Welcome to PCI's webinar series. Today's presentation is Environmental Product Declarations. This webinar is brought to you by WAP Sustainability Consulting. My name is Royce Covington, Member Services Manager at PCI, and I'll 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 a handout of today's presentation. Please note that the handout has been updated. The updated handout for this webinar can be found in the handouts section of your webinar pane. If you cannot download the handout, please email PCI marketing at marketing at pci.org. 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. I'll be keeping track of them to read to the presenters during the Q&A period. Also, a pop-up survey will appear at the 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. PCI is a registered provider of AIA CES, but today's presentation does not contain content that has been endorsed by AIA. Today's presentation is non-CEU. Our presenters for today are James Salazar, Sustainability Director at WAP Sustainability Consulting. James is a widely regarded expert in the field of Life-Cycle Assessment, LCA, and Environmental Product Declarations, EPD. Over the past two decades, James has managed the Life-Cycle Assessment projects and advised industry groups across North America. Joining James is Hannah Renaud, Sustainability Analyst at WAP Sustainability Consulting. Hannah has experience in Life-Cycle Assessment, Environmental Product Declarations, GHG Accounting, and Industry Studies. She holds a degree in Environmental and Sustainability and has been working in the LCA and EPD space for over three years. Liana Miller will also be joining James and Hannah. Liana is a Sustainability Manager at WAP Sustainability Consulting. She uses her expertise in Life-Cycle Assessment, Environmental Product Declarations, and Product Category Rule Creation to help industry organizations, agencies, and companies meet their goals. Liana holds degrees in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering and is a Certified LCA Practitioner through the American Center for Life-Cycle Assessment, ACLCA, and a background in small business. I'll now hand the controls over so that we can begin our presentation. Hi, I'm James Salazar at WAP Sustainability. I'm here to give you a bit of a rundown on the industry-wide LCA and EPD project we're going to be working on with PCI, why we're doing it, what it's about, and also to conclude with some of the data that we're going to be needing for that study to hopefully give you a bit of a heads-up on that, and then a timeline for your expectations. So just to outline the study, like I said, we're going to go through the goals of the project, what some of the terminology means around the LCA and EPD space. Hopefully some of it's familiar with you, for you, but if not then, yeah, hopefully you'll learn a little something too. Then we'll go over the project, the expired EPDs that we've worked on in the past, and then the new project that we're planning to make that update, and then, like I said, go through some of the data collection requirements and the timelines and next steps for you. So just to introduce all of you to WAP Sustainability, our consultancy is about 50 strong across North America. Ourself with the concrete team, we were previously with the Athena Institute, so if any of you worked with Athena in the past on projects with PCI or otherwise, it was likely members of our team that you worked with in the past. But we're really excited to be with WAP starting this year to help scale up our service and to get ready, really, for the increasing demands for EPDs that we're seeing come down the pike with bi-clean and different requirements, both federally and locally. So hopefully to give a little bit of a background on some of the terminology we're using, again, hopefully this is a repeat for some of you, but I want to emphasize this, that the key research we're doing is the Life Cycle Assessment, or LCA. LCA is the standardized practice of calculating the environmental impacts of a product over its life cycle. It's based on international standards, and it's really the core of everything we do around product sustainability. Those, in addition to the international standards for LCA, there's also more specific, sector-specific standards called product category rules. There currently exists product category There currently exists product category rules for precast concrete, as well as other industries, ready mix, blocks, etc. And all this is building towards environmental product declarations, or EPDs. Now EPDs are really probably what you hear the most about, but an EPD is really just the summary of life cycle assessment research that's been conducted in accordance with product category rules. One key feature of an EPD is that they're third-party verified. So, any EPD you see will have some level of assurance that there was a third-party verification done by a credible expert in the field that looked at the LCA and EPD and compared it against the product category rules and the various industry standards to make sure it was everything's up to snuff. So, what is LCA? So, as the name suggests, it is an analysis looking at the entire life cycle of the product. This is for a concrete product would say start at the cradle, so things like limestone coring, aggregate coring, through production. So, let's say cement production, aggregate crushing, delivery of those materials to the plant, and then potentially downstream impacts. What we find though with EPDs is they're largely limited to cradle-to-gate. This is the case in this industry and most others, and the reason is pretty simple. It's because as a manufacturer, you have some knowledge and experience in the industry, and you have as a manufacturer, you have some knowledge and control over what happens prior to the materials getting to your plant and at your facility itself. Once the product is out in the real world, we can develop scenarios around that and consider some of these gate-to-grave consequences, but largely speaking, that's really the subject of downstream research. What we're trying to do is provide product-level research, product-level data, so that one can consider products against each other and to then use that data and downstream analysis that does potentially look at the cradle-to-grave. Currently, as I mentioned, there is a PCR for precast concrete. It's developed by NSF. This is the document that has all of the really fine details about data sources, modeling assumptions, the specific requirements in the EPD, all of that spelled out in great detail in the PCR, but I also wanted to mention the international standard ISO 21930. ISO 21930 is a key standard in our industry because this is essentially the generic PCR that all construction product EPDs are based off of. So, if you're looking at EPDs, let's say, for other concrete products or other materials, they all follow roughly the same guidelines, not just roughly, really specifically follow the same guidelines and will include the same general structure and reporting format. This assures that, you know, while we don't recommend and advise comparing EPDs in different product categories, as long as they're based off of ISO 21930, there is some assurance that they're relatively harmonized in what they're looking at, and this is really important as EPDs start to gain traction as a decision support tool for sustainability. And one of the reasons we're here today and, you know, beginning this undertaking is that the EPDs that are previously developed by PCI are set to expire next year. Many of you may have participated in this, but there currently are EPDs out in the marketplace that are good, that are covering, you know, the industry up to this point. In addition to updating this material, the plan is actually to expand the scope somewhat to dive further into regions and products, whereas the previous study was really performed at a national level and had essentially a subset, a simplified subset of products. So, I did want to point that out that the idea this time is to go beyond what we did last time when PCI worked with Athena to actually look at more regionalization of operations and materials to incorporate that into the analysis. Okay, so as you can imagine, developing EPD follows a pretty straightforward process, but I think it bears going through. We're right now at the kickoff portion of the analysis, really at the beginning, essentially trying to gear ourselves up for data collection. So, I actually did want to add an additional element to this flowchart, enrollment, which is really where we are today, is hopefully providing a compelling case that this is going to be manageable for your operations to go ahead and participate and to provide us data. But generally speaking, the EPD process follows this kind of work plan. We begin with collecting data. In this case, all of our data collection is going to happen through a software platform that we call Theta. This software is set up for pulling in your operations data and your upstream data as well, your supplier information, your supplier transportation distances, etc. And it's really geared specifically towards the concrete industry. One benefit of doing that and going through the data collection in this platform is that the same platform is actually also currently used for EPD on-demand service. So, for any of you that are moving forward and providing us data, a secondary or potentially even a primary deliverable here is that you'll also be set up to develop your own EPDs by providing this data. So, this data collection is really the focus of our effort because this is really where you have the most input. But again, it also serves this dual purpose of providing us the information we really need for industry average LCA, but also setting you up to develop your own EPDs. Once we complete the data collection, two things will actually happen. We'll go through and we'll verify the data again for both purposes, for our industry average LCA, but also for you to move forward with your own EPDs. So, the LCA modeling really here refers to what's happening at the industry-wide study because at this point, once your data is in and it's validated, we'll be forwarding you on to the different verifying bodies, likely ASTM, potentially some others, that can then verify your facility model in the software so that you're then able to create your own EPDs. And that's really a key feature here is that, again, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but once you're set up, you will be able, once you go through the verification process, be able to create your own EPDs and do that in real time. But for our industry average purpose, we'll be actually aggregating all of this data. Key note here is that none of the data that you provide will ever be released in its raw format, or unaggregated, only when aggregated with a statistically significant sample size, so more than a dozen likely, but certainly more than three or four, such that all the data can remain confidential. And what we're doing there is we'll be then creating national averages and looking at regionalization and looking at the impacts that occur at the different plants across the country, and also then pulling in average product designs, so working with PCI to actually develop these average products so that we can create industry average EPDs. The result of all that will go into a background report or an LCA report. Now, this report is very detailed. It includes all the assumptions that we made, all of the modeling decisions, allocation, data selection, and it really serves as the primary way that the verifier will then be able to review the information and ensure that the report, the modeling, was done credibly. That report will also go through internal review to make sure everyone at PCI is happy with the product and it's representing things correctly. So once we get buy-in from the LCA project, really the LCA report, then we move forward with the EPD development. And this is where we'll really work hand-in-hand with PCI. As you saw in some of the previous versions, you know, they have the ability to have some design elements included, including branding. So that happens at that phase where the actual EPD, the LCA information, is put into the EPD, into this final document. The EPD will then be, again, reviewed internally and externally prior to its publication on the third-party EPD program website. So again, all this process, we're really here at the kickoff. And I really want to point out that the data collection, you know, once we move forward with the data collection, this is really the kind of key variable in any project like this. The sooner we can get through into the data collection, the faster we can move on to our modeling and all the downstream kind of modules. So where we are right now for sign-up, we're currently recruiting as many of y'all as we can. We have a sign-up page. It's at thetaepd.com forward slash sign-up forward slash PCI. If it's not live currently, I've been told that it should be live likely by the end of the day. So as soon as you're able to, what you'll do is you'll head over to thetaepd.com forward slash sign-up forward slash PCI, and you'll put in your information and the number of plants that you represent so that we can begin to make an assessment of how many plants and how many participants we can expect in this study. And I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves because the data collection will come at some point down the road here. Once you're signed up and you're enrolled in the study, you'll be given instructions on how to begin entering your data. And we're happy to meet with you more directly and to potentially even have further webinars on this topic. But I did want to give you a bit of a preview of what that's going to look like so you can start getting your ducks in a row with resources and talking to people internally. Because what we find is, this is really a key hopefully a key takeaway of the data collection portion, is that we're not asking you to calculate or to derive data that you don't already have. But likely it's going to be data that's coming from different places, different people in your organization, and certainly you haven't really pulled together in this way before. So hopefully by giving you a little bit of a preview, it'll give you the ability to understand what's coming with data requirements for this. If you haven't, that said, if you haven't been involved in a study like this in the past, if you happen to have been involved in one of our previous studies, then a lot of this will look really familiar. So what'll happen once you sign up and enroll in the study, we'll follow up with login credentials and a link to our login page. Actually, concrete.thetaepd.com. And you'll go to this login screen and there'll be an account set up with your email. Once you enter in your email and your credentials, you'll be guided through into the software to the first point of data collection, which is the operations survey. And this is the part where we're really interested in essentially one year's worth of operational data for your plan. You can see here, we have a start and end date of 2021. We'd actually ask you to fill out 2022 as the most recent calendar year, or potentially if you're working on a fiscal year or you have data quarterly and you're able to provide us data, let's say through the second quarter of this year, that's fine, it's not necessary, a calendar year will be fine too. All that we do ask on this is that the data is consistent so that if you do a start and end date of let's say calendar year 2022, that you use that same reference when filling out the operations survey. So what you'll do is you'll go through, you'll enter in your production. It's nice for us if you can tell us which products kind of fall into that, fall under that. I will point out that you'll see metric units here, but this is changeable. In fact, I think when you get this, the default is short tons in Imperial. So hopefully that won't be an issue. But again, if you ever get to a point in a survey where you feel like you're needing to do calculations to make it work, feel free to reach out because the survey is designed to take your data in its native format if possible. So you'll put in the production, the production reference here. Then we ask for energy inputs, primarily electricity. You'll see some other options here that you likely won't use. These are for if you happen to have solar panels or something exotic at your plant. So likely those will be blank for you. This next part are on fuels. So 90 natural gas, fuel oils, propane that you happen to be using for your forklifts, et cetera. We want to know about it and it goes into our calculations. In addition to that, but somewhat less significant are annual consumables. So things like road dust control chemicals, if you happen to do any dust suppression, lubricants. These are lower priority for us. If you happen to have them, let's say when you're talking to your purchasing folks about some of the other data points and these are accessible, it helps us at an industry level to get a sense of the significance. But that said, if some of these are burdensome, these are definitely less important for us. This next part is on water use. We do ask for water consumption, including any recycling that may happen in house. If you happen to be using a well that's unmetered, you can enter in a zero there and we'll essentially exclude it from the analysis. We're really looking for metered water connections and the data you might have on that for your water. For waste generation, we have places for any hazardous and non-hazardous waste. This is really just any materials that don't go out the door as product. So if it's in, let's say ends up being sent to a landfill, then we want to know about it. If it's hazardous waste and has to go to some additional treatment, this is the place for that. And then the last part of the survey here is on direct emissions. For most of you, we imagine this isn't going to be an issue, significant issue, if at all. So here it's only if you happen to be tracking things like particulates under a local regulation or under, let's say a Clean Air Act, which I don't believe any of you likely are. But if you happen to be tracking some air emissions and you have that information, that's useful for us again to paint the picture of the industry as a whole and to do it correctly. So once you move past the actual operations portion of the survey, we'll ask for information that allows us to then go upstream of your plant, because again, I want to remind you that this is a cradle-to-gate study. It's not just about what happens within your doors. It also, we need to look upstream. So to do that, you'll actually, at a company level, provide us all the different material suppliers that you have. So any cement suppliers, aggregate, admixtures, et cetera. And again, this serves two purposes. It allows us to, as an industry, understand which materials are getting used and which amounts, which we'll talk about in a second. But also, it's setting you up for your own EPDs. EPDs, more and more, the requirements that they're supply chain specific. So if you put in, let's say, a cement supplier that your cement's coming from X cement plant, we're able, likely, to pull in that data as EPD-specific data for that input. And that's really key, because some of that supply chain-specific language is starting to work its way into the different buy-clean requirements, and cement being front and center there. So while this definitely, I think, working through the survey could be one of the areas that takes the most time, it is really important, and it really sets you up. It sets us up for industry study, but it sets you up to do your own EPDs in the future once the data's all in. And then the last part I'll point out is that once you're set up in the system, like I said, you have the ability now to pull in all of the ingredients that you have in your supplier directory. What you'll do is you'll work through and you'll create the directory and you'll sign them to the plants. And once that happens, you can actually, and you go through the verification process, which you'll do as an individual company. You then have the ability to really quickly within the software to create new products and create new EPDs. And the way that works is you'll enter in the amounts of the different ingredients, the cement and concrete portions, but also the steel reinforcement, if you happen to be doing anything insulated, the insulation, all of the materials. And you'll do that on a flexible basis. So you can do that on a volume basis, you can do it on a per ton basis. And what the software will do is then normalize everything back to per metric ton. So you'll see there at the bottom, the impact summary is all per metric ton. And this is simply a result, this is due to the fact of the PCR. As I mentioned earlier, the PCR is really there to provide uniformity across all EPDs. So the PCR actually specifies that all EPDs for precast concrete are done on a per metric ton basis. So you can see there that you can edit and delete different ingredients. You can hopefully really quickly change in SCMs or different material suppliers to do your analysis. And once your analysis is complete, it doesn't show up on this little screenshot, but there's actually a little button there next to the calculator that's a publish button once you're all up and verified. And that allows you to then submit the EPD immediately to the program operator, but also to the online directories digitally. So more and more we're finding for Bi-Clean that they're using online platforms like EC3. So our system is set up that once you hit the publish button, it automatically goes to all the different places that one's going to be, you know, that you'd want your EPD published. Okay, so again, that was jumping ahead of ourselves a little bit. You can see here that the data collection we have beginning in September, but really rolling through the year because our key focus right now is getting enrollment and getting those of you signed up and set up in our system to then, you know, help provide data to us. So right now we're kicking off. It's now August 23rd, I believe. We'll be doing the enrollment at least for the next month. We'll see how that goes. But the key point here is as soon as you enroll and you're ready to go, there's no actual need to wait. We can get you up and going in the software and the data collection. And if for instance, you were to, let's say, start working with us next week, and it took you a week or two to get your data in, then let's say by early September, we could be moving forward with getting your own plant verified to produce your own EPDs. So this timeline is really up to you. Our expectation, you know, is that there is quite a bit of interest in EPDs these days. So we're optimistic, but we have extended the data collection through the end of the year in a somewhat conservative estimation. That we're going to need to leave it open for anyone that may come in later with data. But that's not to say that we won't be starting our analysis before the end of the year. We certainly will be. Really, as soon as we start to reach a critical mass of data we'll be starting to slice and dice it, to pull out our aggregated numbers, our averages at a region level and start to develop these product averages. But certainly by the new year and the first quarter of next year, you can expect draft EPDs and shortly thereafter verified EPDs. So I'll break there and we'll open it up for questions and comments. Just one quick note I would like to add really on that is that the signup actually is live now. I was made aware of that during the presentation actually. So that dataepd.com signup slash PCI, that link is live now. So you're able to sign up as soon as you like. All right, thank you, James, for a great presentation. The very first question we have is, what key people within our organization do you think will be needed? IEQC, CFO, PMs, controllers or engineers? It depends on the organization and I'd be interested to hear your feedback, but our experience has been largely purchasing. Whoever is handling the working with your vendors, meaning your power bills, your electricity and also your material vendors, that sort of personnel is really front and center in these maybe more so than let's say your engineering or some of your other experts. If you need help kind of figuring out who to ask, yeah, definitely let us know because that's usually the case, whoever handles the bills. All right, the next question is, what category do bridge girders or highway transportation elements get categorized under plant production? Yeah, so in the survey there, there is, we're asking for total production. There is a section for other. So that sort of thing, I think, as I mentioned, we're really, the primary thing we're looking for there is the overall production. And then detail as you're able to provide it. So if it doesn't fit neatly into one of those categories, we would just ask for you to put it under other. Okay, next question. How do you plan to address supplier EPD for sandwich wall connection systems? Well, this is a good question. I think we'll get a better handle that as we move into the data. The way we use EPD data on these really depends on the availability of that data. Those of you may be aware, we did a similar project like this last year for CPCI up in Canada. And in Canada, we were able to even incorporate EPD data for the specific cement vendors. Now, that's a unique Canadian condition because there's cement EPDs that cover all the cement plants there. But in any case, we definitely are aware of all the EPDs that are out there for the material inputs, and we'll make use of them where we can. All righty. This question asks, the GFRC EPD was recently completed under the current PCR. Will this data be added to the data system for future use in developing local EPDs? Yes, the GFRC product actually was, that product EPD was developed in the software. So as part of that, we did incorporate datasets for all of the unique background datasets that apply there. We have a fairly broad range of background datasets having done a number of these precast studies. So yes, the short answer though is yes, that if anyone is making GFRC and they would like to talk to us about getting into their own EPDs, that's definitely a possibility now. This is a two-part question. The first part is, my company has EPD in for a third-party review now. Can we simply forward that to WAP for inclusion in the industry-wide data collection without entering your tool? There's likely some information we can glean off that. It's unlikely we'll be able to, an EPD is by nature somewhat opaque. Like you're not able to see a lot of the background information. But that's an interesting case. We're not seeing a lot of, there's not a lot in the precast industry that have moved forward with their own EPDs. So for that, I would recommend that we're just in contact and discuss what's possible there. Happy to work with you. Yeah, definitely our intention is that we make use of whatever data you have, if possible. Okay, and the second part of that question is, will different market sectors be handled separately, i.e. a data center member very heavily loaded will probably carry a higher GWP than a standard parking structure member? Well, that's definitely something that we're looking at right now. And there's always a big discussion in these is how to define benchmark products. One of the things that our intention is in discussion with PCI this go-round is that there needs to be more delineation. It's hard to group things into really broad categories. And then for those to potentially, like some of the examples you gave, maybe be an extreme or not really fit well into those categories. So yeah, those sorts of considerations we're definitely taking under advisement. And our intention this time is to cover a broad enough range of products so that there's some sensible benchmarks that come out of this, that it's not too broad. Okay, thank you very much. The next question is, will this give enough information to do an LCA for insulated and non-insulated cladding structures, precast structure versus steel, cast in place versus precast parking garages and steel versus prestressed beams for bridges? Yeah, well, EPDs by their nature are non-comparative. It's really about calculating and declaring your own product footprints. Now, what this has become is a bit of a challenge to some of these other industries to produce similar data. The concrete industry is head and shoulders above these other industries, I would say. Precast, maybe not as far as ReadyMix, but certainly very far ahead, you know, in capabilities and developing these EPDs. So, no, it won't give you, let's say, a comparison of a precast panel against another construction type. There are definitely other tools, though, that are really good for that, and we can point you in the right direction. There's several whole building LCA softwares that are out there. The Athena Institute, where we were previously, has one called the Impact Estimator for Buildings that's really good for those type material comparison decisions, but not directly as part of this EPD. Next one, is it free to submit data and a cost to develop individual EPDs? What is the cost and is there a cost per plant or per PCI member to participate? Sure, that's a good question. I appreciate you putting a slide in there. So, in our discussions with PCI, we've essentially got you all a group rate. So, we have our basic pricing for precast EPDs. Our intention is that most, if not all, of you that are going to be providing data into this study will do so with the intention, you know, the dual purpose of developing your own EPDs. Again, if you're already doing EPDs, then possibly that's not the case, but what we're finding is that, you know, there's a really a dual need in the industry both for representative averages and benchmarks, but also, you know, that's not to discount the fact that a lot of this buy clean has come out with really specific language that EPDs need to be plant and product specific. So, that's what we've tried to do. The fee to go all the way through to develop your own EPDs is $3,000 per facility, and we would follow up and contract directly with each of you all on that. Again, there is potentially this possibility of providing data and not, you know, without fee and using in the study, but right now our intention is that for as many of you as we can to move forward and get you set up with your own EPDs as well at the same time. And for that, that would be that $3,000 a plant. Oh, we just had another question come in. How do we separate the DOT transportation products for building products? This will be important as locally we are reporting data to that agency group. Well, right now my understanding is DOT, you know, they're all looking for EPDs. Now, the degree to which, you know, you do something specific for a DOT, I mean, our idea of this is that the software is set up to do just that, that if you need to develop, let's say, if you have a DOT product specific to them, then you would maintain that as one of your products in the system and you can generate that and no additional fees. Everything's on a per plant basis. So, yeah, you have the flexibility to produce any number of different EPDs for any specific purpose you want, and that's really how it's set up. You go through this initialization period, but then for the fixed rate of this $3,000 that you can go in and customize and modify your mixes and your products. This next question is two questions into one. Does the $3,000 include the third party verifier publishing the EPD or LCA only, and does it include verification payable to ASTM? Yeah, that's a good question too. Right now, there's several different verification packages going around. ASTM has a flat rate of $3,000 that'll cover any number of different plants. There are others that are more geared towards smaller producers. NRMCA actually has an EPD program. There's another outfit called EPD International who's entered this space and are definitely interested to work with some of the smaller producers and to do verification. So, right now, we're quoting centrally verification between $1,000 and $3,000, $3,000 being somewhat of a cap because you can go to the ASTM for that. But there are, let's say if you're in the one-two plant range, there are some other options that we can help hook you up with. But that would be in addition to the $3,000. And that's, you know, you have the option there of contracting, you know, basically subcontracting them through us, I think, which is what most people would do, save you an invoice and a PO and all that. But yeah, that would, essentially, when you follow up with this signup, we're going to follow up with basically all the terms on what it means to participate in the study and then also kind of the price sheet, assuming most will want to work with us to develop their own EPDs. All right, next question. How do you third-party verify the data? Do you look at actual purchasing and use documents? Mm-hmm. Well, right now, there is no, let's say, auditing of the information that you put into the system. We go through several layers of checks on our end for feasibility, you know, checking that, let's say, the main energy flows are within reason, plus or minus the standard deviation of, you know, what we would expect. But there is no, let's say, audit trail. I think that likely that will change here in the next year or two as these things kind of seem to be accelerating. I think that it's inevitable. We have some functionality. I didn't really show you on uploading files and sharing files within the software. But for right now, you're putting in information from your systems and we're not asking for, let's say, you to upload bills or anything like that. All righty, next question is, as a supplier of insulation for precast well panels, do we provide our EPD or wait for the precast to ask us for the information? Well, that's a good question. I'd be interested if you'd share directly with us just to make sure that we have it accessible in our program. Yeah, I would say the more proactive you are, if you've invested in your own EPDs at this point, if you want that data used, then the quickest way to that would be to get it in our hands and to make sure that we're familiar with it. All right, how long does the LCA take verification and publication? Well, really, you know, I give the overall project timeline as an estimate. The way we would typically estimate that is, you know, once we get to a conclusion of data collection, we like six to eight weeks, basically, to write everything up to go through our different, you know, review processes internally, as well as with PCI. And then from that point, the documents, and that includes the EPD, the documents will then go to the third party verifier. And that timeline is probably four to six weeks right now, probably on the higher end, I'd conservatively say another six to eight weeks. So let's say if we work and get through the data collection, by the end of the year, you know, our intention was first quarter, basically to take, start working on this later this year, and then take the first few months of 2024 to finalize the documents. All right, what is the fee for publishing? And is there a yearly fee? So there is no fee, you know, the only fees there are right now are on a plant basis, and that's for the subscription to the software, and for the verification. Now the verification happens once. That's a one time thing. The software, that's actually an annual, on an annual basis. So you would sign up, you know, you'd use it for a year. And if you wanted to continue, it's one year contracts. But if you wanted to continue and have, you know, the ability to keep producing these, it's on an annual basis, just another 3000. But yeah, you know, the idea is that we really need you to get up and going in this first year, you know, to provide the data. So it's more of a, you know, a future decision, I guess, if you're seeing values and EPDs. And, you know, if you are seeing EPDs really start to be a major driver in your business, you know, I think that seems, it seems to be going that direction. We definitely seem, are seeing more of an uptick of EPDs required and specifications and things. So to date, you know, we've only, we've never had any money back out of our system. You know, we've been doing this for several years now. And typically, you know, if you saw some value to participate and develop EPDs, that need and need for EPDs is only going to grow. Can you explain how software such as EC3 pulls product specific information? So it doesn't, EC3, the way they've populated their database is they essentially go around to all the different EPD programs, ASTM, NSF, UL, and they will basically scrape the EPD data into their database. They'll look at, you know, the product, the results, all of that and pull it in. One thing our software offers is a universal publish button. So when you actually publish your EPD, it goes into all of the public directories. So it will not just create the PDF for you to share by email, but it actually sends a digital copy of it over to whichever EPD program operator you decide to work with, and also to EC3. And that happens instantaneously through a mutual API that we share with EC3. All right, we have another question that just came in. So do you enroll through your website to provide the EPD for the installation? Yeah, I mean, with the, you know, the enrollment in the through the website is going to give us your contact info that allows us to follow up. So, you know, we're pretty aware of who are precast producers and, you know, who are material providers. So if we have your information, then, yeah, we'll follow up. And I think, you know, myself and Hannah and Leanna's email addresses are probably in this email chain somewhere. Feel free to, you know, bypass that if you want to contact us directly. We're trying to funnel all of the signups through the signup page to kind of keep our sanity and keep in one place. But we're accessible. If you've got questions, you know, don't hesitate to drop us a line. I think you answered a question similar to this, but do EPDs vary from product to product? Well, definitely. I mean, within a product category, you know, they are as specific as you decide to go with them. So if you're putting in specific materials with specific suppliers, and let's say we have EPD data that's specific to those suppliers, then they can be really specific and, you know, just about your product and your supply chain. EPDs done in other sectors, like I said, you know, looking out past precast products, we don't advise comparing against EPDs that are produced under different PCRs. But that said, because there is an international standard, ISO 21930, there is a general understanding that EPDs in different product groups are somewhat in sync. Again, not to the point of, I think, cross material comparisons and that sort of thing. But yeah, it's really, you know, PCRs and the whole system are designed to have as much harmony within a product category as possible. And that's, you know, that's the intention. That's what we've done. All right, we have one more question. Actually, we have two more. Does the LCA include a hotspot analysis? Most definitely. And that's going to be, you know, the LCA report, like the EPD has the panache and like the, you know, the recognition and it's something we need to build towards. But the LCA report really provides a lot of background information. So, it provides like a hotspot analysis, a really detailed analysis of where the impacts are, where the levers are for improvements. And as you can see, too, when I showed the analysis screen in the software, it actually, in real time, will show you the breakdown of materials versus operations, so you can get a bit of a sense, too, within your own products. But yeah, definitely, hotspot analysis and significance analysis is a big part of what we're doing in LCA. Okay. Piggybacking off of that, one more. Does the tool calculate using industry averages for, for example, cement data? Yeah, we'll be, you know, we'll be pulling in your specific suppliers into this and it'll be interesting to see how this evolves. But right now, because there's not complete coverage of all, you know, there's not universal EPDs from every single cement supplier. So, we will be using the PCA industry data for Portland cement and Portland limestone cement. That will definitely be part of the study. Okay, we have another question coming in. Are VOCs being captured in the EPDs? Well, to a degree, you know, I don't think most concrete plants are necessarily tracking and reporting on VOCs. Definitely, there is a place, there are places there for air emissions and the degree to which they come up. Yeah, definitely. VOCs and any of the direct air emissions are part of the study. I'm not sure if this is a question. It says PCI's position is to not compare products, EPDs derived from different PCRs. This is very important with respect to ready-mix EPDs derived from the ready-mix PCR. We have different materials coming out of the gate. Yeah, that's definitely a key point is that, you know, we don't recommend comparing EPDs, particularly across product categories, but also EPDs that are only cradled to gate. And that's the real, you know, I think the biggest problem, let's say with, let's say, if you were to take a precast and compare it to the EPDs that are only cradled to gate, I think the biggest problem, let's say, with, let's say, if you were to take a precast and compare it to a ready-mix is you're comparing, you know, a product that's ready to be installed versus a product that's really has some manufacturing that happens on site, essentially, and some energy use and some transportation. So, it's definitely our position as well that EPDs, even within a product category, need to be compared in a very limited fashion, but certainly not outside of product categories. I think the comment I made on this ISO standard is that at least you can look at, let's say, a ready-mix EPD, and it has the same set of results, and it uses the same language, and it's going to, it has the same content in terms of the scoping rules, and like, you know, so you can go through and interpret these things. If you've looked at, let's say, an EPD in one category, you've, you know, you should have some familiarity with another, but definitely, yeah, we're very cautious about any comparisons with EPDs. Well, it looks like that's all the time we have today for our Q&A. On behalf of PCI, I'd like to thank you, James, for a great presentation. If our listeners have any further questions about today's webinar, please email marketing at pci.org with the subject title EPD webinar. Thank you again, have a great day, and please stay safe.

Environmental Product Declarations

WAP Sustainability Consulting

James Salazar

Hannah Renaud

Liana Miller

Life Cycle Assessment

Environmental Product Declaration

PCI collaboration

data collection