think the last number's 270 or so, I said almost 300, depending on how much rounding you want to do. But this maps from our website where you can see all of the current PCI-certified plant locations in the continental U.S. Of course, I don't think Hawaii, Guam, and a few other non-continental plants are located here on this map. But this represents all the producer members that PCI is out there representing and certifying. So when you think of PCI in general, borrowing from my good friend William Nickus, we kind of have three primary roles. That's knowledge creation, knowledge dissemination, and continuous improvement. So our knowledge creation could be our research and development program, assignments to look at alternative ways for the materials, for the structural design, anything that's related to knowledge creation. So generating that information, new ideas, new practices, new information that's out there. So we create that as an institute. We share it with each other. And then once we have a good feeling, a good knowledge of, a good comfort with that knowledge, then we start to disseminate it. And so that works through all of our different handbooks, guidelines, recommended practices, journal articles, any other type of publication that then shares that information beyond the individuals that created that knowledge to the broader community, to the broader industry. That might be just sharing that information with PCI member plants. That might be sharing information with the construction industry at large, that with the designers, architects, engineers at large. There's all kinds of different levels of dissemination that occurs that the industry is trying to do. And then the last one's continuous improvement. So once we publish something, once we create that knowledge, anything that we're doing, we're looking for ways to continuously try and improve that. And so it's that feedback loop of generating that knowledge, sharing it with others, gathering feedback, improving it, and just continuously revolving through that cycle of generating and creating knowledge. In the early 2000s, we also got together with the AISC. So when I tell folks or try to explain folks what precast concrete is and what's our role in the industry, I tell them our role is a lot closer to AISC than it is ACI. We manufacture things in a plant. We ship them across the country. That's truck, rail, barge, anything. We erect them in the same manner. Of course, the materials are different. The fabrication process is different. The erection process is a little bit different. But when you really kind of drill down into it, we're a lot closer to AISC, I'd say, than what we are with the ACI. And so then in the early 2000s, we got together with AISC and really tried to distill down what are the essential elements of an institute, and specifically an institute that provides certification. And so that discussion, that process of knowledge creation from working with them, distilled it down into these 12 essential elements of an institute. So looking through them, you've got industry standing that's facilitating the exchange of knowledge across the full spectrum of industry stakeholders. Clearly stated purpose, where it's consistent with the advancement of quality and technology. There's no hidden agendas. Every meeting, we talk about the antitrust part of our role here at the institute. Broad professional involvement. And so we have a diverse membership. Encourage committee participation by a number of groups. We try and maintain balance. Mix of all stakeholders that are involved in participating. We're looking at government and consensus. And so we apply that knowledge in a fair and balanced manner. Really that reflects, it's consensus of the institute. So consensus, we kind of say consensus means everyone has to give up a little something. And so that means everybody has come together and agrees that this is the best path forward for the institute or the industry. Looking at research. So good technical institutes, fund and support practical research, trying to expand that knowledge, build upon that knowledge creation, and looking to improve quality production practices. There's a validation part of it where you might have validating key elements of that knowledge and standards prior to that application. Sharing it, maybe a public comment process as part of standards development. I mentioned dissemination a little bit already, but that's educational programs, journals, periodicals, manuals, bulletins, all those things where you're trying to share the information that your institute's developed. Certification of personnel and fabrication processes. And so that's where you are affirming that you are producing a high quality product, whether it's through a personnel or the fabrication process. Independent audits conducted by third parties that are technically qualified and professionally accredited. Feedback recourse loop, whether there's communication, education, anything to gather feedback and provide a means for that continuous improvement. And then a commitment to kind of maintain that level of quality of the programs and the information that you're providing. So that's kind of a quick summary of what the 12 elements of a technical institute were, or are. If you would like to know more, there's actually a white paper on the PCI website that you can get following the link at the bottom and read some of the things that I went through and learn a little bit more detail about what those 12 essential elements are. And this was again, jointly published with PCI and AISC. So now getting into the body of knowledge a little bit. So what is the body of knowledge? I think most PCI staff and a lot of members kind of know what that is, but it's really anything that the institute publishes as representative of our practices. So when you walk in the front doors of the PCI office here in Chicago, you turn to your left and there you can see the bookshelf. So we're probably displaying our body of knowledge. A lot of the information that we've developed and generated over the years, because our role as a technical institute is developing and disseminating that body of knowledge. So this might include periodicals, technical documents, whether that's something like a handbook, bridge manual, architectural manual, quality related documents. We'll talk about those a little bit later in our certification program. It could include guide specifications. And then I'm gonna touch a little bit on some research and development and other PCI resources that are out there before getting into standards development. So the first one I was gonna touch on is the periodicals. Of course, our flagship periodical is the PCI Journal. And it's kind of stated purpose or mission is to be a vital role in building and disseminating the PCI body of knowledge. I'm really trying to share that information with both the members and the institute and the industry at large. And the archive of the PCI Journal is actually freely available on the PCI website. You can figure out which year, you can search parts of it and try and find some of the information or anything that you're looking for in the archives of the PCI Journal. One nice thing to talk about, the particular view from May, June, 2024, shown on the screen. You can see there's three research projects that are included, peer reviewed articles, I guess that were included in this issue. And each of those peer reviewed articles are the result of a PCI research project. The first one was revisiting the ways that we predict lateral torsional buckling and expanding that to consider the more, the slimmer across sections that are becoming more common in the industry as a research project sponsored by PCI conducted out at the University of Washington, which has led to some additional work, including some recent full-scale testing of some bridge girders to evaluate the, to compare the theoretical approach to actual real-world applications. The middle one was looking at some repairable bridge columns and this was a Mertz Fellowship actually that was awarded to the South Dakota State University. And so the professor and the student worked with a local producer to create a number of different connection scenarios at the base of a bridge column that allowed once you had some damage from a seismic event, you could move and replace those, that connection. And so that was, again, another PCI fellowship that resulted in a publication. And the last one was on the experimental investigation of multiple strand lifting loops. This was kind of a several step project. It started several years ago with, sorry, a Mertz Fellowship that was initially looking at using a six-tenths diameter strand as lifting loops. That was the initial focus. They did some preliminary testing with that. The findings of that work and survey of industry members resulted in some additional funding of a PCI specially funded project that did more testing on the six-tenths diameter strand lifting loops, and also multiple strand lifting loops, whether you should put a conduit or bare strand or crushed conduit. What type of a detail should you use if you're looking at a multiple strand loop? So again, it's kind of the generation, the building of that body of knowledge kind of summarized right there in one issue of the PCI journal. And then, of course, after these publications, they start rolling into the bridge manual or the other lateral stability manuals that we have available from the Institute as well. So kind of going back to our purpose of this, you know, to talk some of it about our history. So volume one, issue one of the PCI journal was May 1956. You can see it's about two years after we were formed in 1954. And there's the kind of news blurb that was in the Fort Lauderdale News about the PCI journal. So if you are looking at the table of content there on the left, or maybe the list of authors shown there on the right, there's kind of two names at least that jumped out to me. The first one, Dr. T.Y. Lynn, of course, was one of our first journal articles included, can we design pre-stressed concrete by law of stresses? And so I think we're all familiar with doing that still today. And this kind of article was setting out some of that basis. Another one from a young assistant professor at the University of Florida by Paul Zia was, I think, really shows how long Paul was around. I think if anybody that is on the call probably knows who Paul Zia was and the decades of work that he also did with the Institute after he moved up to a North Carolina state. So I thought it was interesting to see Paul's name there in the first issue of the PCI journal. What else has been published? So numerous committee practices, or committee recommended practices, committee reports, guidelines, a variety of different names of the documents that are out there. Those are all committee developed work product. And so that knowledge creation, knowledge dissemination part of it is in all of those committee reports that were published and available in the PCI journal. There's almost 50 articles that are referenced in ACI 318 commentary that are used for the design of structural concrete. And in the PCI design handbook, we have over 250 articles referenced from the PCI journal. And there's over 200 referenced in the PCI average design manual. If you'd like a nice kind of summary of probably the first 50 years of the PCI journal, that article shown there on the right by Don Rath, a longtime chair of the Journal Advisory Committee. And of course, George Nassar, our longtime editor of the PCI journal, put together this nice summary of the first 50 years of what was included in the PCI journal, including a listing of a number of those recommended practices and committee reports. So what are some of the articles that are published? So just a summary of a couple. The first one toward a consistent design of structural concrete. For anybody that's done strut and tie design, this was really one of the seminal works on the application of the strut and tie method to reinforce concrete. And it was published here in the PCI journal. We had research projects like this one that really led to development of a brand new or improved cross-section for bridge girders. The NU girder that is now commonly used across the country that are summarized in the PCI journal. Articles like load testing of double Ts without web reinforcement that allow reduction and elimination of stirrups or sheer reinforcement in the end of double Ts have been included. The analysis of cracked sections, chapter five of the PCI design handbook still references this work by Bob Mast on the analysis of cracked concrete sections. Rusting on pre-stressing strands, so more from the quality plant side. How can you evaluate whether that strand pack that's been sitting in the yard for too long has too much rust? This is a nice summary article on how you can perform that evaluation. Or I think something that probably most designers on the call use every day and maybe don't quite realize it. So if you've ever predicted deflections and looked at the multipliers that are provided in the handbook, that was developed in a really clear and simple process by Les Martin in this article summarized for the rational method of camber and deflection. So, you know, if you're ever curious why a simple multiplier of two is used on some of those deflections or any of the other numbers, the article really walks it through in a very simple and straightforward process. We're also looking to gather recommendations for important works that have been published in the journal over the first 70 years. So if there's a particular article that you reference all the time, if there is something that, you know, your press wouldn't live without, I think put a link at the bottom of the page, nominate the article. It just requires a little bit of information for us to identify what some of those important articles are in the history of the PCI journal. Beyond the journal, we also have two additional publications, Ascent and Aspire. So on the building commercial slash architect side, Ascent's really trying to share that information on, you know, what's kind of capable on architecturally, structurally, other possibilities for commercial or building type projects. Similarly, on the transportation side, this is actually a joint publication with the National Concrete Bridge Council, the Aspire magazine where, you know, the summary of different things in the transportation industry are provided. So going through some of our technical documents, just looking at what some of our early technical committees are. We have one on fire resistance rating, plant certification, grouting, post-tensioning tendons, load distribution durability. You can see the list there. We had a much smaller collection of committees in the early days. This was from the summer of 1959. And you can see some of these groups are quite small. The committees weren't filled out with the number of people that we have on a lot of them today. But that's just the evolution of an industry starting small and eventually building into our group that we have today, a committee structure. It's not very clear, but you know you can see there's a number of committees and a number of different councils that we currently have working on the vast amount of information that we publish as an Institute. So what are some of our technical resources? We have design handbooks, manuals, those recommended standard practices. That recommended isn't quite a standard and then eventually becomes a standard practice. We publish research reports and special publications and then technical bulletins and there's notebooks. So what's the process that we use? I think anyone who participates in our committees, we give them mathematics. We're working on that knowledge creation to develop the material. There's producers, designers, specifying engineers, academia, the whole range of information or individuals. Once they're done with it, then it goes to our Technical Activities Council. They're really the industry experts that have been recognized for their knowledge of the precast industry that can review that information and confirm it's accurate and appropriate for the Institute to publish. Some of our documents go through a Blue Ribbon Review. So if it's a standard, we put it out for public comment. If it's not a standard, we sometimes send them out for a Blue Ribbon Review. So again, it's just another collection of individuals that we're asking to review that information and kind of ensure its accuracy and appropriateness for the industry. Of course, one of our flagship publications, the PCI Design Handbook. We have published the 8th edition. You can see how that's kind of developed over the years from the first edition in 1971 all the way to the 8th edition there in 2017. So what is it? It's the industry knowledge on the design, fabrication, and construction of architectural and structural products. That 8th edition was published in 2017. The 9th edition is still working towards completion. The committee is working diligently to ensure that we've got up-to-date and accurate information in the Design Handbook. We're working to get that. I think a target time frame is probably early next year is what I would anticipate. Some of the updates that we're making go from the 8th edition to the 9th edition, updating the IBC reference, which also brings in updated ASE and ACI references. We're also looking at the new research and industry practices. So kind of looking at a chapter of the Design Handbook, how does that content get developed? Where does it come from? Where does it originate? So looking at one of the later chapters in the handbook, maybe not used as often by everyone, but thermal and acoustical properties of precast concrete. Taking those two subjects, the first one was acoustical properties. So we had our first report published by the industry in March-April of 1971, which kind of laid out the first ideas of the acoustical properties. Then there was a subsequent version of that report published. Then if you actually look at the content that's in Chapter 11 on the handbook, it's still very similar to those first two reports. And so that information that was knowledge, the knowledge that was generated back then, of course there's been some improvements to it, but principally it's still a lot of the same information that's there in Chapter 11. Similarly for thermal properties, just after the acoustic one was published, thermal properties were published in the following issue, the May- June of 1971. A similar process happened. After the first version was published, some new information, continuous feedback provided. A second version was published of that information. Then actually there's some additional follow-on work by Balick and Barney on the thermal design of building envelopes. And again, that all feeds back into a Chapter 11 and is still a lot of the same information that is included in there. So that's one way that the committee kind of, or the committee or the Institute, works to develop information that you can use to update the handbook. The other ways with PCI-sponsored research, and so there was a research project about a decade ago on the behavior and design of directly loaded L-shaped beam ledges conducted by NC State University. And so they completed their research. It typically happens that research reports has a tremendous amount of information in it. It's distilled down into one or more PCI journal articles. This one happened to result into three PCI journal articles, summarizing the test results and then developing the design guidelines for the ledges of L-shaped beams. And then eventually it winds up in the design handbook. So back in the 8th edition of the handbook, if you were looking between the 7th and the 8th edition, there was quite a few changes that happened in the design of a ledge. We included the beta factor, considering the global state of stress in the beam on the strength of the punching shear strength of the ledge. We included the gamma factor, accounting for the amount of prestressing or the effect of prestressing on the shear strength of the ledge. And so both of those factors, all that kind of traces back into that PCI-sponsored research project that really led to that knowledge creation. Looking at the bridge design manual, the first three editions of the bridge design manual. The first one was published in 1997. It was updated in 2003 and then again in 2011 with some additional information then in a second release in 2014. And we now have our fourth edition published just at the end of 2023 of the bridge design manual. And so this is much like the design handbook. It is primarily focused on buildings and commercial structures. The bridge design manual, of course, bridges transportation structures. There's numerous very detailed design examples that are included in the manual. And it's really there to supplement the LRFD bridge design specifications. So it provides a lot of the same content as the design handbook, just focused on a bridge structures. And this one is actually, for any PCI member, a freely available publication. You can go on the website on the bookstore and be able to download and access the current edition of the bridge design manual. What other resources have we published through our history? A number of early publications related to bridges were on segmental construction. So we had recommended practice for a segmental construction and pre-stressed concrete. That first article there on the left was from March-April of 1975. That transitioned kind of into some tentative design and construction specifications. So kind of building upon that initial knowledge. And then the July-August issue of 1975. There in the middle we have tentative design and construction specifications for bridge deck panels. That was in January and February of 1978, an issue of the journal. That report was then kind of built upon and updated. Then in the March-April 1987 issue of the journal for precast pre-stressed concrete bridge deck panels. And then kind of another similar but a slightly different topic then looking at the horizontally curved bridge beams. This report prepared by ABAM for PCI and reviewed by the PCI Bridge Committee was then published in September-October of 1988. So you can see kind of that building generation of knowledge. Looking at what we have available today. So we have a bridge geometry manual. If you're looking at anything related to layout or geometry of the overall structure. Curved spliced U-beams became a pretty significant product line in some markets. And so we had a guide document for the design of those U-beams. A state-of-the-art report on curved pre-stressed precast concrete bridges. And then a recommended practice for lateral stability of bridge girders. So this is all kind of that building of that knowledge. Everything that's come through history of decades of the Institute. I haven't kind of summarized it here on the slide but accompanying that last document, the lateral stability, we actually have provided a calculator that is available for performing those types of calculations for bridge girders through the bookstore. So we covered buildings, bridges. Let's not forget about architectural. So we have the PCI architectural manual covering a number of topics of course related to architectural precast concrete. There's usage or design economy that can be achieved with architectural precast. A variety of topics on surface aesthetics and the possibilities and capabilities of architectural precast. What some of the design considerations are depending on the type of structure and the type of architectural unit you might be looking at. And we've got some other considerations and some guide specifications in it as well. And much like our other manuals or other references, it's been developed and built upon over the years. The first edition was published then in 1973 all the way to the third edition published in 2007 that you can see there on the screen. And the committee is currently working through the process of updating that information and looking for ways to means to publish it to share it with the architectural design community. Beyond the manual we have a number of other resources that are available. There's the PCI manual for structural design of architectural precast concrete. This is actually I think it's from 1977 was the date of that manual. And there's even still some specifications that we've seen that still reference the manual for the structural design of architectural precast. Much of the information has been included in chapter 7 of the PCI design handbook. So that also covers the structural design of architectural. But that manual is still out there still referenced by some organizations for that. We also have a architectural color and texture selection guide available. You can both scroll through the website or download a publication that shows a lot of the different possibilities. And then PCI has published a total of 37 designers notebooks over the years. They've covered a wide variety of topics from connections for architectural precast, designing to avoid mold, terracotta, acceptability of appearance. Our most recent one was on the suitability of environmental product operations and material selection. And so they've covered a really large range of information. They're kind of little short, succinct, topic-specific resources that can really be helpful if you're kind of working through an issue with someone or trying to convey some information specifically on architectural precast. Those little designers notebooks can be a nice tidy reference for some of those specific topics out there. What other sort of technical documents have we published? Before there was a design handbook, we published a Fundamentals of Pre-Stressed Concrete Design. That one on the left there, it's the third printing of the first edition published back in 1963, I believe. And then even today in the bookstore, we've continued to publish this Fundamentals of Pre-Stressed Concrete Design. Of course, the codes have changed, the loads have changed, you know, a number of different requirements like that have changed. But in the end, the mechanics of pre-stressed concrete, how you calculate allowable stresses, how you calculate deflections, all of those kind of mechanics-based principles are still applicable. And so there's still some good information there for someone that might be getting new into pre-stressed concrete design to look at those publications. Codes and design requirements. If you think that PCI is just starting writing codes and standards, we've been publishing a number of them for, we have published a number of them throughout history. The first one, as you can see there, from the Building Code Requirements for Pre-Stressed Concrete from the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California. So this was back in the day of the uniform building codes and we did different codes around the country. They were publishing these guidelines for supplementing the UBC with information on pre-stressed concrete. One item that I took out that I found interesting there was looking at the allowable stresses at the design loads after all losses. And, you know, some of these values again have changed. Some of them have still remained the same, whether it's the allowable compression stress or the tension stress based on either six or three square roots of F prime subsidy. The next one in December of 1959, this was the blurb that was included in the PCI Journal that we had presented a standard building code for pre-stressed concrete for review. So much like today's public comment period, this was kind of notifying the industry at large that we had sent out the first draft of this building code for review. After that kind of public comment period, we published the first PCI standard. I think it was 110 in 1961. Tom Darcy was kind enough as he was cleaning up some of his files to send this hard copy of this back to PCI headquarters. So looking inside of it, the initial original building code committee from PCI had a list of individuals that many of you will probably recognize. Of course, T.Y. Lynn was our chairman and, you know, the list of very distinguished individuals there that were involved in the writing of this first building code requirements from PCI. Again, kind of picking one out of there and kind of just looking at the way things were designed at the time. So looking at horizontal shear, so members with a transverse width is the entire width of the compression block. You don't need to provide mechanical anchorages, provide your shear stress at service loads, does not exceed 40 psi and where your surface is rough, clean, and free of foreign material and looser scaling particles, otherwise what we call laitance today. But that was how they presented the design recommendations in the early 1960s for a horizontal shear. If you are providing some minimum reinforcement but you use a smooth form trowel or floated surface, you would go to 40 psi. If you provided that rough and clean surface and some minimum reinforcement, you could go up to 160 psi. Up there you can see how some of the design approaches used back in the 60s are still similar to some of the values that are used today. Then we also published a proposed design requirements for a pre-stressed concrete. This was in the November-December 1986 issue of the PCI Journal. So this was really taking some of the what used to be Chapter 16 content of ACI 318, which covered pre-cast concrete design, and provide some additional information, some additional commentary on the requirements that were in Chapter 16. So this paper kind of walks through the process. This information was generated from the PCI Committee, Federal PCI Committee 550, and then they did some refinement of it, and then eventually it was brought to and proposed to ACI Committee 318. So that was kind of our channel mechanism for bringing information into the building code. Looking inside of that particular report, anybody that's ever used the effective shear friction approach, even at that time they were recommending inclusion of effective shear friction into the code design process for shear friction. Anybody who's looked at 318 knows that it didn't eventually get its way into the code. As things go through the process, they get eliminated. But in 1986, that was our recommendation even then to bring effective shear friction into the codes. If you'd like to learn a little bit more about our code history, there's again another wonderful summary article prepared by Tom Darcy, George Nassar, and S.K. Ghosh, three titans of our industry, that really summarizes these three and other publications PCI has published over the years related to building codes and design requirements. So kind of beyond just those codes, then we started developing a standard design practice. I like to call these the interpretation of 318. I don't like to call them the exception. They're really trying to evaluate 318 requirements and then determine how you should apply them to precast or pre-stressed concrete design. So the first version published in the July-August 1996 issue of the journal was again put out for public comment. It was a proposed committee report sent out, gather feedback from the Institute. There wasn't websites that we could post things for public comment like we have today, so they were published in the journal like this. Then the final version after that feedback was published in March-April of 1997. So that really represented our first PCI standard design practice, and that was based off of the requirements of 318.95. So since then we've continued to do this work. So then the next one was in the January-February 2003 issue of the PCI journal, and this one was based off of ACI 318.02. Similarly, it doesn't quite have the same heading at the top, but the first version that was published in the journal was again put out for public comment, really out there to solicit feedback. But then instead of publishing the final version in the journal, we actually took that information and published it within the PCI design handbook as a standard design practice and placed in the kind of familiar side-by-side ACI code PCI practice format that we still use today. So that was the first kind of published, the first time it was published as a supplement in the PCI design handbook. We also published it as a separate document. Again, those were all based off of ACI 318.02. Then ACI 318.05, we did a similar process. So the 2 was in the 6th edition of the PCI handbook, 05 was in the 7th edition of the PCI design handbook, and published it as a separate standalone document that you can get off the PCI bookstore. And then continuing on, we did updating the content information for 318.08, 318.11, and most recently 318.14. The committee's still working on finalizing with TAC the standard design practice for 318.19. That's how that information is kind of built since the mid-90s with that first version on 318.95. I'm not forgetting our friends in the GFRC side of the Institute. So we published a number of documents over the years on glass fiber reinforced concrete, starting there in the 1961 issue of the journal, January-February, for the recommended practice for GFRC panels. Continuing to build, over time we had that specification for GFRC, which eventually got built into the manual for quality control that is used for certification, a second edition and published in 2009. And the most recent one related to GFRC is our specification for, it's actually design of GFRC panels. So this is an ANSI PCI document 128, which we'll talk a little bit later as reference now in the IBC for GFRC design. Looking a little bit at seismic design. So our first publication was Principles of the Design and Construction of Earthquake Resistant Pre-Stressed Structures. So this was from June of 1966. And I wanted to touch on this a little bit just for the elegant simplicity of some of the requirements that are included in these principles. Kind of looking there in the middle of the paragraph, you know, all individual elements of structures and earthquake areas and less specifically designed XOI should be tied together by adequate connector in rural construction. So it really just kind of lays out some of those principles. It doesn't get into the specifics of 1.5 SY or any other type of value that you would use for a design of those connections. It's just really laying out that kind of background for seismic related design. And of course we worked on that over the years until our most recent PCI manual on the seismic design of precast and pre-stressed concrete structures that was last published. The Seismic Committee continues to work on updating this information, going to be separating some of that content into smaller kind of bite-sized pieces related to seismic design and focus on some specific components, diaphragms and certain intermediate shear walls, and then work on some of the other content going forward. Looking at materials. So we've got a number of reports on the development or use of different materials and precast plants, whether the high-range water reducing admixtures, the permissible chloride levels, you know, a report on high-strength concrete and what that actually meant at the time, or if you're considering using silica fume in one of your products. So some of our early reports that led our industry into updates in a variety of our different manuals. Today we've got you know kind of two main documents, the guidelines for the use of SCC. I think most folks, most plants are familiar and comfortable with SCC. And then more recently we have the guidelines for the use of UHPC and pre-stress and pre-gas and pre-stress plants. That's you know again taking us into the future with new and innovative materials. Looking at connections, so this first report was published in December of 1959, a summary of basic information on precast connections. And I just was looking in there, figure 29 is on the design of typical neoprene bearing pad. Just looking at some of that side-by-side with one of the recent figures or tables from the PCI design handbook and you can see some of the similarities and again some differences as information gets updated. The shape factor is effectively still the same. Now we look at a maximum rotation instead of a shear strain or a compressed strain. So the process has changed, the materials have changed and updated, but kind of the bones of the information is still very similar in the two documents. Then we went to updated the next version in 1982, the connections for precast pre-stress concrete buildings including earthquake resistance. Then we had the design of typical details of pre-stress connections for pre-stress concrete. Now this was MNL 123-88 and this one actually became a reference in commentary for ACI 318 all the way through the 2019 version for the design of connections and precast structures. We had an updated manual MNL 138 published in 2008 on the design of connections, included a lot more design examples and other information there as well. This is a webinar about the PCI body of knowledge, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the ACI Committee 550 documents. In the end, a lot of the information that is published there by ACI 550 was generated by individuals and projects that were conducted by PCI. As I kind of mentioned earlier, this was kind of our feeder of information into some of the other codes and standards on the ACI side of design. So the first one is just some design recommendations for precast concrete structures. That was the first report published by Committee 550. Then if you're looking at emulation for seismic design, 550.1 was a guide for that. Precast connections, precast jointed systems, 550.2. Unbonded tensioned special moment frames, looking at some of the press type systems. Went into first an ITG document over at ACI and then those have a certain shelf life and they get translated over to a committee and Committee 550 took ownership of this one of course since it's related to a precast concrete, but that's the design requirements. Again, another one that's referenced directly in the Code 318. More recently, we had the DSDM project looking at how we can design diaphragms and so there's two 550 documents related to that. The first one is on the qualification of the connections and the test protocol to develop the backbone curves for your diaphragm connections. That feeds into the code requirements for the design of diaphragms and so this relates to the alternative design methodology that's included in ASCE 7 for diaphragms and again it's referenced directly in the Code of 318 for untapped precast concrete diaphragms. The last two, an acceptance criteria and then requirements for the design of post tension precast shear walls. Again, this was kind of related to the press system. Another document that went into an ITG at ACI and then eventually went over to ACI Committee 550 as the kind of clearinghouse or the last place that it'll be published over there. Looking at the quality side of the Institute. So we first published our PCI standards for pre-stressed concrete plants in September of 1958. You can see the information that was included. I think this was about 20 pages or so in the journal, so much more succinct and shorter than what we currently have in our quality manuals, but you can just see some of the content that's included there. But as this was published in 1958, this wasn't anything related to a certification. This is just what our Plant Standards Committee was publishing as a PCI standard for pre-stressed concrete plants. It wasn't until 1967 that a number of plants within the pre-stressed concrete industry subscribed or joined a PCI plant certification program. And you can see there at the end of the first year, 35 plants exhibited the capability to produce those structural precast products and that led to this new symbol of quality as a PCI certified plant that has really grown and continued into what we consider the PCI plant certification program today. And so starting in 1967, the same kind of process works. We have that initial certification program, those initial requirements that kind of get built on and evolve. About 20 years later, the PCI Plant Certification Committee established what we primarily know as our groups, at least for BNC, for bridge and commercial structures, the different types of products, whether there's deflected strand or straight strand in the particular element. Architectural was revised more recently with the Architectural Certification Program. But that's kind of the evolution of how plant certification has grown into what we know today. Using those quality manuals, we have MNL 116-17 and then that GFRC one, of course. Erector certification started with a recommended practice for the erection of precast concrete, eventually became an erector's manual that is used by actually a lot of contractor training programs for erection. And then there's also erection safety for precast and prestressed concrete. Well, looks like I'm running a little long. Looking at tolerances now. Our first report from the Workmanship Committee, published in December of 1962, is there on the left. I think it's four or five pages on workmanship related to tolerances. And again, back at that time looking at the elegant simplicity of the requirements, the dimensional tolerances consisted of those five items we can see. Cross-sectional dimensions didn't relate to the type of component specifically or anything in the way that we show or consider them now, but just some simple tolerances that were included at that time. Took that information, created the tolerances for precast and prestressed concrete. A similar process that we walked through before in March-April of 1981. The first version, kind of shown there in the background, was published. Feedback was gathered from the industry. And then in January-February of 85, the second version was published of the initial tolerances for precast and prestressed concrete. Published an updated report in January-February of 1993 on product tolerances. And then we have our tolerance manual there published in 2000. That anybody who's followed public comment knows that we are working to develop a standard now for tolerances for precast. One interesting document or two that sometimes I've seen used and could be helpful if you happen to find yourself trying to explain a certain type of crack to someone in the field. There's two reports from the January- February 1983 and the May-June 1985 issues of the PCI Journal on the fabrication and shipment cracks and various types of components. And so they provide some good information, what might have caused the crack, potential solutions, whether it should be a concern or anything should be done about that particular crack and those type of components. We've had a number of documents on responsibility. And so our first one was in January-February of 1978. What we called at that time a code of standard practice for precast concrete. So trying to lay out those responsibility requirements. A similar document, the recommendations on responsibility, was published in July- August of 1988. And then if you look in Chapter 14 of the PCI Design Handbook, we have that same what we now call standard operation practice for recommendations for precast concrete. But if you look closely at the table of contents on the first version back in 1978 and the most recent version in the 8th edition of the handbook, they're very similar. They've got samples, mock-ups, and qualification of manufacturers, contract documents, and design responsibilities, shop drawings or erection and production drawings, materials, finishes, tests, and inspections. If you go through the list you'll see they are almost a mirage of each other on those two documents. Guide specifications. So we published some of the first ones back in the 1960s for different types of components. So, you know, guide specification for precast concrete construction or actual precast concrete. Today you can go on the website and there's a guide specifications page that you can download Word documents for category A, B, A, C, A, D type guide specifications or structural, GFRC, all the different types of materials are now available there on the website for guide specifications. Touch a little bit on PCI R&D. So thankfully PI members recognized that industry growth was dependent on funding research. In 1973 they established that Committee on Industry Research and established the process for funding research in the Institute. And so now with Council, so the Committee on Research was translated into Research Development Council that identifies those needs, approve those rewards, and then advises those teams during the projects. A few of the different ways we perform research. There's fellowships, Jenny and Mertz, especially funded projects or collaboration with other research entities. That's maybe the ACI Concrete Research Council or the Charles Pankow Foundation. PCI fellowships, so for any of our academic partners that are listening still today, you know, the current call for fellowships is now available until mid-August, I think it's the 9th. And so we typically award four Jenny fellowships each year and one Mertz fellowship that's bridge specific every year. The funding amount has grown over the years and it's currently a $50,000 intended to cover tuition, stipends, supplies, and other costs for a specific student. We're really trying to focus on engaging with students in the industry. And traditionally it's been materials and structural related projects, but we're really trying to expand that into operational plan practices, anything that could be of interest or could help improve our precast producer members businesses. So we've awarded more than 150 of these since 1971 and continue the program later this year. One of our specially funded projects, everybody enjoys a good video, so a precast structure on the shake table. This was a diaphragm research project where they were shaking the structure to evaluate the performance of these diaphragms during some of the maximum considered earthquakes. Again, really there's no audio on the video, but it's funny hearing that people cheer in the background after the structure survives that seismic event relatively undamaged. There we go. So what are kind of specially funded projects? So if you go on to the members only part of the website down here on the left-hand side, you'll see there's a box that says research reports. Click on that link, it'll take you to the research reports page. You can expand all of these little subjects and access all of the research reports that we've had published through the PCIR&E program. Just looking at a few of them, we've got some specially funded research and development program back in the 80s that looked at exceptions to some of the minimum reinforcement requirements. We had the PRESS system there throughout the late 90s and early 2000s for seismic systems. I talked about the ledges earlier. We had a similar project on slender spandrel beams. More recently, a very comprehensive project on incorporating or how we can use ultra-high performance concrete to develop long span precast and pretensioned elements. Again, to help our industry innovate and evolve into the future. Some of the projects that are currently ongoing to be on the watch for. We've got one on insulated wall panel wipe connectors that'll be coming out soon. Project phase two of our DAPTENs research is nearing completion and will be available. Some great work on ductile rebar connections that is going to facilitate detailing of the boundary regions of special shear walls and other shear walls. A project with NIST on the disproportionate collapse resistance with column removal. We had that one I mentioned earlier, stainless steel strand reinforcement and lifting loops. Sorry, that was the lifting loops one. There was also an NCHRP jointly sponsored project on stainless steel strand for pretension elements. We're also kind of just getting underway. Some of the specimens were just fabricated last week looking at developing a buckling restraining base frame out of entirely precast concrete elements. So anybody that works in high seismic zones knows that BRBs are a preferred system somewhat for their R-value but also for the openness that they can provide to the structural system rather than shear walls and other solid elements. And so we're looking to develop a precast system just using conventional A706 rebar. And again the specimens were recently fabricated and we'll be doing some more testing. This is a consortium of universities funded by NSF. Looking through some of our other resources, so HowPrecastBuilds is really our external facing website. So pci.org is for members. HowPrecastBuilds is intended to be external and so it's really compiling information, summarizing it for our different audience segments whether there's architects, contractors, or engineers. There's project profiles, references, all kinds of different things that will try and help individuals make the decision to use a precast concrete in their particular structure. On the transportation side, we partner with or we're a part of the National Concrete Bridge Council. This group of 10 industry organizations you can see there across the bottom does a lot of advocacy for concrete structures in transportation. For a number of years, I think they from about 1999 through 2016, they published 80 of these HPC bridge views covering a variety of topics related to high performance concrete and other concrete related subjects for bridge structures. And then just earlier this month, they published their first collaboration with AASHTO. So it's an AASHTO NCBC collaboration document on resources for concrete bridge design and construction. And anybody can go get this free resource from AASHTO. It's really a link to any of the different resources that are available from all of these institutes including the PCI bridge design manual and some of those other manuals that I mentioned earlier. If you're looking for more education, there's the PCIe Learning Center. It's got a number of different webinars like this one that will be on there eventually where you can go and learn more or direct students if you're teaching a course on precast concrete or have a new employee to send them to to learn a little bit more about what PCI is and about precast concrete design and construction. For a number of years, we've been members of FIP and FIB. Initially it was FIP, the Federation Internationale de la Precontraine, I guess, so prefabrication. And that's been since about the early late 50s early 60s, we were members and participants with FIP. And then in 1998, you can see there in the middle document, the highlights of the 13th FIP World Congress and the birth of FIB. And so that organization converted from FIP into the Federation Internationale du Baton or the International Federation for Concrete. And so we continue to participate in FIB. If there's certain topics that, so a lot of our, a number of our members participate in the development of information with FIB. If there's a particular topic that is relevant for our industry, our market, we jointly publish documents as you can see here with bulletin number 94. So a number of PCI members were heavily involved in its development and generation. FIB does all the development publication, our PCI TAC performs a review of that document, and then it becomes a jointly sponsored FIB PCI bulletin on precast concrete bridge continuity over piers. This isn't the only one, there's been a number of other resources available on the website, that website that we've jointly published with FIB. Sorry for running long to touch a little bit on a few standards. So just earlier this month we published our fourth official standard. So we now have the specification for fire resistance, which is in its second edition, first published in 2018, updated in 2023. We had the specification for GFRC panels published in 2019, currently working its way on its first update. This year we had two new ones published. The first one was the specification for the design of insulated wall panels. Again, a lot of work went into the development of this document from taking a lot of the information in our state-of-the-art practices and then translating into design requirements for precast panel or insulated wall panels. And then just earlier this month, I think last week actually, the most recent specification for precast pre-stressed concrete piles was published. And again, it's the third official ANSI one and our fourth PCA standard. So how did we get to that specification? Kind of building upon our body of knowledge again. We started with that first edition, 1977, on the recommended practice for design, manufacturing, installation of piling. That version was then taken, used, and updated in 1993 for that second recommended practice. Again, another feedback loop. We brought in more information with another recommended practice in 2019 that was published and updated. And then all that was taken together, fed into what finally became PCI 142. Applicable to both commercial structures related to the IBC or ACI 318, also bridge structures, and is intended to be proposed for reference in AASHTO for transportation structures as well. Looking on the IBC side, two of our standards are referenced in 2024 IBC. So PCI 124, specification for fire resistance. That's in Section 722 and some of the subsections there. So when you're specifically looking through the requirements for a precast, you can get directly over to PCI 124. Or in Chapter 19, Section 1903, for the design of certain concrete elements. That's where we have reference to ANSI PCI 128, the specification for GFRC panels. If you hadn't heard, I would doubt anyone's still on the call hasn't, but we are still working through the process of developing and publishing ACI PCI 319. So this is going to be the building code requirements for structural precast concrete. So if you are familiar with 318, it's going to be very similar in format, just with additional content that has been developed and generated by the PCI Design Standards Committee. So be on the lookout in the next several months for the first version of this standard available for public comment, and then we'll be working on getting that published and included as a reference from 318 and from the International Building Code. Supporting the standard that we have for design of GFRC, we're taking our current MNL 130, our manual for quality control of GFRC, and translating it into a standard for quality control for GFRC. Again, it supports the design requirements that are in 128 that are referenced in the IBC, but this is focused on the plant and the quality control requirements. And then our last one that was put out for public comment a couple months ago was PCI 135 on tolerances. That is, again, taking the information that's developed over the years and is now working its way into becoming an official standard from PCI. So again, I apologize for going over, but I have run through seven decades of the body of knowledge in about as fast as I can, and I will be glad to try and answer any questions that are available, Becky or Nicole. Thank you. Thank you for that great presentation. We don't have any questions at this time, and to be respectful of everybody's time, we'd like to thank you for the wonderful presentation. And if anybody types in a question in the next couple minutes, we will definitely export those and get them answered by our speaker, or you can email marketing at PCI.org. As a reminder, your Certificates of Continuing Education will appear in your account at rsep.net within 10 days. If you have any further questions about today's webinar, send them to marketing at PCI.org. If you want to learn more about PCI's body of knowledge, you can visit PCI.org as well, or join one of PCI's committees, which is an excellent learning opportunity. Thank you again, and everyone have a wonderful day.
Video Summary
The video discussed PCI's 70 years of promoting precast concrete as a high-quality construction material through education and resources. Becky, an education manager at PCI, moderated the webinar highlighting the Institute's various publications, research projects, and technical documents that aim to improve industry practices and construction efficiency. Key resources like the PCI Design Handbook, Bridge Design Manuals, and Architectural Manuals provide guidelines for precast concrete structures. The video transcript also covers collaboration with organizations, development of standards, and upcoming initiatives related to precast concrete construction. PCI's commitment to sharing industry knowledge and maintaining technical integrity through expert reviews and public feedback was emphasized, along with an invitation for participation in PCI committees for further engagement with the industry.
Keywords
PCI
precast concrete
construction material
education
resources
publications
research projects
technical documents
industry practices
PCI Design Handbook
collaboration
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