On Monday, November 4th, Brindley Engineering’s Nick Triandafilou attended and presented at the American Concrete Institute (ACI) Convention in Philadelphia.
ICYMI here is a link to the presentation: MINI SESSION: Overview of ACI PRC-546.3-23 Guide to Materials Selection for Concrete Repair and ACI PRC-546-23 Guide to Concrete Repair with moderator Mr. Peter Tarara.
In this presentation, Nick Triandafilou and Terry McGovern provided an overview of the recently published ACI PRC-546.3-23 Guide to Materials Selection for Concrete Repair and ACI PRC-546-23 Guide to Concrete Repair guides. We sat down with Nick to learn how the presentation was received and to learn more about the ACI convention as a whole.
Q: How was the ACI convention? What were your biggest takeaways?
A: The convention was excellent. There was particularly good attendance, and we made significant progress with the various committees with which I am involved. Sessions were informative – I particularly enjoyed the sessions on concrete anchoring developments, in which I learned an extensive history of concrete anchorage design – how equations were derived and what laboratory testing was performed to validate design equations.
Q: What were some trending themes/topics that you saw and heard others speak about?
A: 3D concrete printing, sustainability, serviceability, repair/retrofitting, Artificial Intelligence, statistical evaluation of concrete structures.
Q: Is Brindley Engineering seeing those same trends? How are you addressing them with clients?
A: At Brindley, we are committed to extending the life of existing infrastructure, which is well-aligned with the serviceability, sustainability, and concrete repair trends observed during the convention. Our approach to repair and strengthening projects is to determine the limits of unsound concrete and to clearly define the root cause of damage in order to design effective countermeasures. Using statistical approaches to evaluate structures is also a trend in the industry and one that we often employ on our projects.
Q: What did you hope that people would take away from your presentation?
A: Primarily, I would hope that people understand the importance of the Concrete Repair Guide as a source of information on the current methods and materials used in performing concrete repairs. Other takeaways include summaries of each chapter in the guide, a history of the guide and how it got to its current state, updates to the guide since its previous publication, and an illustration of how the guide can be used in real world projects.
Q: What do you expect some common themes to be in 2025 and what are you doing to prepare?
A: I think the statistical evaluation of concrete structures will continue to gain widespread use and acceptance. ACI has created a new committee ACI 353 “Statistically Based Assessment of Existing Concrete Structures”, and I am looking forward to serving as the Committee Chair for this initiative. The goal of this committee is to standardize the approaches used to evaluate existing concrete structures so that assessments are more consistently performed throughout the industry. This will become increasingly important as our nation’s infrastructures continue to age and deteriorate.
Q: Any other parting thoughts to share with us?
“I would like to say what an honor it is to be a part of the ACI organization and to have the opportunity to present on the Concrete Repair publication that involved the hard work of so many dedicated individuals. It also meant a lot to me to have my friends and colleagues Mr. Tom Brindley and Mr. Gourav Patodi attend the conference with me, and I truly thank them for their support.”
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