Hello and welcome to PCI's President's Update. All attendees are in listen-only mode. If you have a question, you can type it into the question box in the webinar panel. We will get to as many questions as we can at the end of the presentation. You can also raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you will receive a private chat message from me. Handouts can be accessible in the webinar panel under the handout section. If you have trouble downloading the handout or you do not see them, please email marketing at PCI.org and we will get them to you. And with that, I'll turn it over to Bob. Well, good afternoon. I'm thrilled to be able to be here and give you an update on what's going on with PCI. So why don't we just get started. First and foremost, I'd like to welcome our newest employee of our teammate on our staff, Stephanie Maggio, is our new events manager. She started the first of the year. Many of you were able to meet her at the convention. I'd also like to take the opportunity to point out a few awards deadlines that are coming up this spring and summer. First, our highest awards, the PCI Fellows, Mario Bertolini Leadership and Innovation Award and the PCI Medal of Honor all open to April 1st. Nominations will close on August 9th. Please be thinking about folks who deserve credit for all of the service they've given to PCI and to the industry. These folks will be – nominations will be put before the board at our meeting in September in Nashville as part of committee days. And then they'll be presented at the convention in Indianapolis next February. We've also got some looming deadlines on individual award nominations that are presented at committee days. We're still looking for nominations for the Norm Scott Professional Engineer Award and for the Irwin Spire Young Professional Engineer Award. Those nominations are due by May 1st. I hope anyone listening saw some deserving folks who could be nominated for those awards. Again, those will be presented to the board at our summer board meeting in June and then presented at committee days. As many of you know, there's a lot of discussion right now in the area of sustainability, so I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about some developments that occurred at the convention and since. Sustainability and other topics related to it have become a very big part of some of our members' markets. And in order to properly serve our members' needs, the decision was made by the board to form a sustainability committee under the Building Performance Council. Part of this thinking was that many of the sustainability efforts cross over several different councils and it needed a place as a permanent home. So as you can see on the screen, the mission is to promote and provide sustainability resources for our industry and our members and their customers. Under that committee, they've created three different subcommittees, marketing, technical, and an advisory group subcommittee that will have liaisons on the sustainability committee. So in the past year, PCI staff and members have really been hard at work getting a lot of tools and resources for our members to use in meeting the needs and demands of their customers in regard to the sustainability issue. One of those is environmental product declarations. We're seeing an increasing number of our member plants being asked to provide EPDs for their specific plants and the products that are coming out of their plants. So in order to meet that need, last spring, PCI entered into an arrangement with WAP Consulting to provide access to a tool that PCR producer members can use to put in the data they need and generate an environmental product declaration for the products coming out of their plants. We are also in an effort, every five years, we are updating the industry-wide EPD that members have been able to use up to this point. Unfortunately, at this point, we only have 52 plants that are currently using the tool. We really need a minimum of about 75 in order for us to be able to declare something akin to an industry-wide EPD. So for all the producers who are on this call and listening, I ask you to strongly consider signing up with WAP and getting the process started. In case you have not had a customer asking for this yet, I do want to remind folks that this is not something that you can do in a week or two. It takes a fair amount of time to gather the information that's necessary. One of the benefits of using this tool, however, is that it's extraordinarily less costly to our producer members than if you've gone out and done it on your own. The cost is $3,000 per plant to use the tool. Producers who've gone out and gotten EPDs on their own have reported to us that they've spent in excess of $20,000 to do that on their own. There was a webinar on how to use the tool that took place on February 20th. That was recorded and is now in the PCI eLearning Center. There are also a number of EPDs update and resources available on the PCI website. We also, in response to market demand, have created a separate PCI sustainability webpage under our How Precast Builds umbrella, where we can provide information to the design community and other interested parties and owners about sustainability resources and information about precast concrete. I hope you'll make use of those. We also have a number of resources, both from PCI and from other organizations. You can see a recently published designer's notebook that PCI has put out on the suitability of EPDs in material selection. A lot of misinformation and a lot of misuse of this data are being reported out in the design community. So this, along with some of these ASTM publications, can be used by members to instruct the design community on what they can and shouldn't be doing with using EPDs, especially in comparing different products. So I hope you'll make use of those if your market calls for that. The technical side of PCI has also been extremely busy over the last, actually, couple of years. Right now, we are planning or have finished five different standards to add to the completed standards. I would like to point out – I've got a slide in a minute. So we're updating the one on fire resistance. There's one in progress with GFRC, PCI 135 intolerances, and a specification for precast free stress piles. That is very near to being published, and it is scheduled to be referenced by AASHTO in 2025. I'm very pleased to announce the completion of a specification for the design of precast insulated wall panels, PCI 150-24. It's a brand new standard, and the slide says it's in the bookstore by May 1st, but I was just informed right before we came on this webinar that it is up and available in the PCI bookstore as of earlier today. So if that's of interest to you and of use to you. Our plan is to take this standard and propose it for reference in the IBC building code for 2027. Those hearings start next winter. So we're hopeful we'll be successful in getting this PCI standard referenced in building codes going forward. As many of you know, a very high priority goal for the organization is the publication of a precast code, structural code. We're doing that as a joint venture with ACI, and the document is called ACI PCI 319. I'm very pleased to report the great progress, and I want to give compliments to our standards committee and especially to Edith Gallendorm of our staff who's so ably directed this effort. We're not there quite yet, but we've made great progress, and everything looks to be on track. They completed the document last November. They just completed PCI and an ACI TAC review at ACI's convention. Very recently, the 319 committee reviewed and responded to all of ACI TAC's comments. We're anticipating that the public comment period for this will begin this summer, and that the first version of ACI PCI 319 will be published this fall, and then we'll take it together to the IBC code hearings I mentioned a minute ago for reference in the 2027 building code. So, major goal, multi-multi-years in the making, a lot of effort, but when we get this done, it's really going to complete a vision that our leaders and especially our technical leaders had for this product about six years ago. A couple of things to note on the transportation front. Next week, we will be co-hosting, along with other organizations that are part of the National Concrete Bridge Coalition, NCBC, a two-day seminar in Georgia for concepts for extending spans on pre-stressed concrete bridges. We've got over 120 people signed up for this. Were there any of you involved in your local chapters? We held this same seminar last August in northern Wisconsin at the border between Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the Minnesota and Wisconsin DOTs both participated. We do have it budgeted for one more of these this calendar year, so if that would be of interest to the bridge producers in a particular area, let your executive director of our chapter know and to work with William Nickus on getting that pulled together sometime in the fall. Also on the bridge front, happy to announce the brand new bridge design manual was finished around the first of the year and is currently available for download on the PCI website. This new publication has really taken off. I spoke with William just earlier this morning, and in the previous 10 years, we had about 4,400 downloads of the previous version of the bridge design manual. Since the first of the year, we now have over 2,200 downloads of the fourth edition just since the first of the year, so congratulations to those committees and to William and everyone involved in all the hard work to bring this latest publication to market. A few other things on the bridge side for our bridge producers, we've launched two new e-learning modules on piles. Our standard on pre-stress piles is completed, and we're working on the public comment processes. We're looking to that to be out in the next couple of months, a few months. M&L 137 is going to the PCI Committee on Bridges for balloting. In the next few months, we've got, as you can see, various efforts on seismic and piles going before the PCI Committee on Bridges. So, a lot of activity, and thanks to all the members who participated in all those activities. I'd like to spend a few more minutes here this afternoon talking about our architectural precast certification. There was an update webinar that was held on April 15th, and it was recorded and is also now available in our e-learning center. But I just wanted to take a few minutes because there's been some confusion about the renewal process this year, specifically as it relates to the architectural precast certification designations. As the architectural producers are aware, we, about six years ago, embarked on this journey to develop different levels, different categories of our architectural precast certification. You can see them listed on the screen there. There is a document that was produced by the Architectural Certification Committee on all of these supplemental requirements for this particular program. This is available on the website and was produced, as you can see by the date there, back in 2019 when we launched the program. This is available on the website under producer resources for anyone who's interested in looking at it. And inside the document is a review of the recertification process. So initially, people signed up for one of these designations. And so, during the audit process, the different categories, as you can see on the screen, require a different number of points to maintain that category. Now, this is a – the initial certification was based on proficiency in a certification category verified every two years. After the initial certification, a minimum number of feature points was on the previous slide has to be demonstrated on a rolling four consecutive audit basis. So it's really not two years, it's a rolling four audits, which becomes two years. So we launched the project in October 21, and in December 2023, it was considered the initial two-year. From January to June, this six-month period is considered an extension to earn the key feature points. Any plant that has not earned the required key feature point will be presented to the ACRB, the Architectural Certification Review Board. One of the misconceptions was if you don't earn enough points, you will lose your PCI certification. That is not the case. They will not lose their current certification in Group A until the appeal process is completed. And that appeal process, which is outlined on this particular slide and is also included in the supplementary requirements, if the points are not made for a particular category, the ACRB can recommend several different options. They can recommend that they go ahead and get certification. They can do a re-audit or a site re-evaluation or recommend that the plant be certified in an alternative category. So in order to clear up this confusion, there's a lot of discussion at the Board of Directors meeting and at the Executive Committee level and with the region representatives on the board at the convention in Denver. PCI put out this memorandum on March 13th. So all the QC managers of architectural certified plants did receive this memorandum that was sent out on March 13th reviewing the processes and clarifying what would happen if the points for a particular category were not achieved. So just to wrap this particular section up, no plant loses their current certification until the appeal process is concluded. If the key features are not observed during a regular audit or a plant does not maintain their minimum key features, the review board will make one or more recommendations. A special audit can be requested by the producer and a plant can request to be moved to a less complex category. The total appeal process can take three to four months. But under no circumstances, if the audit was successful, outside of the points will the plant lose their PCI certification. There's also some upcoming events happening. The AA and AB surveys, which are part of the program, are about to be sent out. We've got a training webinar that's upcoming in the weeks ahead. We're going to start the AA site evaluations training for those evaluators this fall. We have an ongoing promotion and adoption of these specifications. On our body of knowledge side, just a little bit of an update on other documents that are in the works, particularly in the architectural area. You can see those on the screen. I'm really pleased to report the success we've had with two different advisory groups. The first, the architectural advisory group, is a group of practicing architects who are interested in and fans of precast and pre-stressed concrete that meet regularly with Randy and our members to discuss what PCI can do to advance architectural precast in the marketplace. Really an invaluable source of insight as to how to position ourselves and what we can do to get the word out about the benefits of precast. As part of that discussion and the interest in sustainability, it came to light that every one of these architecture firms has a sustainability director. Very recently, they launched the sustainability advisory group that's made up of those sustainability directors of those architecture firms to further give guidance to how PCI and our members can navigate EPDs and the other challenges of the discussions around sustainability. All right, switching gears to government affairs. Our number one priority right now is workforce development. We are doing this in conjunction with our friends at NPCA. And I really want to take this opportunity to ask for members to get involved with this particular piece of legislation. House Resolution 3734 is a bill that's been sponsored by Congressman Lloyd Smucker from Pennsylvania. He's a Republican. He's got bipartisan Democratic support. But he's looking for co-sponsors. And this Essential Workers for Economic Advancement Act creates a new temporary visa for non-agricultural workers, specifically in the construction and service industries. You can see it's 36 months. It's renewable. There's other sorts of requirements. The first year, it is limited to 65,000. Could be expanded to 85,000. But this particular vehicle, if we could help get this enacted, would start a precedent of having a special visa for construction industry folks that our members desperately need to work in the plants and on construction sites. So I would urge all the members, not just the producers, if you have a relationship with your member of Congress and your senators, please let me know. We will be posting this and sending some things out. But we'd like you to encourage them to become a co-sponsor of this bill. It is not an immigration bill. It's a temporary worker bill. And we need to position it along those lines. So very shortly, we'll be sending out links to materials and sample letters that members will be able to send to their members of Congress to encourage them to be a co-sponsor or at least consider supporting this effort. OK, moving on to our other big strategic goal, which is to increase the market for recast concrete. Very pleased to announce our design awards. We had a very successful design awards presentation at the convention. But the effort never ceases. So the 2025 design awards are now open, open April 1st. And the submissions close July 16th. So congratulations to all of the award winners at the convention. They've also, the Marketing Council has also created a new Precast Concrete Longevity Award. Feedback from the design community and previous judges was that we don't celebrate the durability of precast concrete enough. So this special longevity award was launched this year. And submissions are open until May 3rd. And it is free to submit. And you can see the categories. There are 10 to 25, 25 to 50, and 50 year plus. And then the two subcategories of buildings and transportation. So I encourage you, if you know of the projects that have stood the test of time, that you consider making a submission to this brand new award. The Marketing Council has also launched two new marketing awards, the Individual Achievement Award and the Marketing Company Achievement Award. So if you've got individuals in your companies who you feel have done a fantastic job and need to be recognized for their efforts to promote precast concrete in the marketplace, I encourage you to submit a nomination. They will be open until May 10th. And they are also free to submit. The Marketing Council and our education efforts have built quite a relationship with the National Institute of Building Sciences. And I'm pleased to announce that for the second year in a row, PCI has a spot on their program. We spoke the industry scrote, Jim Schneider, from Mountain States Chapter, presented at their meeting last September. And we will be participating again in their meeting, Upcoming Innovation Conference, next month, also in Washington, DC. So great effort on that. Back my popular demand is the PCR Marketing and Sales School. It's going to be held again in Chicago here, right near O'Hare, in our office. It's scheduled to be June 27th to 28th. And it's limited to 55 people. But there will be a waiting list. And you can see all the topics that are going to be covered there. Also encourage all of our members to participate in Precast Days, which is scheduled between October 7th and 18th this fall. We encourage all of our producers to host an open house, either inviting the community, designers, politicians, your members of Congress, or your senators. It is an election year. So I can tell you that they will be more than usually open to invitation to put on a hard hat and come and tour a precast plant that's in their district. If you need any help getting in touch with any folks in Congress to try to help make that happen, please let me know. And we'll get you the information and make that connection. We also continue our Precast Protects Life to talk about the resilience benefits of precast concrete. I can tell you that we are also in a meeting a couple of months ago in Washington with a newly reformed group called Build Strong America. It's mostly funded by insurance companies. And their sole purpose is to promote more resilient construction in areas that are prone to events. And so this is potentially a great partnership that PCI is going to have to try to use that third party to promote building codes and other policies that call for the design of structures that will withstand events like hurricanes and wildfires. Our marketing efforts also continue in regards to earned media. These are articles and other free publications that we get in different media and avenues. Really pleased to announce that our April issue of Structure Magazine featured one of our design award winners and highlighted precast concrete in their concrete issue, including getting the cover. So we're also getting coverage in engineering news record and concrete products, both planning stories on a UHPC project that was built in South Dakota. This is just a sample of our earned media that we've gotten just between February and April of this year. We maintain a database of all of these press releases. You can see this is our news and media section of the website. And they're by year. So if your company is getting press, please forward it to marketing at pci.org so we can post it on our website and get the word out about the coverage that precast concrete projects are getting in the marketplace. Upcoming issues of Ascent, the spring is out already, which highlights our design awards. The summer issue will feature architectural designs and finishes. The Did You Know feature in the fall issue. Precast concrete sustainable benefits next winter. And every spring, we showcase the design awards winners. So if you've got ideas for projects that we could highlight in Ascent and these future issues, please contact Becky King of our staff, and we'll get that started. Lots of activities on the education front. Coming up next month is the 2024 professor's seminar, which the foundation has held for a number of years and PCI is now a co-sponsor of. We've made considerable progress on teaching materials for professors. We plan to have this completed this summer. And it's 13 weeks, an entire semester, and it's 13 weeks, an entire semester, of teaching materials and presentation materials for an entire semester-long class on prestressed concrete. The PCI Online Academy continues to grow. Our newest offering is on connection design. The first course was earlier this week on Tuesday. And we're planning a concrete mix design on the Online Academy in July, led by Paul Ramsburg from SICA. I'd also like to remind the universities or any universities or producers who are participating in the Big Beam competition that applications are due June 1st. We also have upcoming QC schools. You can see we've got two onlines scheduled this month. Next month, we've got in-persons in Chicago and Toronto. Another online, Level 1, 2, in June. We have a lot more QC schools and some in-person ones planned for the fall. So the rest of the year, QC schools are all listed on the education section of the PCI website. Just reminding everyone of the literally vast amount of materials, education resources that are available through our webinars, our PCI Academy, the Online Academy that we mentioned, and all of our e-learning sections. Wanted to give you an update on some recently completed projects, some of which have been in discussion for many years at PCI. And one of them is the availability of a student handbook, design handbook, student edition, available for free for students to download. This went live last year, and I'd like to report that we've had 369 downloads of our student edition of the design handbook since it went live on the website. We've also just recently completed the update of the pre-stress in a box, which is teaching materials. And we've had 67 downloads of those materials since they went live. We've got several different courses coming out on the e-learning center. I won't read through all those, but they're all available on the website. You can see basic pre-stress concrete design and on materials and manufacturing and other topics. I think the bottom line I want to emphasize in terms of our e-learning center is just the continual growth we are having of design community coming to PCI's website for their PDHs and to get information about pre-cast concrete. In 2023, we had over 474,000 page views, which was a 39% increase over 2022. And 2022 was a 60% increase over 2021. As far as the courses that are being taken, we had a 40% increase in 2023 of started courses and a 33% increase in completed courses, again, after 2022 had considerable increases over 2021. So I want to give a lot of credit to Becky King and our marketing and education staff and the councils and committees that support this. We're obviously making progress in making information about pre-cast available to the design community and them seeing PCI as a resource for getting that information. We have a whole slew of, we continue our series of webinars. I obviously will not read through all of these, but these are all the webinar topics that we have planned for the rest of the year and beyond. As you know, we've had a lot of effort around the workforce development arena over the last couple of years. But there's one new endeavor that we've really kicked off at the convention in Denver. And that is to look at recruitment and retention, of course, that's always been there. But what we've also now added as an aspect is wellness. The construction industry is second overall in suicide as an industry. And so we wanted to make sure that we provided members with information and resources that you can use with your employees who might be having some difficulties. This QR code connects to those and also these stickers. You can see the circular in the top right-hand corner. We've made available stickers for hardhats with that QR code. So even if you're on a job site, you can take a shot of it and instantly get access and links to information and resources for folks who may be having difficulties. Number of events coming up here in the near future. A couple of weeks is the productivity tour, which is anchored outside of Philadelphia. We've got, I already mentioned, the professor's seminar at the end of May, which is also in Philadelphia. Marketing and sales school. The architectural committee is, again, hosting their production manager summit. That'll be in July up in Sioux Falls. And after a COVID pause, we're reinstituting the PCO CEO summit for chief executives of PCI member companies. That's going to be held August 14th, 15th, right near our office here near O'Hare. I'd also like to point out to everyone, especially the producers, that PCI renewals and survey information all went out last week. So I encourage you to get to work on those and, in particular, make a pitch for the producers to fill out and get our market survey. The only source of information on how we're doing in the marketplace has got to come from you, the members. So please complete that market survey so that we can continue to track the progress we're making in the advancement of gaining market share for precast concrete. Some more upcoming events. The architectural precast concrete workshop is going to be in September in Nashville. As I mentioned, committee days will also be in Nashville. Although the slide doesn't reflect, I'm very pleased to announce that we have found a venue for the PCI Foundation. And we will be having a Nashville version of a version of Concrete Chefs to benefit the foundation at committee days in Nashville. So really excited to be able to help raise money for the foundation through that event. We already mentioned precast days. Again, encourage all of our producer members to have an open house and invite the community and other stakeholders to come in and see what it is that we do as an industry. And then next year, the convention will be February 5th to 7th in Indianapolis. So with that, I'll be more than happy to take any questions. As you can see, there's a lot going on. I should mention that we did, once again, have over 1,000 registrants for the convention in Denver. It was a great success. And I want to thank everyone, the volunteer members and staff that helped make that possible. So with that, I'll take any questions, Becky, if anybody has any. And thank you so much for your participation and support of PCI. At this time, we don't have any questions. One question. If we have any questions regarding sustainability, who do we reach out to, or how do we get involved? Depending on the aspect. If you have a question about the EPDs, if you're looking to get your plant going in that regard, I would reach out to Jared Rui, our chief engineer. He's heading up that effort with WAP and can get you connected with them for that effort. For all the other messaging and other things that we're doing, I would contact Becky King on our staff. She's helping to coordinate all of that and the special subcommittee that we put under BPC. When will registration open for committee days? I should know that, and I don't. Sometime, I would imagine, around the 1st of June. OK, we'll give a few more minutes. There's no more questions at this time. What is the best way for professors to get the pre-stressed in a box teaching materials and the student materials? The pre-stressed in a box is available, should be available free of charge for download from the website. If you have any trouble with that, I would contact either of the Beckys, Becky King or Becky Masaccia. As far as the student materials, I think you're referring to the student version of the handbook. That's also available. You do need to have an EDU website address in order to qualify for that. And then the teaching materials, the 13 weeks, aren't quite finished yet. They're going to be done this summer, but they will also then be available on the website for download. Yes, that answered his question. He said, thank you. OK, well, thank you very, very much. Again, thanks for your support and involvement in PCI. And I hope you have a great rest of your week. And we look forward to seeing you at committee days in Nashville.

PCI updates

employee introductions

awards deadlines

sustainability efforts

EPDs

industry standards updates

workforce development legislation

market expansion efforts