Abstract Manager

This presentation session is focused on the use of concrete in public works and infrastructure and the balancing act in delivering quality alongside reduced costs and carbon emissions in new construction.

One of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in your local infrastructure may be a single line of text in your construction specifications. Maybe it’s a statement on minimum cement content, or a percentage value for a certain material. It was put there with the best intentions, but it has since become a barrier to decarbonization. Prescriptive specifications like these are very restrictive for concrete elements, running counter to carbon reduction efforts and providing no measurable benefits to the end product.

While specifications have been slow to change, the concrete industry has seen many innovations to reduce carbon footprint. We need to shift our fixed mindset and embrace performance-based specifications, which focuses on the end performance of the concrete.

To illustrate a real example of how performance-based specifications can drive real change and reduce CO2 emissions, Concrete BC and the Canadian Precast Prestressed Concrete Institute (CPCI) collaborated to create a video to highlight the impact that BC's Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure had by adjusting their requirements for precast highway barriers in the province.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib6PPYTIFvs&ab_channel=ConcreteBC

The presentation will discuss the need to move to performance based specifications in general and focus on some real world examples where this move has made a difference.