Good afternoon. Welcome to PCI's webinar series. Today's presentation is the PCI President's Update. My name is Royce Covington, Manager of Member Services at PCI, and I'll be your moderator for this session. Before I turn the controls over to our presenter today, I have a few introductory items to note. Earlier today, we sent an email to all registered attendees with a handout attached of today's presentation. The handout is available now and can be found in the handouts pane located near the bottom of the GoToWebinar Toolbox. If you can't download the handout, please email PCIMarketing at PCIMarketing at PCI.org as shown on your screen. Note that all attending lines are muted. The GoToWebinar Toolbox has an area for you to raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you will receive a private chat message from me. If you have a question, type it into the questions pane and I'll be keeping track of them to read during the Q&A period. There will be a pop-up survey after this program ends. Our presenter for today is PCI President and CEO, Bob Risser. I'll now turn the controls over so that we can begin our presentation. Well, thank you, Royce, and good afternoon, everyone. I hope you're enjoying your summer and thank you for joining us on this quarterly update on the activities of PCI. We'll just jump right in to what's going forward and on with PCI. First, I'd like to discuss the recent Board of Directors meeting. We met under Chairman Matt DeVos' leadership in New Orleans and covered a number of things that we'll mention in this slide here. The first was the format of our board meetings. We start off with discussing mega issues that are important to the industry. It's no surprise that the topic of discussion at our meeting earlier this month was on workforce development and what PCI might be able to do at the national level to complement our members' efforts and the efforts of some of our chapters that have started to develop things on their own websites to attract people to the industry. It was a pretty lively discussion. We've been tasked with coming up with a draft work plan and some deliverables of what PCI might be able to contribute to attracting people to our industry. Related to that, there is a new committee on workforce development that has been proposed under the Business Performance Council. That committee is looking for volunteers, including the chair, but they've been tasked with taking the lead in laying out what it is that PCI can add to its suite of value adds to the membership along workforce development. The other business that was conducted by the board was an approved updated strategic plan. The plan essentially stayed the same with a few exceptions that I've noted here. The first was to update strategic goal one to acknowledge the ongoing effort between ACI and PCI to develop the ACI PCI 319 building code for precast. A strategy under enhanced members' businesses was added on workforce development, so that's now officially part of our goals going forward. As most of you know, our fiscal year begins July 1st, so the board also approved a balanced budget which did have a placeholder amount of revenue in it to cover some possible workforce development activities. It is a balanced budget. I'm happy to report that PCI will end this fiscal year in healthy territory, very much in positive territory. Along those lines, the other item that the board undertook and approved was our reserves policy. It had a goal of 40% of our operating revenue for the reserve target, and the decision was made to up that to 50%. I'm happy to report that our reserves are currently above that goal. So I'd like to remind everyone on the call that it is renewal season, so thank you to everyone who's gotten their materials in. This can all be done on the website, and the membership renewals include the market survey for producer members. I'd like to remind everybody that that is a board has made that a condition of membership, and we really need all producer members to complete that market survey, which is due by the end of this month here this week. So if anyone on the call could check with their companies to make sure that that's being done, we really appreciate the help in getting that information. It's really important to our marketing and outreach efforts to be able to measure the numerator in our market share, and we can only get that from you, the producer members. I'd like to announce that committee days registration is open. Committee days will be in Rosemont, right outside of O'Hare, here in Chicago, September 21st to 23rd. So registration opened on the 15th of June, so go ahead and register for that on PCI's website. And also a reminder that we'll be moving committee days around the different parts of the country, Tampa Bay next year, Nashville in 24, and then rotating between Rosemont and other locations going forward. Another event that we are registration will be opening in early August is a production workshop. This is not the productivity tour. The productivity tour is scheduled for May of next year in Charlotte, North Carolina. These production workshops are sponsored by the Architectural Precast Committee, and they're picking a topic. This one will be forming. It will be October 18th to 20th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The plan is for one day of classroom and one day visiting plants, but they can see product and process demonstrations. Future production workshops, in-person workshops, are planned for 2023. On production in 2024, on finishing and patching with those locations still to be determined. I also want to let everyone know that nominations are currently open for a series of awards. Some of these awards get approved or put before the board of directors at their meeting at committee days in September, and others will be actually presented. The Medal of Honor, Mario Bertolini Leadership and Innovation Award, PCI Fellow, Distinguished Educator, whose deadline is July 15th because that will be presented at committee days, and Educator of the Year, also deadline of July 15th. All of the nomination forms and other requirements, recommendation letters and such, and instructions are all on the awards section that can be found on the PCI website. While we're talking about workforce development, I just wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that we have workforce development opportunities to retain your employees of PCI member companies. The productivity tour and allowing your employees to participate in those things. The marketing and sales school, which starts tomorrow. Production workshops that we're now kicking off. And of course, the backbone of PCI's activities are our committees and the various task groups in those committees where there's an opportunity for your employees to get mentoring and to grow in the industry and for your company. I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about government affairs, something that we're very active in right now. The first announcement is that we have partnered with a new agency in Washington, D.C. called Innovative Advocacy. We're partnering with the NPCA on that. They're representing both of us jointly. And we have a monthly update call with the principals of the firm. They participated on our behalf and NPCA's behalf on a fly-in for the cement and concrete industry a couple of months ago. And you can see some of the issues that were covered as part of that fly-in. Workforce development being one of them. Specifically to PCI, the issues that are extremely important to us, we are beginning messaging on workforce development, particularly around immigration reform. The board of directors feels that that has got to be an essential piece of taking care of the workforce problems that we're having getting people into the plants. We also very recently participated with other industry members in opposing a mass timber pilot in the Department of Defense reauthorization bill. We were not successful, but the concrete and cement industries as well as the steel industry were successful in bringing this issue from being slipped under to out in the open, as it were. We're pretty confident that with member participation, we'll be able to get rid of this pilot when they go to conference later this year. PCI also participated with other transportation related associations, including the Road Builders Association and HEC in a letter to the White House arguing against the proposed gas tax holiday that the president has put out. We're also continuing our efforts on interstate trucking regulations and the costs associated with states having wildly different requirements. We're encouraging PCI producer members to consider having some open houses this year, either during the August recess or later into the fall. This is an election year and it's very highly probable that your member of Congress, if invited, would have themselves or at least a member of their staff visit your operations. That's a great way to build those relationships because when we can ask you to weigh in with your member of Congress, it gives us a lot of weight in Washington, D.C. It is interesting to note that teamed up with the NPCA, PCI and NPCA together have almost 1,000 plant locations, making us the second largest footprint in the concrete industry after the ready mix industry. Together, we represent almost every district in the United States so our members can weigh in as voters as well as interested businesses. So now I'd like to just take a few minutes to go through some updates on our new strategic plan. I want to start with our quality goal. One of the things that we did in updating the strategic plan was to get rid of the goal zeros and just call them these bedrock goals, one of which is the quality goal. So a couple things I want to talk about. For the architectural producers, just a reminder that there is a new piece to the new architectural certification program that is going to be going into effect here on July 1st. It involves providing project surveys. It's applicable to AA and AB member plants and you can see that a minimum 5,000 square foot wall panel area, the kinds of projects. There's also an online survey that we're going to be doing. That needs to be done by customers and the survey results go back to the plant. So this is an important part of the feedback process that when we put together this program to ensure that the industry is putting a good foot forward out in the marketplace. We also wanted to remind us our architectural certification, our architectural plants, that A1 has been eliminated and you're very, very likely seeing and will for quite some time see A1 designated in contracts. Since there are no A1s, we have posted this certification statement on the certification portion of our website for you to use if there is any conflict between the requirement of an A1 and the fact that there are no A1 certified plants any longer. So this is a resource you can use if you need to in the contracts. Also a reminder that we've got websites that explain the new program and hopefully your companies and the local chapters are working with the architecture and specifying community to let them know about the new program. It's also referenced in AIA's master spec and there are guide specifications for each of the categories that are also available on PCI's website so you can download those and provide them to the architect of record. The Quality Committee also continues to produce their quality talks. Another round is currently in the works. There are more than 30 of them currently available on our PCI website both in English and in Spanish so take an opportunity if you can to check out those quality talks. They're essentially one or two page meant to mimic safety toolbox talks. Speaking of the certification programs, the schedule for the Quality Control QC schools up through the rest of this calendar year are seen here on the screen. They are also available in the calendar on the PCI website. You can see we have several in-person level ones and level twos as well as a virtual next month in July and another one in November. Now as we continue rolling out the online schools, particularly level one and level two, we have just recently put in place a waiting list provision that's located on the website. So currently the July online course is full and so we will be starting a wait list and if we get the wait list up to the minimum that we need to run a class, we will consider having an online class before the one that's currently scheduled in November. We're going to continue to keep an eye on this and see what the demand continues to be for particularly the level one, level two online QC schools. I also take this opportunity to remind anyone on the call or anyone on the webinar who is sending folks to the QC schools, PCI doesn't have the capacity of, they must come with a laptop. Everything that we're doing with the QC schools is now online through our certification management system. So each student must have a laptop with Wi-Fi capabilities so that they can take the exam as part of the class. They are also allowed to bring a non-programmable calculator with them to the class. So just a reminder that a laptop with Wi-Fi capabilities is necessary. I want to talk briefly about our IT goal, developing and maintaining our IT platforms. I'm very happy to announce that our work to provide a single sign-on for committee central is complete. It has all been tested and we will be going live tomorrow, June 29th with the single sign-on. So what that means is you don't have to sign on with a separate password to get into committee central. If you try to get directly into committee central, the new system will take you to this sign-on page as if you were signing on to the PCI website. So from now on, it'll just be a single sign-on and once you're in, you can get right to committee central without a second sign-on. So I'm very happy that our IT folks were able to get that done and make it that much easier to do work on the website. Spend a few minutes talking about our strategic goal too, which of course is to increase relative market share. I just want to make everyone aware of a couple of different things that are open right now. One of them is the big beam student competition, which is where producer members team up with a university. These results for the big beam competition entries are due by July 15th. So if you're involved or your chapter is involved, anything you can do to move that along would be very helpful. I just want to remind everyone of the tremendous amount of marketing resources that we have on our website, including under market research is the new FMI study that has been completed. This is a study that we've done, we did in 16 and repeated again in 2021. It's rather exhaustive, much larger It's rather exhaustive, much larger in scope than in 2016. The full report as well as a summary and an executive summary are available in the members section of the website under market research. So take a look at that and try to make use of that. As I mentioned, we have our marketing and sales school that starts tomorrow. Great opportunity. And once again, we filled it to capacity with our 50 attendees. So we're really happy to be providing this opportunity going forward. And this is two years in a row that it's been full. So we're really looking forward to the next couple of days and then seeing what we do in the future. There's discussion of having a sort of a version 2.0 for those who've already been through this one to further enhance everyone's skills. Also a reminder that our 2023 PCI Design Awards submissions are open. They close August 9th so we're always looking for showcase projects that can demonstrate what the industry is capable of. So again August 9th is the deadline for PCI Design Awards submissions. Also remind everyone of our How Precast Builds externally focused website that's reaching out to our stakeholders and design professionals. Related to that, at the end of this month we're going to be launching our Precast Protects Life program. That will be part of the How Precast Builds microsite. We're going to be coordinating that with a media campaign and we are currently looking for projects that reflect this for the fall edition of Ascent Magazine. So if you have any projects that fall into, you know, resilience, whether it's from storms or floods or what have you, a project that would be exemplary, please contact our marketing department and get them information for that fall Ascent issue. We're also very pleased to be rolling out at the end of this month a free member video software that will allow members to upload photos and other video clips and to make videos that they can use for their own for their own company's use. This is completely free of charge. The only people who will have access to it is the PCI staff and if videos are created by a member and we wanted to use them for some promotion purposes, we'll make sure to contact that member before we go ahead and do that. But this is strictly for to make it easier for member companies to make videos about their projects. We continue to pursue earned media, which is where we get stories in various online digital and print media. So far this year we've got 36 features including future coverage and architectural record and some articles in concrete products and concrete plants international. So we continue to pursue that. This is just an example of some of those earned media just between March and June of this year. So once again, if you have any coverage of a project that you're involved with, please forward it to PCI staff and we will make sure to add it to the library. Each of these coverages is on our website and available for folks and the public to review. We continue to promote our webinars and continuing education webinars on social media and other events like the design awards. And we continue to build and grow our PCI YouTube channel. This not only includes some how-to videos and things about precast, but also some how-tos on how to access and use various portions of our website such as the LMS, the learning management system. So now I'd just like to take the rest of my time to kind of do a deeper dive into, you know, what is the backbone of PCI and that's our body of knowledge. Also our main goal of our strategic plan. So I just want to take a few minutes to review some things. We are a standards organization and have already produced a couple of standards that are currently referenced in the IBC building code. Several others are in development with the intent of having some of them also put forward in the next building code cycle. QC of GFRC tolerances and concrete piles. Remind everyone that our strategic goal one is now to develop ACI PCI 319. This is an ongoing effort that requires our design standard committee to take items that are in the PCI design handbook, turn them into mandatory language, and then they'll be included. The group is also working on design and standard for precast insulated wall panels. This is essentially complete from the committee and now needs to go through the approval process and should be out hopefully by the end of the year. Also working on a standard practice for precast concrete buildings and bridges. This would be a parallel to the AISC code. This is under the business performance council and sets up standard practices for the industry. Our goal is to develop these publications and maintain our body of knowledge. So several things that we recently published are the design practice of 318 and architectural precast concrete category selection guidelines as well as a white paper on why sprinklers should not be required in open parking structures. Several different publications on the transportation side. We continue to publish ASPIRE and you can see these several other recently published that are available on the website as well. Upcoming publications that are very close to being complete are guidelines and a guide specification on UHPC and a recommended practice for spuncast poles. These should be out very shortly. Also in development are two of our major major publications of the PCI design handbook currently on track for the next version to be published in December of next year and the bridge design manual which is well into its update and the goal is to have that completed around the end of this year. Also in the development are a number of other manuals including the architectural precast manual which we're looking to do as an online digital publication rather than a traditional book. Lots of other things are in place or in the works in the various committees. One I'd like to really point out is the guide to the use of Portland limestone cement in precast fabrication. We're working with the cement producers to try to work out issues with using limestone cement since the cement industry is more or less announced that that's all that's going to be available here in the in the near future. So we're working through all that so that'll be a useful guide for members. I also point out that we're going to have a webinar on using Portland limestone cements in precast sponsored by PCI member Lehi Hanson next month in July. So look to the PCI website for that as well. Also remind that we have a very strong partnership with FIB. This is the European based professional society similar to ACI. Our agreement with them allows us to have co-branding on various public technical publications related to precast. So these two publications are recently published. They're working on lateral stability of concrete concrete girders. These publications are available to PCI members on the PCI website. Just also wanted to remind everyone of the tremendous amount of technical resources that are available to designers as well as members on the PCI website. If you go to technical resources you can see that FIB bulletins that I just referenced and all sorts of resources that are available to members and to specifiers for their use. We do have a lot of education resources related to that. We've got monthly webinars, our PCI academy, and on-demand training. Last year the on-demand CEUs had almost 12,000 professionals, mostly architects and engineers, two of our target audiences, who accessed the PCI website in order to get continuing education credits for their maintaining their license. So again we keep statistics on our learning management system and it's working extremely well here. You can see some of our modules, advanced free stress concrete, the eighth edition handbook module, these are all available on the website through our learning management system. PCI also invests a significant amount of resources in research and development. In fact, members may not be aware that it is actually a provision in the PCI bylaws that a certain percentage, eight percent, of producer fees are set aside and earmarked specifically for R&D projects. So it's quite a commitment that the institute has made to continuing to advance our industry and technology. We do this through various methods. The fellowships, the Jenny fellowships, and the Mertz fellowships on bridges, specially funded projects that come up, and then collaboration with other organizations such as Charles Pankow Foundation and the ACI Concrete Research Council. The Jenny and Mertz fellowships, there's about four each year. One Mertz fellowship, they're typically about $4,000 to cover tuition and other expenses. They can cover engineering topics, operational topics, safety, or any other topics that are of interest to precast producer members. This is just an example of some of the recently awarded fellowships. You can see a couple of them on UHPC. It continues to advance the industry. And then those fellowships typically result in research papers published by the university and then also published in the PCI journal so that they are available out in the marketplace. Many of the fellowship projects that have been funded in the past have eventually made their way into the design handbook as new provisions or new techniques. This is an example of some of the specially funded projects that the R&D Council is working on. And in particular, we wanted to mention a specially funded project with Oak Ridge National Lab. This is an ongoing project with them. I think we're in about year seven of that. As you can see, the research is to develop a 50% lighter concrete sandwich panel and improve the thermal performance. This project has also yielded the use of 3D printed concrete molds as part of that effort. So that's an ongoing effort as well. Another specially funded project was a very large project regarding UHPC, that the results of which are now located on the website. You can go to member resources, technical resources, and then ultra high performance concrete. So these research results are available to PCI members only. And they are currently on the website for anyone who is looking at that. We are also collaborating, especially the Transportation Council, collaborating with AASHTO and other committees to continue developing design recommendations for UHPC. An exciting new potential PCI project with the National Science Foundation is looking into creating precast buckling restraint braced frames. This could break through in terms of making precast much more competitive in seismic areas. So stay tuned. We hope to have this project underway by the end of the year. It builds on research that's been done in the past by Clemson and Notre Dame. We will also be looking for, after approval by the National Science Foundation, we're going to need approximately $250,000 in in-kind support from various PCI producer members to manufacture the elements. Just a couple more minutes on the activities that we do technically with outside organizations. One of the services or value that we provide to PCI members is to represent you on the International Code Council, the building code cycle. This current cycle is just completed. We had some wins and we had some losses. We were successful in getting a relaxed special inspection for welding of reinforcement in this code and we got modified proposals for modular construction. We, along with many other industry folks, were not successful in getting a relaxation of the sprinkler requirement and the increased floor area limits. We will continue to work on those areas as we go forward. We also represent PCI members on various ASTM committees, the ones that cover steel and steel reinforcement, to make sure that particularly things like weldability are maintained in the specifications. Many of our members, as well as the PCI staff, remain very active in ACI 318, as well as active in the new 319 committee as well. We're continuing to work with ACI on the next version of 318, which is due to be published in 2025. The goal is to have PCI 319 also ready in that time frame so that it can be taken to IBC to be referenced in the 2027 building code. We're also active in a number of other groups that apply to the specification of precast concrete. ACI 301, which is on structural concrete, and then ASCE 7 and other structural committees at ASCE. PCI staff represents the membership on those as well. We also continue to have a very strong relationship with AASHTO T10. This is the AASHTO Bridge Committee on Concrete Bridges. This group meets at committee days as well as our PCI convention. We continue to work with them on all sorts of different provisions and continue to have that very strong relationship with the bridge specifying community. We've also been working, our PCI staff and members have been working very hard with Federal Highways and AASHTO T10 to harmonize the recommendations on UHPC going forward. As you can see, Federal Highways has come up with recommendations that are generally more generic and PCIs have come up with recommendations that are intended to be conservative and relatively simple. So we are working on a guide specification that will include properties, testing, quality control, and recommendations for structural design. So a lot of exciting things going on in that world. With that, that's a quick roundup of some of the things that are going on, a little deeper dive into our technical activities. So we've got some time for questions if we have any. Did any come in, Royce? We don't have any questions yet, but if anyone would like to submit them, we have time. We'll keep the webinar going for a little bit, a half a minute, to see if we get any questions in. Oh, we just got one. Hold on here. This is a question that says, how do we get involved in the new Workforce Development Committee? Okay, you can send an email to me or to Beth Taylor or to Patty Peterson, who is the Chair of the Business Performance Council, and we will get you in the pipeline. Excellent. Another question just came in. It says, can you advise about the status of PCI 135? I don't know the specifics. I know it's very close. I think it's finished going through balloting, but Edith Smith on our staff would be the person to send an email to, to get the most accurate update of where that stands. All right. The lines are still open if there are any more questions. Well, Bob, it looks like that's all the questions we have right now. On behalf of PCI, we'd like to thank you for the great webinar and all our attendees for your participation. As a reminder, there will be a pop-up survey after this program ends. If you have any further questions about today's webinar, please email marketing at pci.org. Thank you again. Have a great day, and please don't forget to subscribe to PCI's YouTube channel. Please stay safe.

PCI President and CEO

Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute

workforce development

strategic plan

government affairs

market survey

research projects

collaboration