NPCA’s technical staff have participated in several codes- and standards-related virtual meetings as 2020 comes to a close.
Director of Codes and Standards Eric Carleton, P.E., attended the AASHTO Committee on Materials and Pavement (COMP), subcommittee 3b Fresh Concrete and subcommittee 3c Hardened Concrete during the week of Nov. 16-20.
The 3c and 4b subcommittees are responsible for developing the respective material and testing standards used in most Department of Transportation (DOT) contract work. Carleton is listed as an industry “friend of the committee”, since only DOT officials may hold voting roles on AASHTO committees.
Additional information and minutes of the respective COMP subcommittee meetings can be found here.
Carleton also participated in virtual meetings for the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) committees for direct design of concrete pipe and box culvert for both open cut and trenchless installation methods in early December.
These committees are responsible for the design content of:
- ASCE 15 Standard Practice for Direct Design of Buried Precast Concrete Pipe Using Standard Installations (SIDD) [undergoing revisions to comply to LRFD code conditions].
- ASCE 26 Standard Practice for Direct Design of Buried Precast Concrete Box Sections [undergoing review to determine if needed to be revised to comply to LRFD code conditions or stay with standard bridge code].
- ASCE 27 Standard Practice for Direct Design of Precast Concrete Pipe for Jacking in Trenchless Construction [undergoing revisions to meet long micro-tunneling applications].
- ASCE 28 Standard Practice for Direct Design of Precast Concrete Box Sections for Jacking in Trenchless Construction .
More information can be found here.
From Dec. 7-9, three NPCA technical staff attended virtual Committee Week meetings for ASTM Committee C27 on Precast Concrete Products. Staff attended meetings for:
- ASTM C27.90 Executive Subcommittee.
- ASTM C27.30 Subcommittee on Water and Wastewater Containers.
- ASTM C913 Task Group.
- ASTM C27 Main Committee.
Some significant points of interest that were discussed that NPCA staff are involved in are:
- Working to develop a new in-plant watertightness testing standard that harmonizes the hydrostatic and vacuum testing procedures in C1227 and C1613 and is consistent with C1719. If this would proceed and become a standard in a couple years, the watertightness testing language in C1227 and C1613 would be removed and instead the standards would both reference this new standard.
- Clarifying the title of C913 to include “non-circular,” as well as clarifying the scope of C913 to distinguish between conveyance structures and holding or treatment structures. They will add a statement about conducting watertightness testing as needed and will remove oil/water separators from the scope because they need their own standard.
- Clarifying the proposed secondary safety apparatus requirement in C1227 to state these are needed in openings whose lesser dimension is greater than 8.” They will also add verbiage to list some examples, so users know what does and does not count as a secondary safety apparatus.
- Clarifying the “middle 25%” wording in C1613 so it is clear at what the distance from the bottom of the tank the transfer port should be.
Some administrative points of interest we discussed were:
- ASTM Committee C27 gained 33 new producer members in 2020. NPCA has been doing a lot of communication to members about ASTM, getting involved, holding co-located meetings, what ballots are open that impact NPCA members, etc., and the membership increase was largely attributed to NPCA’s efforts.
- ASTM is working to set up student chapters at three universities. Committee C27 will mentor the ASTM Student Chapter at UTEC in Lima, Peru which is very interested in precast concrete.
- Committee C27 will discuss creating a Transportation Products Subcommittee during its Q1 Executive Subcommittee conference call in 2021.
For more information on ASTM C27, please visit https://www.astm.org/COMMITTEE/C27.htm.
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