In an effort to promote contractor creativity and construction innovation, Hardscape North America held its first ever Project Awards.

LEED Gold certification for the Grand Rapids Art Museum is a first.

Decorative concrete installers, in effect, produce art, so they’re often held to a much higher standard than those placing plain gray concrete. The ability to provide high quality work, satisfy customers, and gain referrals depends to a great extent on steps taken before a project even starts. The author presents seven steps that can help decorative concrete installers establish a routine, work smarter, and set themselves up for success.

Five years ago, the Michigan Concrete Association initiated a training and certification program for decorative concrete finishers as a response to increasing complaints regarding poor quality decorative concrete. They realized that decorative projects were a rapidly growing market segment, but one that could be stunted by poorly executed projects. By developing, implementing, and then publicizing decorative concrete certification, they hoped to improve decorative concrete contractors’ skills, provide a means for owners to identify contractors with well-trained workers, and reduce the incidence of projects that failed to meet owner expectations.

A group of products developed by Surface Gel Tek, LLC, make cleaning and stenciling surfaces for decorative concrete safer, easier, and more environmentally friendly. Three of these products are combined in a process the company calls "FlattooingTM" - the art of tattooing images and graphics into concrete surfaces. Sample projects and a step-by-step walk through of the Flattooing process are presented.

In this Buyers’ Guide, the focus is on decorative concrete, including Fresh Cast-in-Place Systems and Post-Pour Systems for both horizontal and vertical applications. We’ve included manufacturers of products for producing colored, stamped, textured, polished, engraved, and stenciled concrete. Additions to this year’s Guide include cementitious overlayments for horizontal and vertical applications and form liners and textured forms for vertical applications.

Although many people are aware of ACI’s numerous technical committees, fewer are aware of an entity known as the ACI Foundation, which is comprised of the Strategic Development Council (SDC), the Scholarship Council (SC), and the Concrete Research Council (CRC). Briefly put, the ACI Foundation is a wholly-owned, nonprofit subsidiary of ACI, designed to assist ACI in fulfilling its mission to find and share the best ways to advance concrete knowledge. In this article, the chairs of the SDC, SC, and CRC chairs provide a brief overview of the ACI Foundation’s structure and the initiatives of its councils.

Updated strategic plan adopted.

The heat island effect in urban and suburban areas is the result of many factors, but the solar energy absorbed by pavement and building surfaces plays a major role. To reduce the impact of the heat island effect on surface air temperatures and energy consumption, environmental rating systems for buildings encourage the use of construction materials that efficiently reflect solar radiation and emit heat via radiant energy. The results of a study conducted to see how these properties vary among concrete mixtures containing various cementitious materials and aggregate types are presented.

In the spring of 1998, the Student Activities Committee of the ACI New Jersey Chapter proposed a concrete cylinder strength contest for local students. Since then, the contest has grown from a matchup between New Jersey’s most competitive concrete schools into the ACI Concrete Cylinder Competition, which drew 24 teams to the ACI Fall 2006 Convention in Denver, CO. Two of the people involved in launching the original competition show how the international contest came to be.

A recap of the ACI Spring 2008 Convention.