In addition to the more than 100 hours of live education at The Precast Show 2021, five recorded sessions were packaged into a single-purchase item. Covering concrete production, quality control and production management, these sessions offer PDHs and are available through your myNPCA account on the NPCA Online Learning Center.
For those who watched the videos through the event app, PDH certificates are available for downloading through your myNPCA account.
Sessions include:
- CP1: Fiber Reinforced Concrete: New ACI Design Guides and Other Developments
- CP2: Precast 101
- CP3: Lifter Safety for Precast Products
- QC2: Mix Design Adjustments: Quickly and Accurately Adapting to Changes
- QC3: Avoiding Common Mistakes When Testing Fresh Concrete
Access to this five-course series:
- Comes FREE if you purchased a The Precast Show 2021 full-package registration or if you purchased the series through the event app. Contact Melissa Newton at NPCA.
- Costs $50 to purchase a la carte through the Online Learning Center.
Session descriptions
CP1 – Fiber Reinforced Concrete: New ACI Design Guides and Other Developments
Mike Mahoney, Euclid Chemical Co.
The use of fiber-reinforced concrete (FRC) continues to evolve and become more commonplace in everyday concrete and precast construction. Learn how the new ACI 544.4R document can help precast producers and engineers by providing a roadmap to designing FRC for many applications including walls, tanks, and other precast elements. Mixture design impacts and expectations will be discussed along with improvements in ASTM and other test methods to verify correct fiber selection and quantities in concrete.
At the conclusion of this course, you will be able to:
- Discover current industry resources and certifications available for fibers.
- Determine how and where to use FRC in precast concrete.
- Identify the differences between fiber types and limitations in precast concrete.
- Determine the cost benefits of using fibers in precast concrete.
CP2 – Precast 101
Kayla Hanson, P.E., NPCA
With the precast concrete industry constantly growing and evolving, companies are continually hiring new employees. Ensuring those employees get up to speed quickly can improve teamwork, reduce mistakes and help new hires quickly become integral team members. This course is intended for those who are new to the precast industry as well as those who may have been in the industry for some time but haven’t had a chance to learn about what happens in the precast plant and why. This course includes an introduction to basic concepts including terminology, different types of concrete used in the precast industry and its uses, raw materials, different types and applications of reinforcement, typical production practices, common curing procedures, fresh and hardened concrete tests, safety and the importance of quality control and quality assurance.
At the conclusion of this course, you will be able to:
- Define precast concrete terminology and processes, discuss the principles of QA/QC, and explain the benefits of precast.
- Differentiate between different types of concrete and their common applications.
- Explain the role of each raw material in a concrete mix.
- Explain typical production practices, curing procedures and the purposes behind them, and identify various fresh and hardened concrete tests.
CP3 – Lifter Safety for Precast Products
Clint Kilborn, Leviat
Proper lifting is paramount for every precaster. This session is intended to inform personnel in a precast plant at all levels, from engineering to the production floor, how to safely design, identify, place anchors and ultimately lift precast elements. The production team in the plant trusts their engineers to design a product with a certain type of lifter in a precise location with certain sling angles and designate what PSI concrete is to be used. This course will go through almost every scenario of why it is done this way and will build awareness that you are dealing with lift safety products, which should eliminate complacency.
At the conclusion of this course, you will be able to:
- Define different styles of lifting anchors.
- Recognize the effects of concrete strength on lifters.
- Differentiate between a safe working load and an ultimate load.
- Inspect clutches for bend or damage.
Claude Goguen, P.E., LEED AP, NPCA
Developing mix designs that work for different products or clients are great achievements, but oftentimes a modification suddenly needs to be made to that design. It could be a change in applicable codes, availability of raw materials or many other reasons. Having the ability to make modifications to those mix proportions and still meet the requirements is crucial for precast concrete producers. During this session, we will start with a mix design and make various adjustments that are representative of what we find in the precast industry. Examples will include adding SCM’s, changing aggregate gradations and changing to lightweight aggregates. Attendees will be encouraged to submit other scenarios they may have encountered so we can work through those adjustments together. We will also talk about how to use Excel to develop easy-to-use calculators to facilitate some types of modifications. This is a great course for those wanting to expand their concrete mix design knowledge and streamline their modification processes in the plant.
At the conclusion of this course, you will be able to:
- Identify resources available to assist with mix design modifications.
- Explain the process of modifying mix designs for change in cementitious materials or aggregate type and gradation.
- Incorporate tips in Excel to facilitate mix design modifications.
QC3 – Avoiding Common Mistakes When Testing Fresh Concrete
Eric Carleton, P.E., NPCA
Concrete testing is an important quality control process to verify the concrete placed to produce a precast product meets the minimum standards or specification required for that product. Concrete testing can be broken down into two distinct concrete periods: fresh (concrete still in a plastic state) or hardened (concrete has reached initial set and beyond.) This course will focus on the fresh concrete testing and specifically mistakes often make when conducting these tests. Testing standards have been developed with very specific procedures to be followed exactly. This is very important to so these tests can be reproducible and testing data obtained can be trusted to not have been skewed by additional accidental or unintended variables introduced at the time of testing. This webinar will attempt to recognize common mistakes testing technicians do when conducting fresh concrete testing.
At the conclusion of this course, you will be able to:
- Recognize common procedural errors when performing fresh concrete tests.
- Describe how these errors can affect your test results.
- Describe what to do if a testing procedure mistake has been made.
- Implement fresh concrete testing in accordance with the ASTM standards.
