The broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen-only mode. Good morning. Welcome to PCI's webinar summer series. Today's presentation is Architectural Precast Certification Program Advancing the Industry, a Roundtable Discussion. I'm Nicole Clough, Marketing Coordinator 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 an email to all registered attendees with handouts of today's presentation. The email contained a webinar sign-in sheet, a guide to downloading your Certificate of Continuing Education, and a copy of today's presentation. The handouts are also available now and can be found in the handout section of your webinar pane. If there are multiple listeners on your line, please circulate the sign-in sheet and send the completed attendance sheet back to PCI per the instructions on the form. The attendance sheet is only for use at locations with multiple listeners on the line. If you are the only listener on your line, there is no need to complete an attendance sheet, as we already have your information. With hundreds of attendees for your webinars, it is impractical to prepare individual certificates. We will upload attendance data to www.rsep.net within 10 days, and you can print your Certificates of Continuing Education. Your login name at www.rsep.net is your email address, so please do not leave that blank if you are completing the sign-in sheet. We need your email address to get you your certificate for this course. If you cannot download any of the handouts, please email PCI Marketing at marketing at pci.org as shown on your screen. 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, and I will be keeping track of your questions and will read them to the presenters during the Q&A period. Also, a pop-up survey will appear after the webinar ends. Today's presentation will be recorded and uploaded to the PCI eLearning Center. PCI has met the requirements of the AIA Continuing Education System and can offer one HSWLU for this presentation. We are a registered provider of AIA CES, and today's presentation contains content that has been approved or endorsed by AIA. Any questions about the content of this webinar should be directed to PCI. Credit earned on completion of this program will be reported to CES Records for AIA members. Questions related to specific products or publications will be addressed at the end of the presentation. Our presenters for today include Randy Wilson, Director of Architectural Precast Systems at PCI. I will now hand the controls over so we can begin the presentation. Thank you, Nicole. Thanks, everybody, for attending our program today. Hopefully, my screen will pop up here any minute. So, today, we are going to, as Nicole mentioned, we are going to be having a roundtable discussion about the new Architectural Precast Concrete Certification Program and how it's advancing the industry. Did my screen pop up, Matt? Nicole? Yes. Okay, good. All right, just making sure. So, we have two amazing speakers today in our roundtable. One is Mr. Matt Groff of International Concrete Products in Germantown, Wisconsin, and the other is Cori Grieka, Course Lab in Germantown, Wisconsin, and the other is Cori Grieka, Course Lab Structures, Indianapolis. I do have a bio for both of those gentlemen once we get to that point, but what I wanted to start off with was a little reminder about our PCI Summer Series that is going on. This is the third installment of that Summer Series. It was a brainchild from the regional directors at PCI that we should be doing a regular series on architectural precast specifically around our new certification program. So, today is the third in the installment. The fourth installment is going to be with three different architectural firms in a roundtable format very similar to what we're going to do today. So, put that on your calendar for September 15th. Those invitations will be going out in the next week or two. So, the learning objectives today, I think, have really hit the point. This is really a webinar that's going to, it's a how-to webinar more than it is just an instructional lecture webinar. It's going to be a lot of really good information. It's going to center around the third bullet point there, which is define and demonstrate how collaborating with your local specialty contractors, specifically your precast concrete producer, can enhance your design and ensure expectations are met. During the Q&A, we will start talking about how to gain an understanding of how an architectural precast producer approaches a project from early design through completion. And I'll probably repeat this a few times, but we're hoping to give you the questions, really help you ask the questions you don't even know how to what to ask at this point, especially early in the design phase, and how to work with your precast producer. And one of the number one things that we do as precast producers is we provide custom samples, and we also want to ensure that you have arranged samples and mock-ups for each one of your projects. So, those topics will be covered in detail through the Q&A. To kind of set the basis of everything that we do, I've been selling precast concrete for 30 years. I've been involved in industry, and these are the few number one strategies for success on a project. One is to collaborate. Work with your local precast producer early in the design process. That's what they're there for. They love to participate with you in the design. Try to enhance your design in many different ways. In order to do that, you as the architect, designer, construction manager, clearly communicate to the precaster what your expectations are for the project. That collaboration together helps you align your project with the proper precast concrete producer, and then we'll be able to specify the project within the proper precast certification category. And so, those are some of the key things I'd like for you guys all to take away, guys and gals, to take away from today are those those three steps. So, what is architectural precast concrete? We defined that in the first two webinars a little bit. The first webinar in the series was an overview of architectural precast. The second one was more of a deeper dive. So, we're not going to go too heavily into this, but it's basically precast concrete components manufactured off-site. So, it's prefabricated in a plant, shipped to a job site, and installed on your building. That's what architectural precast concrete is. Any component that has an architectural shape, color, texture, finish is considered architectural precast concrete. So, who is PCI? Well, PCI is the technical institute for the precast concrete industry. Several years ago, back in 1954, some precast producers got together and began to create the body of knowledge for the design, fabrication, and construction of precast concrete structures and systems in North America. And today, we continue that process through many committees and through many councils. We work very close together on a very regular basis, almost weekly in some instances, to make sure that all the body of knowledge, the quality control manuals, tolerance manuals, and other QSMs are all up to date. And we now are in the process of converting the majority of our body of knowledge into design standards, which will be being incorporated into design specifications along with building codes over the next dozen years or so. So, what is PCI certification? Again, we hit these topics hard in the last two seminars, so we're just basically giving you a little bit of an update and overview. So, PCI certification began in 1967. The institute began in 54, and the certifications began in 67. And when the producers started to create this certification program, they realized that there are certain characteristics of precast products that needed to actually have their own category. So, the products were broken into A category for architectural, C for commercial, B for bridge, and G for GFRC. Any component that has an architectural finish got a subcategory of CABA in the commercial or bridge side, and then architectural certification was A1, which is pretty much a catch-all, one-size-fits-all program. And then over the years, PCI's developed an erector certification program also. So, collectively, this is all rooted back into the body of knowledge that we've maintained, and all PCI producers must be certified in one of those categories, or more of those categories. But safety is our number one priority. I think it should be for all design-build projects, design-construction projects. Our building codes insist on it, right? Local codes insist on it. Inspections insist on it. And what's safety? I like to break safety down into three key components here. Safety during the construction process, safety during the structure's life cycle, and then safety during deconstruction. So, it's not safety from cradle to gate. It's safety from cradle to grave. And a lot of times when you're dealing with pre-manufacturing products like precast concrete, you can design in the deconstruction of a building 100 years from now. So, I think that is something that is one of the key features of working with architectural and structural precast and total precast systems. So, that kind of leads to one of the hot topics today is resiliency. Resiliency and durability go hand in hand. So, when you're designing and you're thinking of safety and resiliency and durability all at the forefront of your design, I think these next three bullet points hit the mark. One is a structure that protects the inhabitants from natural disasters. I think it also should be able to be a thermal efficient project. Maybe even net zero is coming and precast fits very well within the net zero narrative. And also something that's little or no maintenance. When you've got a product that has little or no maintenance and you reduce worker risk, you don't need people coming out power washing or cleaning or inspecting a project. You know it's going to perform for the life expectancy. And in precast concrete, especially architectural precast, we're talking about other than caulking some joints, we're talking about 100 year plus or minus structures. So, how do you ensure a safe design? Well, here are the steps that I've seen architects follow a lot over the last 30 years is to design with certified quality products and systems. That's the first thing. Having something you know that you can actually go and touch and feel and you know that the workers are following a detailed written certification program and a process, that's number one. That lets you sleep well at night, I would think. Next is to work with especially contractors early in the design, as I mentioned before, being able to bring a contractor in and say, this is what I'm trying to accomplish. How would you get there? How can you help me get there? Those are some really good questions to ask initially and a precast producers will work with you in any way possible to make sure that your vision comes to life. Utilizing prefabrication to limit the number of workers on site, that's definitely a safety issue. When you can erect a precast concrete building, an exterior facade in a matter of weeks instead of months, and you can do it with six, eight people on site versus 60 people or 30 people on site. I don't want to exaggerate. That's always a good thing, I would think, in a manner of trying to create projects that are safe and also build a quality project. And then also make sure that your installer provides a pre-construction plan. Where is the crane going to be? Where are your scaffolds going to be? Not in our case because we don't have scaffolding, but where is everybody going to be and when are they going to be there? That gives you and the construction manager an opportunity to plan the entire project around a pre-understood, fully comprehensive plan. Those are all wonderful ways to build safety into your project. So now let's shift gears to our certification program. As stated, the first two programs really went into a really deeper dive of all the different categories, so I'm not going to hit those real hard. If you'd like to go back and see the previous summer series programs, they are on our website at pci.org in our e-learning center. It's very easy to find and you can just search for summer series and those webinars will pop right up. But the new architectural certification program, it breaks apart the A1 categories we mentioned before and we break them into four different categories with the fifth category being AT. AT is small products including coping trim, banding, small accent panels. That category remained the same as before, but the A1 category we broke into four different categories that aligns primarily with the complexity requirement for the project. It has nothing to do with the quality of product. In fact, all categories have been enhanced for color consistency and texture consistency. So that's the main reason we broke these things into four categories was to align a category with a project specific complexity. We do have a great resource. All information that you need to know that's been published to date is at our website pci.org slash arc cert. Within that category in the in the dark blue box on the left-hand side is kind of inward facing information. That's information that PCI has created in conjunction with our producers to educate our producers. Then the blue box on the right, that's an outward facing list of information. That's information for architects, construction managers, and the market in general of what the program is and how it works. Our newest addition to that, all those educational products is our designer notebook. Designer notebook has been a series, there's actually 36 of them, a series of educational documents for the architectural community and construction management community about what is architectural precast and how it's how it's used. This latest edition is an overview of the program. It is on our website. Again, you can go to our bookstore, you can search a search cert or architectural certification, and then this will come up and you can download that for free. It is a free publication and it does give you a great overview of the program. So with that, I wanted to hit real quick what are the different categories. The categories AD through AA, as you can see on the screen, gives you kind of a real life view of kind of the different complexity levels for each one of the categories. And then we'll go quick through four more slides of the different categories to kind of give everybody a refresher course of what these categories are. AD is primarily as, it's based on structural precast concrete products in the past. It's based on, you know, flat panels, simple reveals and form liners, maybe casting in some thin brick. But it is, it is being, these producers are being measured on the consistent mixes and finishes. And it does follow our PCI manual 116 quality control requirements. The AC products, when you start introducing a little bit of form liners, you start introducing a little bit tighter size tolerances, you look at more of a cladding product versus a structural product. So this, this aligns with our PCI M&L 117 manual. And with AC, it does require a PCI certified erector. Wanted to make that that point. When you move into the AB and AA categories, this is when you start creating some 3D reveals or 3D patterns in the panels. So you start seeing some projections of some sort, whether it be a cornice detail or just some banding. You also interject two different mixes and two different finishes. We are looking at return panels. You can see at that entrance of Kyle Field, those panels actually return the corner. They don't miter. There's no, there's few, but there's some areas there's no miter joints where the corners come together. That starts to get into the AB category. And then the AA category is when you start to get into very tight size tolerances for alignment of architectural features. And with AB and AA, both of those levels of production require the, require the necessity of being able to perform from BIM. So that's the overview. And now we want to get to our speakers. Our first speaker is Matt Groff. He's Executive Vice President of Sales and Operations, International Concrete Products in Germantown, Wisconsin. Matt basically cut his teeth in the precast world. So 39 years of servicing the precast world from the inside out, right? So he was one of the few people that I get to deal with on a day-to-day basis that actually worked in the plant for several years. Before moving into management. So Matt has an extensive amount of experience with working with architects early in the design process. And, but he also has a great working knowledge of production capabilities and production means and methods. And that's some tremendous value that precast representatives can provide to the marketplace. International Concrete Products, to give a, give a little bit of a background of their company. They started in 1988 with four employees. It's primarily a family-owned business. And they've grown to about 70 to 75 plant employees. And they have won several design awards, primarily in that AA, AB category range. And they're, they're not really afraid of doing anything out of architectural precast concrete. But at the same time, they do a lot of projects that are, that it would fall in that AC category also. Our next speaker is going to be Corey Grieka. Corey is a vice president, sales manager of Course Lab Structure in Indianapolis. Corey has got 23 years of servicing the precast industry. I've known Corey for, for many years. He's one of the individuals in our, in our industry that is extremely intelligent, always thinking, forward thinking, thinking outside the box. He's, he's, he's helps drive our industry by servicing architects. He does a really good job of pushing architects to the limit as far as architecturally, but also structurally of how to utilize precast concrete and the tools that they have at their plant there at Coorslab Indy. Coorslab, their plant in Indianapolis actually started as American Precast Concrete, and they were purchased in 2004 by Rinker, and then they were purchased again in 2006 by Coorslab. Coorslab has several plants around the country. So a little juxtaposition between Matt and Corey, right? Matt's at a singular plant that's primarily family owned, and Corey works with many sister plants across the country. Corey's a little, their plant's a little unique. They have both architectural and structural beds in their plants. They have long line steel molds for more of the industrial type warehouse type panels and structural panels, and they also have custom wood molds for architectural precast. So I wanna welcome both of those gentlemen, and we'll start off with our first question in our round table discussion, and I'll let Corey kick us off here, and that is when working with design construction professionals, what are the standard requests and what support do you provide? Thanks, Randy, appreciate it. I would say on projects that I normally work on, design and construction professionals usually wanna see what the bare bones cost would be to provide a precast facade on their structure, and then they wanna build upon that with adding either reveal or form liner patterns, more depth of offset or projecting profiles, adding integral concrete mix and architectural finishes, such as sandblast, acid etch, retarder, or adding in thin brick, tile, or stone that can be cast into the precast products. So on our typical projects, we're more of a bottom up is what we see our customers requesting. Okay, and I'll kick it back over to you, Matt. How would you answer that question? Yeah, slightly different in architectural side, but not too much different than what Corey said, but a lot of our architects request penalization of their structure, how we're envisioning this thing, project being put together for their exterior facade. Panel thicknesses and weight play into that precast units. A lot of times they'll be asking on different finish options and the cost to each one of these options. Occasionally it's return details, what we can provide to them. Quite often they want to see our connection points back to the structure and loading requirements to the structure. So we try and support them in whatever their requirements may be. We might also be offering up section cuts to their building to see the interaction between the structure, the precast, and other materials. Often we provide 12 by 12 samples for color and texture. So it's a big gamut. Of course, in the business we're at, we're likely to provide whatever requests we get from anybody. So it's a good thing and it's a learning opportunity for both us on a project and the design team also. Yeah, I'll follow up a little bit on that, Matt. What about schedule? I know schedule is always a hot topic with any project, right? We want a roadmap and we want to know where we're going. What kind of input can you give to an architect or a construction manager early? I mean, what's on the screen is a typical elevation that you might see in a late schematic, early design development stage. So what kind of scheduling information do you typically give? I would say we don't really hear too much of that from the architects or stuff like that, more so from the construction managers, a timeframe of what it would be, the duration of the project. Quite often lately they're asking us for our bed state status. But quite often we can fill them in on a full range of our design, how much time it's going to take for the design, the production period, and then the erection portion of the project. But most of those scheduling things were addressed more with the construction managers, more so than the architects. Okay, what about you, Corey? I know when you start looking at, especially more of a structural driver of a project, whether it be load-bearing industrial panels or it's a total precast structure, I would imagine that schedule might be a little bit higher of a topic early in design from an architect construction manager's perspective. I agree. This example looks like it's a total precast structure. So even though the architect's focused on the facade, the construction manager, as Matt said, work precast is first. So our lead times are going to drive his whole construction schedule. Architects also are very interested too as far as maybe lead times for some of our materials to get cast in, like thin brick and stuff like that. Things that might have a little bit longer lead time than maybe our production beds do. So the folks who stay in constant contact with us, I think they benefit from just staying on top of that and having the pulse of what the backlogs are. And ultimately, it just doesn't become as a proc. Everybody can plan around it. Usually we get involved in a project that looks like that drawing-wise and the schematic design level. If you get a precaster involved at that stage, our backlogs and lead times and same with our materials are not gonna be the driver. We're not gonna be holding anything up. And then we also help the customer, either the designer or the construction manager know how to get us on board and what those different stages of commitment are for the precaster. Yeah, that's excellent, because I know in talking with architects, sometimes one of their apprehensions of using precast is, okay, we're gonna design around precast. Now I'm locked into the system. My bid day is not for six or eight or nine months. How do I know I'm gonna get bidders on that bid day? And how do I know they're gonna meet the promised schedule that you promised several months in advance of a bid day? And I was always telling architects and construction managers that, if you work with me early on the process and we can know you're coming, we know the bid date's gonna hit and we stay in tune on a regular basis, we're not gonna hold plant space necessarily without a contract, but we can definitely have you on our hip parade and we can be able to manage around or schedule the best of our ability. You guys kind of take the same approach? Yeah. Yeah, this is Matt. I think looking out, we're always on trying to be as honest we can be with architects. Lead times are a big key factor. And I think as long as we're staying in front of them and we're being constantly updated and where the projects are going, we can be giving them updates. And I think they find that very valuable at the end of the day. So it's good to be looking ahead at different projects. We've got some projects we've been looking at for three, four years. So, yeah, it's been a long thing. Of course, schedules have changed since what we gave them three or four years ago on a project, but we revisit it. Okay. Well, thanks guys. Well, one more on that. More and more now we're also helping the architects and design teams know what has to be shown on bid package for precast in order to get a number that can be held through the construction. So you don't have to be 100% construction documents on all the MEP and all that. So more and more now we're seeing early bid packages for precast that might have elevation, plans, section cuts, some penalizations that help them get competitive numbers that can hold up throughout the whole process until we get to 100% TV. Yeah, that's good. Staying ahead of the game is important. This next question is architectural precast is always being customized based on the project requirements and the architect's vision. What challenges have you faced over the years with the current A1 and CA approach to certification and certifying architectural precast producers? So I'll let Matt speak to that first. Yeah, I guess it's worked for a number of years, but I think the drawback as we're kind of seeing now and hearing from architects is that not all projects are the same and with the limited classification it's hard to lump all the customer's needs, their expectations, their budget concerns into one or two categories. And I know that it has produced a lot of challenges in understanding what the expectations and requirements of the projects are. Like anything else, all of our challenges as a producer, we're doing this and we need to up our game also with these new classifications. We've all had inconsistent looking panels, finishing color, we've discarded panels before even shipping them to a job site because it didn't meet standards, patches that get evaluated early. So I think with the new process going forward, it's gonna be a help. One issue that we've been struggling with lately is the backside uniform finishes. And oftentimes we don't put a high priority on the backside finish. And we need to do a better job with that because this backside finish can be just as important as the exterior finish. So I'm happy to see these new classifications coming down the road. Hopefully being able to collaborate with more people and understanding each expectations of the design team and what we're able to give them. What about you, Corey? How would you approach that when you're looking at more of the AC, AD type category products? Yeah, I would say that the certification program as it was previously, it did not provide the construction design community with enough information about what the precast plant capabilities really were. Due to this, because we were more on the mid level for architectural ability, we had to spend quite a bit of time educating our customers on that. And sometimes it would cause frustration and confusion and there'd be a time delay. It also works on the other end. I think sometimes folks don't understand that architectural precast can be structural. It can be load bearing, it can be integral with the structure. So by the end of it, the program as it was before, it really didn't serve either the precaster or the construction industry effectively. So I think it was time for a change and I think this new setup is a perfect way to educate everyone on what our capabilities are. Yeah, I think this next question kind of plays into that a little bit, again, a little bit deeper dive. And I'll go back to Matt real quick. Do you find that architects or construction managers challenge the A1 spec and request more stringent requirements like color consistency, alignment between panels, et cetera? I know just to kind of add to that, our quality control manuals establish tolerance levels for architectural and structural products. But when an architect really starts to design something very complex with a lot of shape and a lot of detailing, it really needs to align to make sure their vision is reflected in the finished product. Are you finding that, I know you do a lot of the upper end, high complex projects. Do you find that architects really want that tighter tolerances? Yeah, I think we will fall within the spec. I don't think they really challenge the spec that much. At the end of the day, they're looking for a good looking product and they wanna see what parameters are available to their design team when we're talking to them. Like all of us here, we're constantly being compared to other building materials that are very consistent in color and finish. And we need to stress to the design team that the precast is a constantly changing facade. It can give a slightly different appearance with different moisture and light conditions. And hopefully this collaboration on the front end, talking through these things, we can maybe stress that point a little bit more. I think it's one of the good things with precast concrete, it is constantly challenging. It's a living structure, which is good. But quite often we would meet the spec with what we need to be done, but there's also some people not really happy with their vision of what they thought the projects would look like. So the new classification definitely help us on that accord. How about you, Corey? What would you like to add to that? Yeah, I think coming from our side of it, I think folks wanna know that you're just providing them the highest quality product that would be provided to any other customer in our market. So the way we try to ensure that is we spend time with them, either in a design meeting or at the precast plant or at the job site, going over how the product was constructed and what the limitations of the process are. And after that, they can generally come out of that with a deeper understanding and really an appreciation for the quality of the workmanship and effort that all of our folks put into their products day in and day out. So yeah, I think it's more education and making them just understand what we're working with day in, day out. Well, I think you nailed it, is that appreciation. I've always been in a lot of different discussions with architects and construction managers. And one of the analogies I use is it's like building the most expensive detailed piece of furniture that you can build and then pour concrete in it for 20 days. The level of craftsmanship that our precast plants have out in their facilities and the capabilities that they can manufacture, whether it's high volume industrial type panels, but you still have to pour that mix consistent, you still have to make that finish consistent. And that takes a lot of skill and a lot of help from our associate members and mixed design folks and cement producers and aggregate quarries. And it's a choreographed effort. And when an architect comes to a precast plant and sees how that works together and then see the finished product, I think you guys nailed it, is that they do have an increased level of appreciation of what this material can do for them on their projects. So the next question is how do you see the new architectural precast concrete certification program advancing the industry for the individual producers? So kind of a, I think Matt, you hit on a little bit about putting a mirror on yourself, right? So I'll go to Corey first, but how do you see this advancing the industry from your perspective? Yeah, I'll talk about that from like an ACAD producer perspective. I think there was never really a place for us to talk. You know, it was always, maybe you're not living up to an A1 expectation, because that wasn't even defined. But now that we know exactly what can be and should be done in an ADAC category and seeing examples of what other producers do with the same exact type of forming system that we have, like steel form beds, long line, what not. And realizing that, you know, when you do pre-stressed things, there's things to keep in mind as far as, you know, how to keep down reveals and stuff like that. But anyway, it really, it makes us up our game and feel confident that we're giving the industry what is asked for and expected. And then the industry can also say, you guys are, you know, a premier ACAD producer, you know, instead of looking at us as a subpar AA producer, even though this didn't even exist before. So I think it gives us a level of confidence on our side. That's excellent. From your perspective, Matt, how does, how's this advancing our industry from your individual producer perspective? I think it's gonna be the collaboration going forward. Both us understanding their needs, design teams needs, whoever that would be, them understanding what we can accomplish. And hopefully with more complex forming coming about, tighter tolerances for erecting, stuff like that, the industry will start taking notice of that. I think kind of like Corey touched on it, I think the industry may also be able to notice that they can receive a more complex finish on a structural wall panel that's insulated. That can bring up different avenues for different things growing the pie. So I think that's a good thing. And like we all want this experience to travel through the architects and GC's developer's office. But I think it's gonna take a little time for this classification to be fully appreciated throughout the industry, just as long as we keep up with this. Projects last for a year, year and a half, but I think it's a good thing that we're doing here. Yeah, I do too. I think it's been a long journey. It's just for everyone's edifice. I mean, this has been a three plus year program collaborating with all the precast producers across North America. so every I has been crossed, every T has been dotted, and moving forward, coming October 1st is going to be a wonderful thing for the industry, internally from a precast perspective and externally from an architect's perspective. So how will you direct architects to the proper category for the project, at the same time increase your aesthetic options, assure high quality, and maintain the budget? I'll go to you, Corey, because when you start looking at ACAD products, and again, kind of treading on some thin ice here, but AC and AD products, when you produce a 200, 300 foot long bed, 12 foot wide, and you can turn that bed every single day, those products typically tend to be a little bit more economical than a custom one-off form, but you also can get a lot out of that steel mold, but the steel mold is still rigid, right? You can't really cut into your steel mold to create a lot of depth and a lot of architectural feature. So how would you answer this question, knowing that you've got some constraints in the panel, or in the forming, you're also trying to meet some budget, but you still want to provide an architect with something other than a big, flat, gray panel? Yeah, I think it starts with making mock-ups, and I've really come to appreciate mock-ups more as I've gone along, because it shows what you can do, and it shows, and you can bring in the architect and show them how you're building the form within the constraints that we have, hey, I gotta do this long line, I gotta do it on a steel bed, here's the surface that we're working with, and it just starts a dialogue, and everybody, again, come and see, we're doing our best, we're caulking everything up, we're really making sure everything's where it needs to be, but I just think mock-ups are a huge tool to use here to help educate, and then PCI also has several marketing materials available that can be shared to help educate about the differences. You guys have done a great job about creating the handouts, having these webinars, there'll be some guide specifications that are coming out for A, A, A, B, A, C, those are gonna be hugely helpful for everybody. And then finally, providing the budget pricing for those different finish categories and explaining why costs are less for each one or more for others is also extremely helpful to them. So ultimately, that owner and design team's gonna pick a finish and a budget that meets their needs the best, and then the appropriate spec we put in place after that for the project. Gotcha, so before I kick it over to Matt, so if you have any questions for the group, please go ahead and send them over. We do have a couple of questions that's already came in, but I wanted to make sure that we address any questions, any burning questions you may have about the certification program. This is a great opportunity to ask two of the best in the industry about architectural precast, so this is a good time to get your question in. So now I'll kick it over to you, Matt. I've got some questions from architects, and I think the PCI certification matrix is a pretty good tool to give a quick overview of the expectations of each classification. I point that to them. I've sent them mock-up drawings for each category. This is gonna give them a good idea of what is possible with the precast concrete, and then hopefully our specifications should tie together that with the mock-up drawings. The Precast Color and Texture Guide is a great guide to try and get the look that's required. A suggestion I might have on that could help all of us is that for the Color and Texture Guide, we'd be able to review the mixes and identify where those aggregates came from from those mix designs, and put that in the Color and Texture Guide. This may help us a lot of times. Somebody will select something out of Color and Texture Guide. They're not understanding that it's gonna cost to ship those precise materials to them, and I think that would be a good understanding for them to help us let them know that there is a cost associated with shipping those precise aggregates that they're specifying. Along with this information, we may be able to use local aggregates with a slightly different appearance and be a savings to the project. So going forward, maybe that's something that we can be looking at, adding something to the Color and Texture Guide. It will come up. It comes up in our business quite often with AA, AB categories. Here's the mix design. Meet that in aggregates being shipped across the country. So that might be a help going forward. Well, and to that point, I just got a phone call or an email yesterday from an architect asking that same question. They were looking for a particular number out of our Color and Texture Guide for you that aren't familiar. We have about a three-inch, three-ring binder that has, I don't know, 800, 900 different color swatches. It's available on our website at the bookstore, pci.org, and just click on the bookstore and search Color Form Texture, and that guide will pop up. I think it's probably free by now, but anyway. In each one of those color swatches, those 900 color swatches, is a precast concrete sample. And that sample is something that you can take to a precast producer and say, I'm looking for something like this. Sometimes a precaster can hit that identical, and sometimes a precaster might have to slightly modify, as Matt said, based on where the aggregates are coming from or based on the individual precast producer's resources. But to expand on that is, and I look at your sample wall behind you, that must have been one heck of a job there. But as far as range samples, that's a great range. And I'll tell another quick story to kind of set you up here, Matt, and we can kick it to Corey. I also had an architect call me and talk to me a little bit about color uniformity. And I asked them, what was the mock-up look like? He said, well, the mock-up was a 12 by 12 sample. And I said, well, what was the job like? He said, well, it's a big warehouse. And they want it all to be buff, colored, consistent, 12-foot panels, 40-foot tall with no openings in it, and they expected it to be 100% color consistent. So how often do you go with range? Can you explain what range samples are, Matt, and tell us about how often you guys do range sampling? Yes, and Corey kind of alluded to that. They're very important. We make them, we do the range samples, and it helps us in our manufacturing process. We will do the actual section of the panel for our range samples to make sure every production technique is hit. We'll show them to the group, but a lot of times the difficulty is not in making the range samples or presenting them. It's when the group wants just one of the samples. Often we're ready to go into production, and so we agree to making just the one sample and not the range. For going down the road, I see this, we're gonna be in the AA category, so I imagine their response will be something like it's their expectation by specifying AA classification. So I think there's gonna be some give or take with that going down the road. That's one of the problems I foresee on our side, and it's something that we need to work through. We still need to hold them to the 20-foot rule, and like I said a little bit earlier, we need to make them aware that the precast is a constantly changing facade with different moisture and light conditions. So being in the AA category, like I said, range samples are very important. I always like to see it if we can get them to agree on three samples. One in the middle, that's where they wanna be, and a slight variance on each side. I'm always happy, and typically, if we're able to do that, projects roll through pretty decent and not less headaches with them. Got it. So what about you, Corey? I mean, you guys are big on range samples. I know they're at Coors Lab. Yeah, we like to make sure they're at least four by four foot or maybe even larger. We will make sure they have a range in color either by manipulating the pigment for the range samples, or you could even do it by pouring some on Wednesday and Thursday, stripping them and finishing them right off the bat, and then pour one on Friday and finish it on Monday, doing stuff like that. Because why would you do that? Because that's reality. That's what's gonna happen. One-fifth of our pours are gonna happen on a Friday. So to our previous conversation, we're a natural material, and so there's gonna be variation. There's gonna be variation coming out of the quarries. There's gonna be variation as it gets mixed all within spec and tolerance, but it's gonna create some range. So range samples are a great tool to stand there before you have a bunch of 12 by 40 foot panels in the yard and have the architect and contractor and everybody looking at them, talking about them, having this conversation and getting on the same page with we're doing everything to the best of our ability, and there's still gonna be some range. Yeah, and I always, and again, reading a bunch of this documentation that we do have at PCI and the years of experience I have, the moisture content in the air can affect your color. You could have four beautiful, perfect, sunny, non-humid days, and you might have a week of rain, and each one of those days, you have to make a small adjustment in your plant. That's why I go back to the craftsmanship and the appreciation of the chemistry that goes into precast, and the folks that are up there mixing the concrete are specialists. They go through QC school, and they're professionals. So you did mention one thing that I picked up on, which I really wanted to put out there. Again, under the quote of architects, what questions should you ask, and what should you request from a precast producer? And that is specifications and work scope definitions. So Corey, can you tell us about what you typically would do when an architect calls you and says, I got this project, and I really need your help, and you start looking at the spec, and you start looking at the work scope. What do you do to set the project up for success? A lot of times, the specs have a lot of stuff in it that either contradict each other or whatnot. So that's our first step is to get everything down to one or two of what they really want as far as finish. And then talk, make sure there's stuff about this, this process of samples, and then mock-ups, and then range samples. Make sure that's in there. Make sure they have a mix design. Don't pick a plate. Before we get to the spec, let us do a local mix that you like, and then put that mix material into the spec. And then at least everybody's working off local material and something that's possible. From an architecture, and then thin brick, obviously. Make sure you pick a thin brick that can meet our tolerances, that's available. So going through all that thin brick approval beforehand. Form liners the same way. So really just doing all this upfront stuff so that when the spec does come out, you don't have to RFI a lot, have a lot of addendums, and create delay and confusion. Excellent. What about you, Matt? How much time do you put into writing specs and work scope, and kind of lead that? It's valuable time for you guys to do this work too, right? Yeah, I don't think we really write too many specs. We point them to what specs to use. Corey's exactly right. There's a lot of duplicate material in specs. Okay, provide black mesh. Okay, provide epoxy mesh. So that's the biggest thing, helping them understand what they need to do for their specific product and project. And of course, we're not going to tell them that one is better than the other one. We need to rely on the specs and try and make them as clear as possible. Quite often we'll get, I'll get the question like, on this project, where do you think some of the problem areas would be? And I try and let them know what those are to focus on that. It might be the interaction of other window systems in with the precast. You watch your lines, where your insulation is, stuff like that. So any guidance like that, I think they're pretty appreciative to that point. Of course, it's great if we're able to get them in our plant and show them our samples are available. And like the sample I have behind me, we have kind of like an architect's garden, we call it. There's got to be over a hundred different samples for past projects in that. And not that they would use that in their project, but it has stemmed a little bit of smiles and, oh yeah, I can do that. Maybe I'm going to do that. It might be exact thing, but it's a help on our end for architects and designers understanding what can be done. Excellent. Well, I wanted to close with a couple of points. I could ask these questions to you guys and you can have a little bit different spin, but in nature of time here, respectful of time, I just wanted to hit them. Also, you know, competition. I mean, I think we've all in agreement that doing the upfront work with one precast producer doesn't necessarily lock you into that one precast producer. As producers, we all work together in a market to make sure architects are fully educated on projects. And then when it goes out to bid, we all are on the same, we're on the same page before it bids. We're all competing on bid day. And then after the fact, the producers are all back together at PCI events, trying to create the body of knowledge, update the body of knowledge, and drive the industry forward. And the best precast job is not necessarily ones that you produce. It's just a job an architect uses to spec and design the next precast job. And we all look, precast is looking at it that way. So I wanted to say that to the architects that working with one producer doesn't lock you into that producer early in design. What it does, it helps your project. You have to get the most out of your project. The other thing is connections. I know we hit on this very shortly earlier. One of the things that precast producers like to do early is to define where those bearing locations are for every single panel. When you panelize a job on an elevation, where's the load bearing connection? Where is the wind load connections? Where's the lateral connections? Where do you need additional bracing? How much is the eccentric load? Precasters wanna make sure all of that information is complete during that early design phase to make sure that your work scope is complete. The last thing you wanna have is somebody saying, I didn't have that piece of steel, but I can't hang a piece of precast without it. So all those things that a producer, again, falls into the questions I don't even know to ask. Your precast producer will definitely ask those questions when it comes to work scope and making sure you have a complete project. So I wanna thank Matt for his time today. And I also wanna thank Corey. I got a couple of finished slides here just to tie us up for the day. I wanna thank everybody who submitted some questions and attended today. Hopefully you'll attend our next webinar coming up. And for more resources, I'd point you to the pci.org ArcASert webpage. In that, you'll see our supplemental requirements. I think we mentioned a few times about the matrix and the requirements, the different categories. All of that information is defined in the supplemental requirements. That is a 100-page document that it's inward facing. It's giving the precast producers the roadmap to become certified into the new categories. So it's for everyone's use to see. So we're not hiding anything. It's a good read for an architect, especially when they don't know whether they wanna be an AD product or an AC product or an AC or an AB product. It's a good place to start. It's also a good place to find your local PCI certified plant. So if you don't know somebody that you need to call and work with, you can call your local PCI certified plant. They will have somebody that will work with you. If you're not comfortable with an individual plant, you can definitely contact your local PCI region. At the bottom of the screen there, you can see pci.org slash regions. We have regional directors that cover the entire country. So you'll be able to contact them. They would be able to help you. And also you can contact PCI or you can contact me. I'd be happy to help you out in any way I possibly can. Don't forget on September 15th, we have three architects that'll be doing a round table, very similar to what we're doing here. We're gonna have a few questions for them. And just to kind of, if you were listening intensively today, then two or three of those questions might resurface next week. So it'd be good to be able to hear the precast producers perspective today, and you'll be able to see an architect's perspective on September the 15th. And with that, I will sign off. I really appreciate everybody's attendance today. There's my email address. If you wanna get ahold of me directly, I'll be happy to help in any way. And so thanks everybody. And that concludes our program. Thank you. On behalf of PCI, I'd like to thank Randy, Matt and Corey for a great presentation. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we have enough time for more questions today, but all questions will be forwarded to the presenters along with your contact information. As a reminder, certificates of continuing education will appear in your account at www.rcep.net within 10 days. If you have any further questions about today's webinar, please email marketing at pci.org. Thank you again and have a great day and stay safe.

Architectural Precast Certification Program

benefits

industry

precast concrete producers

certification program

complexity

alignment

collaboration

aesthetics