Building for a Green Future

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Hello there and welcome to the Construction Revolution podcast. My name is Aali Alizadeh. Here on the show we explore the latest trends, technologies, people, and organizations that are revolutionizing or disrupting the construction industry and are changing what the industry will look like tomorrow. We’re thrilled to present a special edition of the Construction Revolution podcast featuring an exclusive panel discussion that took place at the highly anticipated Net Zero Construction Conference in March 2023. The panel titled, building for a Green Future brought together some of the brightest minds in the industry who are passionate about driving sustainability and innovation in the construction sector. Today you’ll hear from Dr. Eric Giannini, director of product standards and technology at PCA, Dr. Hessam Azari Jafari, the peer director of Concrete sustainability hub at MIT. Craig Yeack, president and co-founder of BCMI Corp. Julie Buffenbarger, senior scientist and sustainability principal at Beton Consulting Engineers, Pouria Ghods, co-founder and CEO at Geotech. And myself, Aali Alizadeh, co-founder and president and CTO at Geotech. 

Get ready to be inspired by the insights and ideas of these experts as they explore the future of green construction and share their vision for a more sustainable built environment. If you find this panel as inspiring and informative as we did, be sure to follow the Net Zero Construction Conference on LinkedIn. By doing so you won’t miss out under your chance to attend the next Net Zero Construction Conference happening in 2024. 

Hello, and welcome everyone to our panel discussion on building for a green future as part of the third Net Zero Construction Conference. My name is Aali Alizadeh, CTO at Geotech, and I’ll be moderating this panel today. It’s a great pleasure to host a group of experts from technology companies, consulting, engineering, research, academia, and industry associations who will bring different perspectives and opportunities and challenges in the development of a green and more sustainable future. For the audience, if you have any questions, please share them in the chat area. So, without further ado, let’s just start with introductions and find out more about our panelists before we dive into the discussions. Eric? 

Dr. Eric Giannini: 

Yeah, good morning. My name is Eric Giannini. I’m the director of product standards and technology for the Portland Cement Association. We’re an industry association that represents cement manufacturers in the United States as well as companies that also produce products for the cement manufacturing industry. My particular role, I spend a lot of time working on the standard needs of the industry. So for example, what is a Portland-limestone cement? And how do we define that? And if we’re trying to make improvements to that product, how would we define that in a standard format? So that’s my key role. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you, Eric. Welcome to the panel. Hessam. 

Dr. Hessam Azari Jafari: 

Good morning everyone. My name is Hessam Azari Jafari and I’m a research scientist and deputy director of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub. My background is on industrial ecology with a little bit of labor on construction, engineering and management. And here at the Concrete Sustainability Hub, we are mostly focusing on research, on how to achieve carbon neutral in the construction industry, and how to be more resilient and how to evaluate the resilience of our built environment in general. And also we are working on asset management topics, how to achieve the most out of the dollar values that we spend our infrastructure systems. Glad to be here, and talk to you all of you. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you Hessam, and welcome. Craig. 

Craig Yeack: 

Hi, my name is Craig Yeack. I’m with BCMI Corporation. BCMI is a collective between several dozen producers of materials, concrete, aggregate, asphalt and cement in the US and beyond, ensuring the risk and cost of bringing modern tools to the industry. We’re a SaaS-based platform covering every aspect of the industry from CRM through dispatch, through billing. BCMI is now eight years old, and we’re finally coming out from under the radar, which is a wonderful thing, and we look forward to our next venture, which is deep into AI and changing how we fundamentally dispatch concrete. Thank you. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Amazing. And thanks and welcome, Craig. Last but not least for you. 

Pouria Ghods: 

Hi, my name is Pouria Ghods, co-founder and CEO currently at Geotech Scientific. So we’ve been working at Geotech over the past 13 years, actually, this year. Yeah, because 13 years and building the IOT sensor for measurement of concrete properties. So, strengths, temperature or other characteristics of concretes. And we are hoping leveraging like AI as, Craig mentioned. So to use that data, so measurement data to bring efficiency to concrete in this year. So by making mixes more efficient, reducing their carbon footprint, and that’s something we have been working over the past 10 years. But we have had some pivot along the way, working… Starting from NDT devices, sensor lines, and now we are working on the mix optimization, so that the mix management and mix optimization in concrete industry. And very glad to be here today. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Julie. 

Julie Buffenbarger: 

Hi, I’m Julie Buffenbarger, I’m with Beton Consulting Engineers. I also work for a ready mix company in Cleveland, Ohio as their QA&QC manager and sustainability manager. I have a very diverse background, maybe in comparison to some of the panelists, as I have spent 12 years with an international admixture company, another 13 years with a cement manufacturer, again, a global player. And now I’ve done more consulting and again, looking at a perspective from the ready mix construction and also ready mix producer. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you Julie, and welcome to this panel. Thanks everyone again for joining today’s panel discussion. Let’s just start with our first topic. Job sites are one of the key areas in the construction ecosystem where we can implement green practices. This could cover materials, processes, labor, and so on and so forth. So perhaps we can start with discussing the importance of sustainability on job sites and obviously not disconnected from the rest of the ecosystem, but it’s where it all is happening at the end of day. So Eric, are there guidelines, or specifications that support the implementation of grant green practices in job sites or construction? 

Dr. Eric Giannini: 

Certainly there are construction specifications that play a big role in what we build and how we build. These are instructions to the contractor that often tell them what the owner wants in the end, but sometimes they also get very prescriptive in terms of how to do the construction. So the more that we can move towards performance based specifications, we can give the contractors more flexibility to implement green construction practices and be innovative with regards to how they’re building. And then also there are specifications for different types of cements that we’re used to using for concrete construction. So more recently we’ve seen a growth in the use of Portland-limestone cements in the United States and Canada. This was something that began as a research and development effort about 20 years ago, eventually got into product standards. But even from that point forward, it was a long roughly eight to 10 year effort to get this into construction specifications, both at the government level for state departments of transportation and provincial departments of transportation, and into commercial specifications. 

And that has taken a lot of effort and a lot of time to get these materials accepted so that they’re even an option for use on construction. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Yeah, thank you Eric. So it’s actually interesting too, and this is the perspective from the association and guidelines and the specifications. On the other end of it, it’s happening at the research level. Think maybe Hessam, where do you see the direction of research in this area moving? And are there any important areas that needs to be fairly evaluated if you’re looking at sustainability, implementations on job sites at the end of the day? 

Dr. Hessam Azari Jafari: 

Absolutely. So as Eric mentioned, there is a great momentum among the construction stakeholders to achieve carbon neutrality, to be more sustainable majorly because of the needs in our society. And here we definitely need to have a plan to move forward with that. We sought great efforts from different organizations and associations like Global Cement and Concrete Associations or Portland Cement Association on defining different types of frameworks and roadmap to achieve carbon neutrality and moving forward. They have identified many different levers and solutions to move towards a more sustainable or low-carbon cement and concrete, or construction in general. The direction of research in this area is to… Well, generally divided to two major categories. One is the experimental work that we see around concrete, or other construction materials to produce a concrete with better performance, and lower carbon emissions. And the second part is the analytical aspects to measure the carbon performance of the construction activities. And different stakeholders, including builders, designers, contractors, or even the material suppliers are working with their researchers to address the pressing questions around common performance of the concrete construction. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you, Hessam. And Craig, you have seen it all in your experience over the past decades, how have this topic and attention to it has changed? You’re on mute. 

Craig Yeack: 

Sorry about that. First, I’d like to mention that Hessam has been nominated for the 2022 NRMCA Innovators Award. It’s quite a distinction. Innovators like Hessam are critical to making our industry more sustainable. Congratulations. Now at the job, important factors go well beyond environmental. They include social responsibility, regulatory, compliance, reputation, in some cases, an economic benefit for becoming more green. Environmental is the big item, no doubt. Construction greatly impacts the environment, including greenhouse gas emissions, general pollution, and resource depletion, which shouldn’t be overlooked. Social responsibility, and its direct impact on a company’s professional relationships are increasingly recognized as a factor for winning business. It remains a lesser influence, but regulatory oversight is now an essential element of competitive building in specific geographies. So in general, economic benefits are possible and require coordination, especially with the regulatory and total lifetime costs, which is a key issue. If immediate build cost is the focus, sustainable practices are a really hard sell in our industry. Once we transition to the full infrastructure life cycle, there’s ample rim for economic benefits of sustainability. 

The reality is this will require regulation, which is often frowned upon by our business community. So overall, there’s a multifaceted influence on the job site, and I’m sure we’re going to be drilling down into that much more as we go here. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you, Craig. And Pouria, what are the biggest sustainability trends that you see emerging today, and how important it is to focus on them? 

Pouria Ghods: 

Yeah. Maybe from different angles. So just different lens. In construction industry, so I believe total emission we have, GHD emission is around 11%, 12%, right? So construction industry. But perhaps the majority of this, 8% give or take, seven to 8% is coming from concrete industry. I guess the low hanging fruit, so general, or the biggest opportunity for reducing the carbon footprint on environmental impact, or maybe a biggest opportunity to be more sustainable, I believe is in the concrete industry. So it’s a bigger opportunity compared to other aspects of construction. But yeah, if we consider that, perhaps I would say concrete is really, really a great opportunity to basically for adoption of the new technology or doing, or using different materials even. So different sources of material in this industry to make it more sustainable. 

But even within concrete industry, what I’ve seen, over the past 10 years at least, the solutions or technology that are not extra cost, at extra cost, or are more cost effective, for example, SCM, as Eric mentioned, has supplementary cementitious material, like slag and fly ash has been adopted faster, because there was no extra cost or a significant extra cost as a trade off for sustainability. So I believe that those technology that are not adding significant cost to this industry would be more basically promising, in terms of the adoption, or creating a bigger impact, right, compared to more costly technologies. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you, Pouria. Julie, in your experience, how often do clients ask for sustainability aspects, and why would this be important to them? 

Julie Buffenbarger: 

Well, I am not seeing in the Midwest a lot of requests for sustainability per se. However, I am telling you it is coming. I work with clients all over the United States, and certainly my clients on the West Coast are asking actually for us to write new specifications, about low carbon concrete. Also to look at their specifications and ask how it may change. Now, when I say that, one of my clients is a producer, or is a contractor rather, and he is really very forward thinking, and that they want to be the most sustainable construction group in the US. And in doing so, they’re asking a lot of questions that are very, very important today. Not only do we see here in my market, and like I said, more on the United States level, we’re talking about sustainability in terms of environmental product declarations, in terms of, what is a low car carbon concrete mixture. But there’s more to sustainability than just those two items. 

What I see lacking today is the looking at construction in a different way, as far as we need to also be monitoring waste. We also need to be monitoring water. And many of my colleagues don’t equate that in sustainability. The second part of this is, while they look at things economically, they may not look at things from that societal aspect is, how are my construction projects influencing positively or detrimentally the social group in which this structure will be? So I think we are starting to see a change, but in my opinion, some of it is not quick enough, or it’s not complete enough. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you. It is not pretty clear that we need to add a sustainability issues, in the construction industry, but as we go through this transition, and we are adopting technologies in the construction industry that are geared towards sustainability, there are obstacles and risks that have to be addressed. Eric, what are the challenges do you see from the perspective of the standard associations and guidelines, in this area? 

Dr. Eric Giannini: 

Well, I think the biggest challenge is inertia, and overcoming inertia. We have done things a certain way a long time in the industry, and it’s a slow to change industry. So the biggest challenge with inertia it is going to take us somewhere, but it’s not going to take us where we need to go. We also have to get a lot of different stakeholders on board. And when you’re in a standards organization, everybody has a say in these consensus standards. So the people that make the products have a say, people that use the products have a say, general interest folks like Hessam, who are just academics, have a say. And that can mean a slow process towards achieving consensus on these standards. 

So it’s not enough for just an engineer to want to affect change in construction, it’s not enough for just a contractor or even the owner. Everybody really has to be on board. The other part of this too, I think is, this is a big energy issue. We’re talking about… This is getting a little away from standards, but we’re talking about fossil ultra renewable transition to electrification, and the need to get energy where it needs to be, when we need it there. Because a lot of the pathways, and a lot of the levers that we’re eventually trying to pull are going to involve not using fossil fuel for a lot of things, and we have to be able to use electricity, the instant that it’s made. So there’s a lot that needs to be done in that area, and it’s completely out of our hands, but it’s going to affect everything that we do, whether we have electric vehicles on job sites, battery powered tools, being able to make concrete in a net zero way. 

And finally, from a standard perspective too, we’re trying to introduce new materials. It can be something as small of a change as Portland-limestone cement, it can be completely different cement formulations for concrete, and we need to have confidence in the long term performance of these materials. And that goes back to getting consensus in the standards organization. What properties to be defined for these materials that are important, and how do we test for them, and how do we assure the users that they’re going to get material they want, and to have it performed the way that it needs to for a long period of time. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

That’s an interesting challenge, and love to hear your perspective on how to solve it in the next part of the panel discussion. And Hessam, you recently published an article discussing the carbon footprint, and the concrete industry and benchmarking for that matter. What are the challenges that you have identified in your research area? 

Dr. Hessam Azari Jafari: 

Sure. So when we think about the decarbonization of the construction industry, we should see that from a different angles, and it’s a bit different from other industries. And the main reason is that, we have so many stakeholders in the construction industry, and all projects involve many suppliers and subcontractors. This can provide an opportunity to synergize the force, and improve the sustainability of the projects, but at the same time, we have to make sure that we can keep track of everything and we have to provide effective tools to identify where to focus on data collections and improvement efforts, among this complex set of suppliers. The other important challenge is that, no project is alike. In other words, when we see different types of buildings, they are obviously different from a design perspective, but even if they have the same design, the site and supply chains will defer, therefore the availability of the materials, the local energy supply, all the upstream processes would be quite different. 

And the other important factors that I’ve been researching in the past five, 10 years is about the importance of the lifecycle environmental impacts or the sustainability impacts, that we have this opportunity as the construction stakeholders to reduce the embodied impacts, those emissions associated with the construction materials, production and construction, and maintenance and repair and end of life of our buildings or building environment elements. But at the same time, we can use the properties of these materials like reflectivity, stiffness, durability, mechanical performance, to improve the whole lifecycle emissions, or economic aspects of our project. So thinking about the sustainability from a lifecycle perspective matters the most here, and will give us a clear picture of how much we can achieve and how much we have already done. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Great. Thanks Hessam, for sharing that feedback. And going to Craig, if you had a magic wand, what is the biggest obstacle that you would like to remove? You’re on mute. Is it still on mute? Maybe the magic wand needs to unmute. 

Craig Yeack: 

A magic wand. What a concept. Let’s start with this, the harsh reality of staying in business for material producers is participation and competitive bidding. It’s a fact of life. Generally, the successful bids require a price optimized for delivery, not an infrastructure lifecycle. So if I had a magic wand, I’d moved people’s horizon for planning beyond just doing the cheapest, least expensive cost optimization to install the immediate infrastructure. However, this requires significant capital investment. It’s required to implement carbon reduction measures, and it clearly puts sustainability on an economic disadvantage. The technological barriers that we talk about are part of the high cost structure. It’s early days for new carbon reduction methods. Most remain less than fully proven. Many are very good, and all are fairly labor intensive to support. So what the magic wand could do is, change public indifference. The public indifference leads to a lack of political will to implement policies and regulations. And without these, we can’t have a level playing field to reduce carbon emissions. This political will is needed to create a financial level playing field for sustainability, hence the magic wand. 

The counters to this are resistance from normally the established interests, that rely on carbon intensive stuff like, fossil fuel industry, and others, they’re formidable barriers for politicians to the level playing field. In the end, the environment is global. We can’t get away from that, and demands global coordination. Even if as advertised, the nation of Norway can be net zero in 10 years, as long as the developing world churns out carbon and methane in particular, we’ll be no better off. The issue is a misalignment of core interest. We have to balance protecting the future versus prosperity now worldwide. And that magic wand that you gave to me just now, I’ve used to help people demand change for the long term. Thank you. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Right on. Right on. Pouria, what are the risks for implementing sustainable practices? And obviously there are obstacles, but there are also risks that comes with that. 

Pouria Ghods: 

Yeah. My answer is going to be very similar to Eric’s answer. So the biggest risk, especially on the material side, construction materials are the long-term performance of them. Technical risk. And we don’t have enough time per se, or accelerated methodology. So to look at the long term behavior of those new materials, new changes that we are implementing. And that’s part of perhaps the reluctancy that we see in the market, they are not open to basically adopt those new materials, or new changes that the industry bring into the market. And that would be perhaps… And the material. So construction material, the biggest one. But of course, people mindset is part of it too. If it’s a hundred percent safe, it’s still the change management, and also mindset shift is part of the obstacles that we need to overcome. So some of them is understandable, because again, there are not much data experimental history on some of this technology. But the other part is a little bit culture of industry, industry culture that are very slow, risk reversed, and sometimes honestly, they don’t want to change that… They don’t change that much. 

But again, I’m just repeating what other people mentioned. I don’t have anything completely new to add here. Thanks. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you, Pouria. Thanks. Julie, have you seen people bring up cost or training as a challenge that prevents them from adopting green practices? And in general, what are the obstacles that you see in adopting sustainable approaches? 

Julie Buffenbarger: 

Oh, absolutely. There’s many obstacles out there. First and foremost, I would say the educational level of those that are specifying a lot of the sustainability requests. And part of that is, if we look at our local departments of transportation, why they want to apply sustainability, they don’t often do it, because they are in silos, per se, in their own organization. And I would say, not only at the departments of transportation, but when you look at the owner, the specifier, the people that are involved in a construction practice, they’re all very siloed. So they do not talk together. And many of the things that we see are not integrated. For example, I want to have a concrete building, and I think it’s going to be sustainable. Yet the person that may be the engineer behind that is specifying concrete mixtures that are well above the cementitious content that really needs to be used. 

So when we look at cement content as being burdening to the CO2 footprint, again, the owner is stating his objectives, as I want a sustainable building. But the architect or the engineer is not then calling that out in their specification. So we see a real disjointedness to the practice. Now, I’m also going to come back to the idea that, while all of this can bring true, then you come down to the concrete producer. If the concrete producer does not have materials that can lend to lower carbon concrete mixtures, you’re again, right back where you started from. They can’t produce a lower carbon concrete mixer, because perhaps they don’t have a fly ash or a slack cement, or another supplemental cementitious material, that can be exchanged for Portland cement in their concrete mixture. 

Or perhaps even if they tried to do that, to bring them in would be from an extraordinary distance. So again, now you have transportation that really is impacting your CO2 footprint on the site. So again, I look at it as, there’s a lot of things that need to have more alignment for us to become more sustainable in the industry as a whole. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you. It seems that there are several obstacles in our road to green future, so let’s discuss how we can address the challenges that you just identified. And essentially the factors that you think can influence the sustainability changes. Let’s just start with Hessam, please. 

Dr. Hessam Azari Jafari: 

Sure. So we have multiple opportunities in the construction industry, and particularly from an academic perspective, we can think about the education as the first and foremost solution here. Thinking about how to transfer all these research outcomes, and solutions that we found in our lab or in our research works into the industry and to the younger generation of engineers, I think that makes very significant changes. And in general, if you think about our workforce and improving the internal capacity that they would be able to assess the carbon impact of the construction firm, or the project in general, I think this can make significant changes. And most importantly, in terms of communication, if we go one step further, to go beyond what we call information and enable or empower the industry to do their own analysis, and to make their own decisions, and optimize their solutions, given all these availabilities of data sources, and experimental and historical data that is available to make meaningful decisions depending on the companies and the project, the specific requirements, I think that makes a significant change. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Exactly. And that’s a very good approach to solving that problem. Craig, unfortunately, we don’t have a magic wand, so we have to practically address that mindset change and shift in that area. What do you think can be done to address that obstacle? 

Craig Yeack: 

I believe you’re speaking to me, correct? 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Yes. 

Craig Yeack: 

Okay. These are significant obstacles. There’s no doubt. In my humble opinion, to create change that sticks, it will require a partnership between two very unlikely bedfellows, politicians and technologists. Consider a good technologist solves puzzles, that’s what we’re built for. An excellent technologist solves puzzles that help mankind, and collected on this call are several of those. Now, contrast that to this. A good politician finds an angry mob and jumps out in front, and we’ve all seen that. But an excellent politician first creates an angry mob and then jumps out front. I think to solve these problems, to make this partnership work, we must instill social change that creates an angry mob demanding a greener world, and that will be the root at resolving these issues. I realize that’s not a hardcore technical answer, but I do think that’s our biggest obstacle. Thank you. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you, Craig. Pouria, what do you think is the practical or at least possible approach to addressing the obstacles that you identified? 

Pouria Ghods: 

No, I 100%, definitely agree with Craig’s comment. So politicals, policy makers, level, they can help significantly. So kind of helping the industry, helping the industry, making a long-term decision, not the shorter term. Although, it might be more capital intensive, but a little bit longer view, especially from a politician’s side. So into the budget, into the policy they’re making, not for three years, four years, basically kind of a period of time can significantly help from the practical, pre practicality. So that 100%, I cannot agree more with that comment. But the other side is perhaps technology, from technical side, can help as Hessam mentioned that. So the availability of the data. Digitalization, availability of the data, leveraging AI, and even blockchain for example, for traceability. So for now, I guess the biggest problem I see is, greenwashing, for example. And Craig mentioned that we have one planet. Quite often we see that they are shifting problem from one jurisdiction, and transfer it to another jurisdiction. 

But I believe technology help us to become more transparent, and also enable us to do traceability, or tracking things, much, much better. And that by itself can significantly help us in a practical point of view. So basically move the needle, right? So that’s another angle, so if you want to look at it from that lens. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Great. Thank you, Pouria. And Eric, you mentioned one of the challenges is consensus based approach, and the standard and guideline development. This is the way that we have been doing it for hundreds of years. And how do you see we can change, or move that obstacle so that we can develop guidelines and the standards much faster? 

Dr. Eric Giannini: 

Oh, that’s a tough one. That’s a really tough one, because particularly in ASTM, which governs a lot of what we do with construction materials, there’s a very low barrier to entry to being on a standards committee. And once you’re on, just about everybody has a vote. Some other organizations have used a smaller committee approach, and more tightly control the membership of the committees that are developing standards. The American Concrete Institute, for example, the code committee is relatively limited in size for the most part. So to some extent, we have to limit the number of people that are arguing over these topics to get the consensus, and that is going to leave some people out, unfortunately, I think. 

But that’s the reality of how these consensus standards approaches work. If only one side promulgates a standard, that leaves everybody else feeling left out too. So that’s also a challenge. But we’re seeing some of that to some extent, as the US government is trying to implement things like the Inflation Reduction Act. So very recently, the General Services Administration released a draft standard for four different low embodied carbon construction materials, and set global warming potential, or embody carbon limits on each of these different materials. And that’s for the purpose of their ability to use funding that’s been allocated to them, specifically for the purpose of buying these materials. But in order to do so, they need to define what they are. So you have to have a definition of what is low carbon steel, what is low carbon concrete? And those standards are kind of coming out in a one-sided manner with some opportunity for other stakeholders to respond and give input. But it’s really coming out from the government side. 

At the same time the government can provide significant incentives. So they are in this case also acting as a first buyer for these products saying, if you can provide them, we will buy them. And that’s something the government has not often done. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you, Eric. And Julie. 

Julie Buffenbarger: 

Yes, thank you. I think there’s many obstacles that we face in the industry. One is the lack of education. I’ve come back to that many times, but it really is truly part of the issue. Is that, while we may be educated at an university, and we may be educated from an industry level or industry association, that doesn’t necessarily trickle down to the ready mix producers or the concrete producers as a whole, or even the contractors. Because they have very little education on sustainability as a whole. The other issue is that, if we want to look very broadly and very globally at sustainability, it requires money and it’s economically can be very challenging for a small producer, or even a small country to change the practices they have in place. So one of the obstacles I see and to overcome it would be, to see subsidies. Subsidies to allow a producer or allow a country to help raise their A, education and awareness. But also maybe to update their equipment or update the kind of technology that they’re presently using. 

As we know, we’re very blessed in the United States to have some of the top level technology, but that’s not true across the world. And really sustainability is a global problem. It’s a global issue, and we must work all together in the industry no matter what level we’re at, to ensure that we get there. So I would say, until we see changes in subsidy at some point from the legislation, or just looking at, are they going to legislate and mandate throughout all levels of government that we must have sustainable construction. And I’m going to use this example as that, I was recently at a local trustee meeting. I live in a township and their response is, I don’t need to worry about it. That’s the county’s problem. But when you go to a county meeting, they go, that’s not our problem. It’s the state’s problem. So we have to stop and say, globally we’re all responsible. And it’s not just from the top down, it’s more from the bottom up. 

And each group needs to take responsibility to put in place goals where they want to be for sustainability in the interim, in the long term, and what they need to be successful to integrate these types of… And pieces of information, and the types of technology into their own goals. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Awesome. Thank you very much, Julie. I guess, we can also discuss a little bit more about this on the next topic, which is related to technology, and see how technology can help here. Technological advancements are happening at an exponential rate, and construction industry needs to leverage this to become more sustainable. Craig, you have written several articles on the use of technology in the construction industry, including one in the concrete construction magazine entitled ROI of the cloud a few years ago, before this was a hot topic. What advancements have you seen that have been made possible through these technological advancements, and maybe in particular cloud-based technologies? 

Craig Yeack: 

This is a great question. Thank you. So first of all, there’s many technologies that can be used to advance sustainability in our industry without doubt. Some are directly injected into the primary process, while others, and perhaps most importantly, are secondary, they’re support systems. First thing I’d like to throw out there, and these all articles that we’ve put out in concrete products, is fight fire with fire. Direct injection of CO2 and plastic concrete doesn’t decrease the strength, there’s no doubt, and it reduces the high emitting Portland cement consumption. So we use less of the polluter and more of the non-polluting. Or low polluting. Next, in a recent article, we covered using graphene as a form of a carbon in a grinding agent, when we convert clinker to Portland cement. This increases strength and it allows a higher proportion of limestone, a low relative polluter with a lower carbon footprint. 

Those are proven and working today. Now, we also can’t forget secondary things. And top on that list, is transportation technologies. Infrastructure is about aggregate and Portland cement. And it’s heavy. The carbon footprint for transportation is huge, ginormous in a technical term. And CNG technology has helped quite a bit with companies like Ozinga and others putting that on the market. But even more gains are possible when we move towards electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cells. But that’s not on site at this point. Advanced recycling technologies for brownfield rip and replace help recover valuable materials from the traditional landfill waste. Another huge thing to limit our footprint. Perhaps the most important, goes back to what Hessam has talked about and others. It’s build with the future in mind. If we can transform our mindset into building information… Like the building information modeling systems, help us with BIM. We can identify if we’re using high strength, high quality concrete with a much longer service life, we’ll absolutely reduce the carbon footprint of infrastructure over the long term. 

Also, making lifecycle planning and cost per cost provisions a requirement for permitting will reduce the incentive to create throwaway infrastructure. Such as yet another redundant strip mall that’s going to be torn down in 10 years. The success of rip and replace for Brownfield construction is a huge problem. In summary, we need to design for the life cycle of our buildings, if you will. Infrastructure included. In the buildings, more energy efficient designs are here, and they’re proven. Building automation and control systems can help reduce that energy use by optimizing heating, cooling and lighting. When combined with associated renewable energy technology such as solar and wind, it can help reduce the dependence on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions for the lifecycle of the total building or infrastructure. I think in general though, the solution must be multifaceted. Technology is only one part, and it covers so many other areas. Thank you. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you, Craig. Pouria, what is the role of AI and IOT in today’s modern concrete plans and job sizing? We see a lot of advancements in an artificial intelligence industry 4.0, and so on and so forth. How do you see this technology revolution is going to be implemented in the construction sector? 

Pouria Ghods: 

Yeah, thanks Aali. As I briefly mentioned in the previous question, so the impact eventually is a data play, so digitalization or data. So as we are gathering, and collecting more data and basically to the extent that we can call it perhaps big data, and that data gathering big data quite often requires some automation. So through the IOT sensor, and most of them needs to be by nature, cloud-based solution. Especially for data collection. And when we get to the big data, the next step, how to create the knowledge. So knowledge, information, clean data information, and to create actionable knowledge, basically out of the data. Quite often is out of the capacity of human being. So because there are lots of information come in the real time, huge amount, and there are lots multifacet kind of information. Lots of parameters that even training, comparing with the very expertise. 

So experienced person has been doing that for years, you get to the point that it would not be possible. So using the manpower to analyze the data and create knowledge in the real time manner. I guess, that’s the point that we see that AI becomes very handy, and also very effective practical solution. So to train the model, and not maybe in terms of intelligent, as strong as a human being, for sure we are not there. But in terms of the speed. So I know something that can work 24/7. 24 hours, seven days a week, to process huge amount of data in a portion of the second, and yield basically valuable information, knowledge that we can act on it. That’s the way I see that. So data AI, IUT, can play and bring value to the industry. But that can translate to different things. Different value productivity, reduce the cost, reduce carbon footprint, more sustainability. So there are different outcome we can get out of those technologies. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you, Pouria. Eric, our industry’s heavily regulated, maybe rightly so because of the liabilities associated with something that goes wrong, and this makes changes happening relatively slower in our industry compared to other industries. And you touched on a few points related to how standards and guidelines are developed. But in your opinion, how should we or standards associations in general should promote innovation in the construction industry? What is the role of associations in that? 

Dr. Eric Giannini: 

So the role of the association… Oh boy. So I can pause and just kind of reset here. So as an industry association, we have individual staff that actually participate in standards associations or standard organizations. We can also go to our members, and try to generate some internal consensus before we bring a proposal to a standards organization. And that consensus kind of helps avoid any conflict from association members, when we introduce proposal and the standards organization. Another thing that we’ve done that’s been very successful in promoting both innovation, and kind of smoothing the introduction of new proposals, is a limited scope effort, but it’s called the joint AASHTO-ASTM Harmonization Task group. And this brings together members from AASHTO, which is state DOTs in the United States, and they’re a standard organization and members from ASTM, some of whom are associated with PCA, and others are not. But it helps ensure that cement standards across these two different standards organizations are harmonized, and that we don’t publish a change in one organization, but not the other. 

And I know this seems like a small tweak, but by getting both of these organizations on board, before a proposal is formally introduced for balloting, we can avoid any differences that make it harder to do business down the line, by having different standards in these organizations for essentially the same product. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

That’s a definitely important approach that [inaudible 00:50:16]. Hessam, you are on the research side and obviously things are pretty much happening at a very accelerated rate. But from your perspective, what can be done to accelerate the technology transfer, from research projects to the industry practices? 

Dr. Hessam Azari Jafari: 

Absolutely. Well, the fundamental question that I think is very relevant to our discussion here is that, how can we measure it? Because if we can’t measure it, we can’t reduce it. And here we see this unique opportunities thanks to the inexpensive sampling and data storage, because of the computational powers that we have available these days, we can really have a good amount of data to provide a benchmark values about what we have already emitted, or what’s the current level of sustainability in our firm, or for example, the impacts associated with our products. And then we can make a decision, how to reduce it. And this reduction comes with the capacity of developing different types of tools. And for different tools, apparently we don’t have a wide variety of expertise within each organization. Definitely we need to provide a process of streamlining the available tools, and solutions because they are extremely complex and they need a lot of training. And we, as academic people, we should work on this streamlining process without compromising the robustness of the conclusion, most importantly. 

Meaning that we deliberately reduce the fidelity of the data, but at the same time, we make sure that the conclusion is not compromised. And here we can share our tools, and we can have a bigger impact outside the academia and share it with other stakeholders down the stream. Hope that makes sense. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thanks Hessam. Julie, as a consulting service provider, I’m sure you are aware of all the technological advancements that are happening in this area. How do you keep yourself up to date on these latest trends, and the sustainable approaches in the consulting world, for example? 

Julie Buffenbarger: 

Well, I read an awful lot. And daily, I am obviously reading construction journals, I’m reading technical journals. I have a background in science, so I’m very science-based in my approach and looking at things. And I like to see what technology is, not just in the United States, but throughout the world. For example, some of my colleagues in Czechoslovakia are using dry joints, so that they have buildings that can be constructed, and then taken apart and moved and then reused. So that is something that we don’t typically see here in the United States. So looking across the world, there’s many things that are out there, that are forthcoming, but again, here in the United States, we tend to like to use what we see here locally, which I don’t always agree with. But also technically, I’ve done many, many things in technology transfer. And as engineers are extremely conservative in their approaches, they are tasked with the life safety of a building, and ensuring that people egress out of that building, so that they are very safe. 

However, I think they do not look at sustainability with that same rigor. For example, our ACI 318 building code, is about life safety. And while it says you can adopt sustainability, it really has no avenues for you to do that. Whereas, if we look at the model code 2020 that is in Europe, they’re actually looking at lifecycle costing. They’re looking at lifecycle assessment, they’re looking at whole building assessment, and then they turn around and they say, what technologies can we use to measure these to a standard? And what is that standard? And while we do see EPDs, we all know whether we like it or not, that how we construct really essentialized over the economies that come with that. So I like some of the technologies that are abroad a little bit more so, than I see here in the United States. And then we look at the new materials that are coming in. And while I see them, they can be bench top and they look great on the bench top in a laboratory, they’re really not able to be used at a large scale project. 

So I get concerned when people get real excited about something, where they see it in a journal and they go, oh, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, because then can you really apply it to a job site? And so I like to look at things extremely practical. Is what I’m looking at a new technology that is employable? Is it cost effective? Can it be implemented everywhere in the United States. Because in some cases there’s no building codes throughout the United States. You might be in areas that there is no building code. So without these… What do I want to say? Looking at it from a perspective that, will it meet a code? Will it meet the life safety standards? Is it innovative? Can it be adopted across the US? I’m very cautious about saying all of that is true for a technology, until I see it as well vetted. It’s been established, there’s been a pilot project, and I know it truly works. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you very much, Julie. Perfect. So we’re going to the last topic. Craig, I’ll start with you changing the order. Just trying to be mindful of your hardest stop, if that’s okay. As the last topic of today’s panel, let’s discuss how we can inspire companies in our industry to implement sustainable approaches. Craig, what advice would you give our audience? 

Craig Yeack: 

It’s an absolutely fantastic question. It goes right to the heart of the issue. And while we’re surrounded with computational advances in finding computer systems, yet can fulfill the promise of AI. Very publicly apparent now. Cloud-based solutions for software, technology is doing this and that in all sorts of areas. What is it that we need to do to inspire companies to implement change? I think, it’s a simple answer. And the answer is, give the people what they want. When we think about modern market driven economies, these are the biggest and most robust in the history of the world ever. It’s pretty amazing. Reducing the carbon footprint will only be successful if it is aligned with the market drivers of our economy. It’s the only way we can do this. 

So while Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, are the legendary economists that we operate by, in almost all democratic economies. Al Capone, that famous gangster from the 30s probably said it best. When asked why he did what he did, he said, “I just give the people what they want.” And I think that’s very important here. Reducing our industry’s carbon footprint requires us to inspire the people to want it, and then it will happen. Then they’ll put the political pressure on their… They’ll demand it in the products they buy. This to me is the core of the solution. And we as technologists have to have the technology ready, as we’ve described on the last question. Less complicated to use, more clear benefits, et cetera. All of that’s required, but we’ve got to get people to want to make this happen. So thank you. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you, Craig. Pouria, where should we start? 

Pouria Ghods: 

Yeah, I guess that the place you can start is own organization. So I would say that the easiest way to start. And also just start the culture change, is within our own organization. So it is a small step. So it could be developing our ESG, basically. The policy. ESG policy for the organization, and start understanding our own carbon footprint or sustainability issue in our organization, including the travel activities. So even culture of paperless. So to avoid paper in our company, use more digital tools as we do today basically, that’s a great example. No travel, no extra, not necessary additional carbon footprint or GHG emission. So, I guess to my opinion, this is the area that everybody can start, and also it’s a small thing, but that would have significant impact. And the second thing, success sharing. 

So a culture of sharing success. So if we find something… And I find that quite often in construction, we are living in silos. Construction company. Even within one organization, they don’t talk to each other. Each project, project managers. So the culture of sharing successes, if they’re successful with one technology or something helping them. Like, through the education, through the media, webinars or could be [inaudible 00:59:57]. So be more willing to share our success. Because we don’t have that much time. The clock is keep ticking. 2013 and 2015. And as I guess, Craig mentioned that. So Eric, the planet would survive, so the airs would survive, but there’s a big question mark, whether human being can survive, if you don’t act quickly. So yeah, air will still be there, but the bigger challenge is whether we can survive, on the earth. If you put it into consideration, that creates a level of urgency for all of us, including our organization, and the rest of the industry if they perhaps start syncing it that way. That’s my 2 cents here. Thanks, Aali. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Eric, what is a five or 10 year vision that can be inspiring? You’re setting guidelines, the standards and recommendations for this industry? 

Dr. Eric Giannini: 

So I think in the immediate term, we can begin by starting to focus, or double down and focus on quality and performance for concrete. So our quality control for concrete producers, that really determines how much they have to over design a concrete mixture, to achieve a certain performance. And so the tighter your quality control, the less over design you need to do, and therefore the less carbon footprint you can have associated with those mixers. The more we focus on performance, the more we enable innovation. And finally, when you bring the two of these together, that helps us avoid rework on construction projects, because that is the fastest way to double your carbon footprint, is to have to rip out and replace something that you’ve built. Going out five, 10 years down the road, I think we want to look at greater use of renewable energy, we want to look at starting to see the introduction of even new cements for use in concrete, and an increased design and construction for eventual reuse. 

I think that’s something that was brought up earlier, to be able to repurpose structures rather than to throw them away and rebuild. And lastly, just a couple places that folks can go for more information on this. NRMCA had great resources on their build with strength website, guidance on the best ways to reduce your concrete carbon footprint, how to improve specifications right now, today. And also I would recommend folks look at the contractor’s commitment to sustainability. This is a new initiative that about 20, 22 contractors have signed onto already. And this isn’t just about carbon footprint, this is about waste management and water management on construction projects as well, because those are important components of sustainability as well. So I hope this is kind of the start of the path forward. For those of us that produce cement, we are going to be leaning a lot on carbon capture solutions to take us the rest of the way, to help eliminate some of the last and actually sizable amounts of emissions for concrete production. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you. And definitely inspiring. And last but not least, Hessam, what role universities and academic institutions have in inspiring the next generation of practitioners? 

Dr. Hessam Azari Jafari: 

Absolutely. So first of all, as we discussed earlier, education plays an important role just to make sure that sustainability practices and education is a part of the engineering programs in different schools, and they’re familiar with the basics and principles. So that helps a lot, in terms of the implementation in the future, for making our built environment more sustainable, and define the construction industry as a more sustainable supply chain, improve the productivity, most importantly. The second important aspect is the technology that we discussed earlier. And this is where academia can play a major role in lowering down the cost associated with innovative technologies. We see a lot of solutions more importantly, for example, in the context of carbon neutrality, for carbon capture utilization and storage. So these technologies are still relatively costly compared to the other solutions. And comparing to the marginal cost, and benefits of different stakeholders in the construction industry. We as academic people can work on these technologies to lower down the cost, and help with the acceleration of the implementation. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

Thank you, Hessam. Julie, how can we turn green practices to common practices? 

Julie Buffenbarger: 

That is a difficult topic, but I’m actually working on some of that right now, and some work I’m doing with some clients is that, we’re actually looking at how can they become the most sustainable contractor in the United States. Well, part of it is looking at how they bid projects. Are they educated about what is a green building practice, or a sustainable concrete practice? And how do they walk the walk and talk the talk? And it’s a lot more difficult than it appears. While we can look at it from a very high level, from industry level and from an educational level, actually putting it into operation with a contractor is much more difficult, because they may have to purchase new equipment. Maybe they are not budgeted to have new equipment this year. Maybe they have to educate their personnel. That means that that personnel might have to go get specialized instruction. Just even so much as employing a new technology. 

Maybe it requires a longer schedule. Now is that going to be allowable by the owner? And then if it’s not allowable by the owner, and they must stay on the same construction schedule, then what does that mean? Do they need to wrap the project? And that’s a lot more costly than just having the building project as it is. So it’s a very difficult answer. It’s not as simplistic as we’d like it to be. We just can’t dictate code, and say that they’re going to do it. It’s not possible. Some of it is a little premature. I think there’s new codes that are being done right now, like ACI is going to have a new low concrete code forthcoming. But the building codes, people are always going to follow building codes. And unfortunately, people don’t like to change. Whether we want to say that or not. People like to be very in their comfort zone. You are always going to have your leaders, but you’re always going to have the laggards as well. 

And so with that, we have to find that happy medium. And again, I think it’s incentivizing for doing those projects. Maybe it’s so much as saying, bringing the project in on time will get you a 20% bonus. We really have to think about the industry as a whole. And I think that’s what’s really missing, is getting everyone in the same room together and saying what is really possible, and what is not possible? And being practical about those, as for sustainability. 

Dr. Aali Alizadeh: 

And so that’s about all the time we have. I want to thank our distinguished panelists for sharing their expertise and insight on sustainable construction. From green building materials to energy efficient designs, our panelists have highlighted the many innovative solutions available to reduce our environmental footprint. I hope this discussion has inspired our audience to take action towards a more sustainable future. Thank you for joining us today, and let’s work together to build a better world for the generations to come. Have a great day.