Bottom Line, Low Concrete Breaks Happen Because of Human Error
As you’ve probably noticed, the main causes of low breaks are the result of mistakes made because of human-error. These issues happen, not only at the beginning stages of pouring when specimen are first made, but also during curing, transportation, and even after samples have already made it to the lab. Since cylinders need to be created as soon as pouring takes place, mistakes are often made onsite because workers are in a rush. Lack of experience also plays a big role. It’s no secret that there is a shortage of skilled labor. As the workforce matures, new technicians and field personnel managing the process are less experienced with ASTM standards. In the lab, human errors are further exacerbated as technicians are often rushed by managers trying to meet project deadlines. There are few ways you can prevent these mistakes from happening. One of which is to hire more experienced workers, but this is not always within your control, or your budget.
How to Easily Eliminate Low Concrete Breaks on Your Next Project
Another option, one that is becoming increasingly more popular, is to ditch field-cured cylinders for early age testing altogether and switch to wireless maturity sensors to monitor strength and maturity. These sensors are embedded in your in-situ concrete element and secured on the rebar. Strength is monitored constantly in real-time and sent to your mobile device via an app. This means that you can check the performance of your mix at any time. Standard-cured cylinders are still made and tested on day 28 for acceptance purposes. However, all other points of data you would normally receive from the lab with break tests on days 3, 7, 14, etc. are instead sent to you in real-time. Plus, since all your strength data is calculated within the app, it saves a lot of time spent on labor that would normally be used making, transporting, and testing the cylinders. This story from Bottorff Construction Inc. featured below shows just how compelling this new technique is.
2 Responses
“Bottom Line, Low Concrete Breaks Happen Because of Human Error”
While I certainly agree with this, the text makes it seem like the testing agency is the only one capable of committing an error. The ready-mix plant may have messed up the mix, the contractor may have ordered the wrong strength, the driver may be delayed by traffic and the contractor elected to pour old concrete, water or other additives added on site by the drive or contractor, ect..
Maturity sensors while a nice technology are also subject to human error. You can not take the humanity out of the equation. The sensors may be installed incorrectly, the equations for strength may be wrong or implemented incorrectly, sensors may be mislabeled or placed in the wrong locations, ect.. All this not to mention that most structural engineers won’t accept the sensor’s data without confirmatory compressive strength specimens to not only dictate the strength equation but also as a check/balance against the new technology on an on-going basis. So you are actually adding more human elements on top of the existing ones. The technology, while nice, is not a panacea for human error.
Hi Steve, thank you for your comment. Yes, in this article we are saying that low breaks can happen because of human-error on the part of any individual involved in the process including both the testing agency and workers. Our maturity sensor, SmartRock, is not looking to replace standard-cured cylinders for acceptance testing, but rather field-cured cylinders that are often affected by human-error. Yes these sensors, like anything, may also be subject to human-errors but the goal of the sensors is to reduce the risk of these types of issues from happening using IoT-based smart technology.