QUIKRETE observes industry trends at WOC
Advanced technology drives change in the concrete industry.
With a preliminary estimate of more than 1,500 exhibitors and more than 60,000 professional attendees at the World of Concrete, Feb. 2-5,2016 in Las Vegas, The QUIKRETE Companies revealed several trends permeating the concrete industry.
Founded in 1940 and the leading producer of pre-blended packaged concrete in North American, QUIKRETE anticipates these trends to influence the way manufacturers, contractors, specifiers, dealers, distributors and architects approach building, repair, restoration and remodeling with concrete and other cementitous materials this year and beyond.
Jobsite Efficiency
The desire to increase jobsite efficiency, consistency and quality while reducing material and labor costs remains a priority. Few other building materials can help keep a project on schedule and on budget like pre-mixed concrete, which is why QUIKRETE is constantly innovating new products that set and gain strength quickly.
A great example is the new QUIKRETE Q-Max Pro. The first concrete that delivers one-hour working time, three-hour walk-on time and 6,500 PSI compressive strength with crack, freeze-thaw and corrosion resistance, QUIKRETE Q-MAX Pro is the new standard in concrete.
Aging Infrastructure
Another key issue driving the need for fast-setting, high-early strength concrete is an aging transportation infrastructure littered with deteriorated roadways, bridges and tunnels. As a result, hundreds of billions of federal and state dollars are being allocated to rehabilitate the country’s transportation infrastructure. Beyond the cost, the challenge of restoring unsafe roadways, bridges and tunnels is minimizing traffic disruptions during the process.
QUIKRETE worked with state Department of Transportations, nationwide, to develop specific concrete repair products including QUIKRETE FastSet Latex Modified DOT Overlay, QUIKRETE Rapid Road Repair and QUIKRETE FastSet DOT Mix. These repair materials are formulated to meet the necessary structural and cost requirements, and are used primarily overnight and during other low traffic times with traffic lanes open by morning rush hour.
Green Building
Green building remains a construction focus with billions of square-feet of office space U.S. Green Building Council LEED certified in 2015. While concrete and mortars may not seem like obvious contributors to environmentally-friendly building, advances in manufacturing technology highlighted by the use of post-consumable materials like recycled concrete aggregates and slag cement can contribute to LEED certification.
Slag cement, a by-product of iron ore transformed from iron during the molten process in a blast furnace, reduces landfill waste, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. As a result, concrete companies can serve as good stewards of the environment.
Aesthetic Versatility
Similar to misperceptions about its environmentally-friendly viability, concrete’s aesthetic versatility is becoming more prevalent among contractors. In addition to using concrete to fulfill the structural requirements of a project, many interior and exterior designs call for the visual appearance of concrete surfaces to be elevated.
Stamping, polishing, etching and painting are well-represented in the concrete décor community, but staining may be the most permanent way to transform an ordinary concrete slab into beautiful surface these days. Unlike many common film-forming stains that easily peel, flake and fad over time, our QUIKRETE Translucent Stains absorb into the pores of concrete and chemically bond for lasting beauty.
Advanced Technologies
The concrete industry is also benefitting from advanced technology beyond new product development and quality-control. Recently, QUIKRETE launched a new mobile app so contractors can easily access the project and product information they need from anywhere. The interactive functionality provides real-time, downloadable and sharable product data sheet and SDS sheets as well as material calculators and where-to buy locations with one-touch from a smartphone.
With more than 20,000 downloads of the QUIKRETE mobile app to date, contractors and other customers benefit from timely support, whether they are completing a project bid or problem solving on a jobsite.
More information is available at www.quikrete.com.
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