Concrete Credentials is a new podcast hosted by NRMCA Executive Vice President Gregg Lewis, AIA, LEED AP. It features experts from the design, development, construction, and other industries who understand the many benefits of using concrete. Whether it’s concrete’s strength, durability and resilience, its aesthetic quality, its unrivaled sustainability and performance benefits, its ease of use, or cost-effectiveness– the pros agree: concrete is the material of choice for buildings, paving, and infrastructure.

Why We Pave with Concrete was the second episode. You can listen to it here. This excellent episode covers a wide range of topics having to do with concrete paving. Since it is not always possible to take notes, here is a transcript of the entire podcast.

Gregg Lewis:
Welcome everyone to the second edition of Concrete Credentials. I’m Gregg Lewis, NRMCA’s executive vice president for promotion strategy and communications, and I’m thrilled to have the chance to bring you the very latest information about ready-mix concrete and why you should be using concrete on your next project.

Today I have the pleasure of introducing my NRMCA colleague, Brian Killingsworth, who oversees the concrete industry’s Pave Ahead program. And Brian, who is head of not only the Pave Ahead program, but all of the technical support for project teams, hoping to learn better ways to use concrete on their next paving project. Brian is an engineer. He’s experienced in consulting and is a leading voice on a wide range of solutions with paving projects, whether they’re parking lots, local streets and roads. He is the executive vice president of Local Paving with the NRMCA and he heads up the industry’s efforts to educate and promote project teams and the many benefits of using ready-mix concrete.

Brian, welcome to Concrete Credentials.

Brian Killingsworth:
Gregg, thanks for having me today.

Gregg Lewis:
It should be a good conversation. I’m looking forward to learning a little bit directly from you on concrete paving strategies and approaches. And if you wouldn’t mind, Brian, when we get started here, if you would just give folks listening, a little bit of background on what you’ve done as a consulting engineer and how you came to appreciate concrete’s benefits as a paving material.

Brian Killingsworth:
Sure, Gregg. I started my career as an engineer at a small niche pavement consulting firm in Austin, Texas. That was nearly 30 years ago, and since that time, I’ve had the opportunity to work with almost every paving material available across the US and even across the globe.

In the 20 or so years that I was in consulting, I was involved in research and development projects, conducted hundreds of pavement designs, co-managed a materials testing laboratory, been on too many pavement projects to remember, and I’ve taught lots and lots of people, and I shared stories of paving successes and even a few nightmares, but one thing I can assure you is that people, whether they are an owner or a user of a pavement, they want value. They want pavement to last a long time and not require activities that are going to cost them money or interfere with getting where they want to go or doing what they want to do, and that goes for parking lots, residential or city streets, highways, airports, distribution centers, or cargo ports. In my experience, concrete and other ready-mix paving materials, they do a great job of providing that value.

Gregg Lewis:
Excellent. So after an impressive career, obviously as a private sector engineer, you came along to the concrete industry and you’ve been working now with us at NRMCA for 10 years. I’m curious about why you made that jump working for the industry, and looking back today on your experiences, what continues to excite you as you start each day promoting and working in the concrete sector?

Brian Killingsworth:
Well, in 2011, NRMCA advertised, I believe for the very first time, a pavement engineer job, and it was brought to my attention and I inquired about it. I had met NRMCA’s Colin Lobo at a conference where we both were speaking and I had used some of NRMCA’s technical materials. So I was familiar with the organization, but after spending some time really reading about others in the organization and learning more about how NRMCA was really invested in serving the ready-mix industry, and to me, more importantly, serving their members, I just felt like I wanted to be part of a world-class organization with some of the best people that you could imagine. And fortunately, after I interviewed with Lionel Lemay and Bob Garbini, I was offered the position and I guess the rest is history, but I really enjoy what I do.

And I think what keeps me interested is the fact that the industry’s not static. Even though concrete has been and continues to be at its most basic: just rock, sand, cement, water, and many times, admixtures, there’s still a lot of innovation in the industry. And when we talk about paving, there are numerous ready-mix products that can be used in a paving system. There’s conventional concrete, pervious concrete, roller-compacted concrete, and all of those can be used as a riding surface for vehicles.

So when it comes time to rehabilitate worn out pavements, we can grind up the old asphalt and granular base and use cement slurry to stabilize those ground up layers. We do that in place and we put a new surface on top or we can place concrete as an overlay of an existing asphalt or concrete pavement, which allows that existing pavement to be reused. And both of those techniques are very sustainable, they save time, they save money, so there are many, many solutions that we have to offer, and that really keeps the job exciting.

Gregg Lewis:
You mentioned, Brian, that you can place concrete as an overlay to an existing pavement. Well, I’m not sure that there are a lot of folks listening that might be aware of that. Is that a common practice, and can you maybe provide some more detail about how that works exactly?

Brian Killingsworth:
Sure. So in parts of the country, using concrete as an overlay is a common practice, but I’ve got to admit, we do have lots of people when we talk about using concrete as an overlay, they say, “I didn’t know you could do that.” So when a pavement reaches its end-of-service-life or it needs significant repair, we’ve got a few options. And we can either reconstruct the pavement, which is time consuming and it’s costly, or we can overlay it to extend its life. And many times, we see DOT’s do what we call this mill and fill approach, and that’s not very economical because it’s like putting a Band-Aid over a really bad wound, but if we place a concrete overlay over that existing pavement, what we’re really doing is extending the service life of that pavement for up to 10 years or more, and in some cases, we see that life extended up to 40 years.

And with our infrastructure aging the way it is and knowing that public entities have less money to fix our infrastructure, a concrete overlay makes a lot of sense because we’re reusing the existing pavement as a base layer and providing the user with a smooth, maintenance-free surface for many years to come.

Gregg Lewis:
The value of having a pavement rehabilitation last longer obviously, is an important point, and I appreciate the examples that you’ve made here. So Brian, NRMCA launched the Pave Ahead program back in September of 2017. And as you have been in so many other areas, you were on the leading edge of getting that program in place. I’d be interested, I’m sure the listeners would be interested, if you tell us about what the Pave Ahead program is and why you would think it’s important for those working in the design development and construction industries to be aware of the resources that are available through that Pave Ahead program.

Brian Killingsworth:
Yeah. The Pave Ahead program is NRMCA’s initiative to educate others about all these paving solutions that I’ve been talking about, when we use the ready-mixed product. And we have a mission statement, and essentially the mission statement says that we provide designers, engineers, contractors, and others, the tools necessary to make the right decisions about paving.

And so when we think about that, what it means for us is that we’ve got to think smarter, we’ve got to go beyond conventional design and construction methods, and we, in the industry, need to lead the way in helping others adapt new and innovative technologies. So we go about doing these things by having technical experts available, like I mentioned, that’s free of charge. The industry supports us and so our time is free to those that need us. And so we help designers, developers and contractors on their projects, and we do that through our Concrete Design Center.

We can help these folks get through a project from the beginning, at the design stage, to construction and even when they are maintaining a pavement while it’s in service. So it’s important for us to do that because there’s misconceptions out there about the initial cost of concrete pavement or cement-based paving, whether concrete is applicable in low traffic volume situations, whether reinforcing steel is required. There’s just a lot of questions that people have and we can help answer these questions and really optimize the concrete pavement sections so they meet budget requirements, but they’re also cost-competitive.

Gregg Lewis:
So you’ve got this program, Pave Ahead. We offer technical support for project teams who want to find more cost-effective ways to take advantage of the properties: the strength, the durability, the longevity of paving with concrete, and as you pointed out, this program is funded by NRMCA members, and so it’s free to use for project teams that are looking for ways to take advantage of these benefits.

Why from your perspective, would an engineer or a property developer or a contractor use the Pave Ahead design assistance program?

Brian Killingsworth:
Well, very simply because it’s free. We can be a second set of eyes to look over the ideas that you might have for a project or we can evaluate your design calculations or even help you get started with the design if you’re not sure what to do, maybe you might need some help with the joint layout plan, or you want to know if roller compacted concrete would work in a unique situation. Our team really has the wealth of knowledge and extensive experience when it comes to using ready mix products for paving. To me, it just makes sense to use a free service like ours, to help ensure that you’re using your dollars wisely. Our goal is to provide the best advice that we can so that the project that you’re working on is successful. Even if that advice means that a ready mix product isn’t the best option. Admittedly, that doesn’t happen very often, but we’ll certainly tell you if that situation comes up because we want you to come back for the next project and the one after that and so on. So if you can’t trust us to be honest, then you won’t come back for those future projects.

Gregg Lewis:
So I think about this and it strikes me that it’s really a no brainer, right? You’ve got a free design assistance program for the engineering community, for contractors and others who want to look at alternatives perhaps to what might be specified in a set of project documents for an upcoming project, whether it’s for department of transportation or a private developer, owner of a piece of ground somewhere across the country, and having that engineering support that you guys provide obviously brings more value.

But I want to pivot a little bit and I asked Lionel a similar question as it related to the buildings efforts that you’re engaged in it at NRMCA. And that is how this relates back to the NRMCA member, right? So I know for ready mix producers who are members of NRMCA or perhaps are thinking of becoming NRMCA members, they might say, well, we don’t work with the designers or the developers or the DOTs and by the time we hear about a project, it’s often too late to influence the project anyway. So how can we use this design assistance program to help our customer? How would you suggest, from the Pave Ahead program and your own perspective, how would you suggest they take advantage of the Pave Ahead program’s benefits?

Brian Killingsworth:
Yeah, this, it can be a concern. But listen, we’ve talked to design teams, owners, contractors, whomever, right up to the time of pavement construction. We’ve provided recommendations about a concrete design or some sort of ready mix product in the design. Granted, it’s better to get in early during the design phase and get a ready mix product on that first set of plans, but we’re not afraid of a plan modification or change orders. Often our involvement in a project is simply to assist a contractor with putting a jointing plan together for a concrete pavement design that is on the plans. But we know that a properly jointed pavement is just as important to long-term performance as using the right concrete thickness.

So, we can develop in a CAD format, a jointing layout plan that reduces the potential for random cracking, which really allows that owner to enjoy all the benefits of a well performing concrete pavement. For many, many years, we can also review materials and construction specifications for projects. We can provide feedback that helps to kind of balance the risk between the parties or even improve the ready mix product that shows up on a project. Or we can help an owner repair an existing asphalt or concrete pavement. So I would say that our services are useful at any time. It doesn’t have to be during the design stage.

Gregg Lewis:
It’s a difference really, and you and I have talked about this in the past, for a pavement project, really you can get in there and look at alternatives almost right up to the point where they’re ready to start the actual paving on a job site, whereas a building project obviously is a longer time required to make changes to design and get concreting for that building project. But on the paving side for your team in particular, there are hundreds of projects, right, that were born to be paved with other materials and ultimately because of the paid ahead program and efforts of your team, those projects ultimately were converted to a ready mix product, largely as a result of the design assistance program. Brian, what is it that convinced these owners and other project stakeholders to make the change over to a cement based paving product?

Brian Killingsworth:
Well, I think it comes down to value and versatility. It really is that simple that once we can demonstrate to the stakeholder that some sort of a ready mixed product can effectively meet their needs while also being cost competitive, it becomes an easy sell. So the next step for us then becomes making sure that those stakeholders get bids from quality contractors. That’s why we’ve partnered with the American Society of Concrete Contractors and put together what we call the paving toolkit and it’s on the ASCC website, but that’s where those professional concrete contractors can access things like brochures, design guides, construction guides, case studies, and other references for the design and construction of concrete pavements. So it’s kind of like a puzzle. So when we put all of these pieces together, it makes a very clear picture and it is a very compelling picture.

Gregg Lewis:
The work that you guys are doing, the guys and gals on the PAVE Ahead program at NRMCA, you’ve got your hands on a lot of different projects around the country, all different kinds of paving projects large and small, and I’m sure no two days are the same for you guys on the paving side and more and more for the guys and gals on the Build Strength side of things for buildings. But I’m curious, with all of the projects that you’ve been involved with or your team has been involved with over the years, could you tell the listeners what’s the most challenging paving project that you’ve been involved with was and how the team at Pave Ahead solved that challenge?

Brian Killingsworth:
Yeah, that’s a tough one. I mean, there’s a few to choose from, but I think there’s one that stands out to me and it’s a project we did out on the West Coast in 2014. So about six years or so ago. There was a high end neighborhood out there that had concrete streets and they had been built over 75 years ago. That’s 75 years ago that they were built. And they finally needed repairs and it was primarily because they had been patched so many times due to utility repairs. Another interesting thing about that is the concrete pavement back 75 years ago had been placed without any transverse joints. So there was a lot of random cracking, but despite these issues, the concrete had not really required much maintenance over that 70 plus years of service life.

So anyway, the city told the neighborhood that they were going to overlay the concrete with another material. So the Pave Ahead team was asked to assist the homeowner’s association in crafting a response to the city and provide those rehabilitation options and the cost estimates. So to do that work, we collaborated with the state’s cement and concrete paving associations there to do a street by street visual assessment of the nine miles of paving that were in that neighborhood. So from that work, we developed five different concrete rehabilitation options and the associated cost estimates, which the homeowner’s association then used to approach the city to convince them to use a concrete option to restore their streets. And it took about two months to get all of that data that we needed, develop the rehab options and costs, and then finally develop the report.

So recall that I said that this project was completed in 2014. So to date there had been a few intersections that have been replaced with concrete, and I believe a few street segments have been converted or have been restored in concrete. So this is really a continual process that requires both national, and I think more importantly, the local resources continuing to push use of concrete. The point that I’m really trying to make is that just because a report’s completed and we send it out the door, on some projects, there still could be a lot of work to be done to finally see concrete hit the ground. And we measure that not in just weeks or months, but in years, sometimes it takes us to accomplish that.

Gregg Lewis:
I think when you’re committed to making sure that a project is successful, it requires a willingness to stick with it and support the client or support the project team throughout what can be, as you pointed out, a fairly extended project design sequence. And there’s a lot that can go into that. You guys are doing a whole lot more than just small design assistance [inaudible 00:19:06] plans or what have you, but to get involved in the scale much larger, it sounds like then perhaps what some people understand Pave Ahead program to be able to do. And I think that that speaks to not only the expertise on the chain, but also the commitments of the industry to make sure that these projects that we get involved with are successful regardless of what it takes from our side, to make sure that we’re providing the support necessary to get there. That’s one of the values in both the Pave Ahead program and the Build Strength program that perhaps are missed or not well understood. So I appreciate your going through that particular case in some detail.

Brian, one of the cement based paving solutions that has appealed to many designers, particularly for its sustainability properties is pervious pavement. And I had some experience with it myself on projects that I worked on some years ago, but for those who haven’t used pervious pavement, can you explain for them a bit about what it is and how it delivers on low impact development strategies for a project?

Brian Killingsworth:
Yeah, pervious is a unique animal. And pervious concrete is essentially concrete without the sand or the fine aggregate. We take that out, because there’s no sand, the concrete becomes very permeable and allows water to freely flow through it. When we place this type of concrete over an open graded granular base, meaning like a clean number 57 stone. So we just place the concrete right on top of that. Stormwater and runoff flows through the pavement system and it infiltrates into that subgrade or soil below. And as it moves through the pavement layers and the soil, the stormwater is filtered and it’s clean by the time it hits or reaches that water table.

So pervious concrete is recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency or the EPA as what we call the best management practice, and that’s the best management practice for stormwater control, and it’s accepted in many states and local agencies as a qualified stormwater plan. And it also assists in obtaining what we call water management credits that many cities and localities have. And then it also can be used to help meet the requirements of green building rating systems. So for these reasons, pervious concrete is really a great choice for pavement for communities and developers that are concerned about stormwater runoff or stormwater impact fees or for a project site that has very limited area for storm water retention.

Many sites can become very compact and by the time that you put a building or a parking lot down, you have to consider what you’re going to do with your stormwater. And most of the time we have to have a stormwater retention facility there. And if there’s just not enough room to do that, then you can make the parking lot your retention facility. And so when we eliminate the need for those dedicated detention areas, the land that usually is devoted to those storm water management systems, we now can use that to be developed, or we can preserve it. And that really enhances the owner’s bottom line. So you can see there’s a lot of benefits to using pervious concrete, not only on private projects, but also on public streets and alleys and sidewalks and trails and places like that.

Gregg Lewis:
Well, in some cases I know developers who bond with a pervious paving system using concrete, because either they didn’t have enough room to make the project work where a big stormwater retention system was going to be required. And so the pervious allowed them to actually make the deal work from a permitting and design standpoint. So there’s a lot of value there and I think it’s a strategy that more developers, I think increasingly actually, are looking at as we look at ways to reduce our stormwater impacts on development sites. So another way that concrete can help a low impact development.

I want to actually stick with this sort of related topic, and that’s stability a little bit as it relates to ready mix concrete pavements, cement based pavements. And I want to bring it home or at least bring it home to you, I’m up in Virginia and it can get hot, but you live in Texas, right? And there are certainly, like this time of the year. I don’t know if you’re in the hundreds today, but there are plenty of hundred degree days down there in Texas. And particularly in an urban environment in the South during the summer months, concrete pavements can dramatically reduce urban heat island effect. Now this heat island effect is maybe not something that folks understand well enough, but this is another sustainability benefit, concrete pavements. And I guess what I’d like to talk about a little bit is how does that work? How does the concrete actually provide a way to cool an urban environment? And why should municipalities, and I guess, especially larger cities, pay more attention to this benefit from your perspective?

Brian Killingsworth:
Well, that’s a great question and yes, we hit very many hundred degree days here in central Texas. But we know from scientific data that we’ve collected from NASA, the EPA, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, we know that on warm summer days, the air and in large cities can be six to eight degrees Fahrenheit hotter than those surrounding rural areas. So if we look at this on an annual basis, we also know that the annual mean air temperature of a large city, so one that would be a million people or more, can be two to six degrees Fahrenheit warmer than its surroundings. So why does this occur? Well, this occurs because of dark horizontal surfaces that absorb most of that sunlight that falls on. So dark surfaces tend to run hotter than lighter ones. And this is the main cause of what we call that urban heat island effect.

So urban heat islands can have really serious and detrimental effects on a community. And it’s in terms of quality of life issues because we have to use more energy, so our energy demand is increased. We have more air pollution, smog, greenhouse gas emissions. We can have decreased water quality. So it’s really incumbent upon community leaders and even private industry to adopt those strategies that are going to reduce the urban heat island. But we can mitigate the effects of the urban heat island. So there are solutions and we can do that by selecting light colored surfaces for our roofs and for our pavements, for those horizontal surfaces. And then we can also do things like incorporate more trees and landscaping elements in urban communities. So there are other things we can do just besides the horizontal surfaces, but within each of those mitigation strategies, concrete can play a role.

So let me give you a couple examples. So if we were to use light colored paving surfaces for all the roads in Texas, we could save nearly 2000 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere because of the urban heat island induction. That’s like removing almost 400,000 passenger vehicles from Texas roads for a year. Now on a smaller scale, let’s say we did the same thing just in the city of Houston. We could see a 55% decrease in the number of days where the heat index gets above 105 degrees. And that’s that level at which it constitutes a dangerous heat advisory. So the urban heat island phenomenon is real and concrete then help mitigate it.

Gregg Lewis:
It wasn’t until we got on this podcast recording session that I began to understand how much of a challenge it is to say urban heat island. I didn’t realize that was going to be a challenge for both of us. I appreciate your spelling out those benefits and I think our concrete pavements and concrete in general was the urban heat island is understood by some, and again, if we go back to a concrete design center, Pave Ahead and your team can help municipalities and others take advantage of integrating concrete into the project to help mitigate that issue. So just another way that Pave Ahead helps those who want to address issues of sustainability in their projects or their communities.

Just going to change course here a little bit, you need a great team of individuals across the country, right? In markets in that will work to help educate project teams about concrete’s value proposition. What I’m hoping we’ll do now, take a couple of minutes and just talk a little bit about the team itself, where they’re located and how their background and expertise are helping the project to use more better informed decisions about using ready mix products in their markets.

Brian Killingsworth:
Yeah. So with myself, I’ve got six other technical experts on the Pave Ahead team and we cover six regions across the US. And here’s a fun number for you. We have a combined experience on our team of about 200 years. And that really is remarkable. We’ve got five of the seven members are professional engineers. The other two have extensive construction experience and are really industry leaders in ready mixed materials. So we’ve got a really well balanced team. And so within the Pave Ahead team, we collaborate and we rely on each other to help find innovative solutions to all those kinds of unique situations. We do that on a weekly and almost daily basis.

And each of us has specialties that we’ve developed from our education and our experience. And that allows us to really share those specialties amongst each other when a complex situation arises. Also, we all have our own set of contacts across the country that we call on. I’m really proud of the Pave Ahead team and I would encourage anyone listening to contact one of us if you would like some assistance or have a question. Just go to the Pave Ahead website and click on the tab that says meet the experts and you can get our contact information.

Gregg Lewis:
So that’s paveahead.com that you’re referring to, right? The website’s www.paveahead.com. It’s a great resource there for folks listening. The local pavement promotion team that you head up is engaged in promotion and education, but also in developing the standards and tools for design and qualifications for construction. And so what is happening on those fonts from your perspective, and what you guys are involved in? Why is it important for our industry to take the lead on this issue of advancing tools and technology for the cement based paving industry as a whole?

Brian Killingsworth:
Great question. So I’ll talk about a couple of different things. One of them is a design tool. For many years, the different concrete and cement associations all kind of maintained our own design programs. And a few years ago, we got to the point where both the cement and concrete associations, those would be the Portland Cement Association, the American Concrete Pavement Association, us at NRMCA, and then the Roller Compacted Concrete Council, we felt it was really necessary to consolidate all of those industry design programs into a free web-based design software. And so we launched the pavementdesigner.org website in January 2018. And it’s available for anyone worldwide that wants to do a cement-based pavement design. So I highly encourage those folks that are listening to try it out. It’s a very easy tool. It covers a broad, broad base of the different types of pavement sections that ready-mix products can go into. And it also reports out, so we can use the reports from the design software in design reports. So it’s a really great tool that we invested a lot of time, effort, and money into.

And around the same time that we were doing that, NRMCA launched our concretetracker.org website. This is an evolving website that contains information from across the US about specific building and paving projects, so it has both on there, that used ready-mixed products. And so the map is a great way to see where these projects are, and find out a little something about them. And as I said, it’s an evolving website and we’re constantly adding projects to it. So if you don’t see a project in your state or your locality, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. It means we simply haven’t had the opportunity to load every project onto the site that we know about.

But both tools are important, because with the design program, we can produce designs that are accurate, and that they’re proper for the design conditions. And with the tracker map, we can demonstrate that there are many successful concrete projects across the US. So that’s just a couple of the things that we’re involved in. But we’re also involved in places like the American Concrete Institute and we have input into design methods, construction methods, material specifications, and things like that. So the team along with our buildings team is very active in those types of arenas, and so is our engineering team at NRMCA.

Gregg Lewis:
That’s great to hear about the collaborative efforts in particular. And it wouldn’t have occurred to me prior to our sitting down and talking this afternoon that just by bringing these different organizations together, leveraging their shared combined resources, that we could actually do an even better job. In fact it sounds like everybody’s, from your vantage point, are doing a much better job of providing the support that project teams and others need to take advantage of the benefits of paving with concrete. And I think that that’s a tribute to the leadership of these different organizations that we continue to try to find ways to work together and to innovate in the ways that we deliver services to our communities. And it’s that kind of thing that I think is noteworthy, and I’ve been impressed with that kind of effort in the years that I’ve been with NRMCA as well.

People talk about, well concrete isn’t sexy or isn’t exciting or isn’t got a feeling, but when I think about concrete, I think about innovation. I think more than a lot of other industries out there around concrete, particularly in construction, the concrete and cement industries are innovating on a regular basis. And that innovation leads to all kinds of benefits to the end user of our products in the communities that we deliver those products to. I’m interested, if you wouldn’t mind, spend a couple minutes and just talk about what the innovations are that you’re seeing coming down the road, if you will, to make cement-based pavements even better than they are today?

Brian Killingsworth:
Yeah. Well call me crazy, but I still think concrete is pretty exciting and sexy. But we are seeing a lot of innovations. We see different types of paving equipment that are hitting the market now, and they make control of the paving operation fast, efficient. So there’s significant advancement there. Our admixture suppliers are developing additives that can retard set times to allow for longer haul times, or they can reduce water requirements, which reduces shrinkage potential, which is critical for pavements. So the admixtures are very innovative and address almost every issue that we face where we want to try to improve our concrete both in the short term and the long term.

We’re also seeing various admixture and fiber combinations that can provide jointless interior slabs or exterior pavements. And those are truly remarkable advances that can be used in special or unique circumstances, or even just in everyday paving or slab work that we do. I’m also seeing things like bendable concrete mixes that are just crazy when you see pictures and videos of them, and they have high fiber contents and they can be used as maybe thin concrete overlay. It’s a building cladding technology that we can adopt in the horizontal market. I think the market is still very young for those types of materials, but I believe we’re going to see more applications like that in the near future. And for me, really, the sky’s the limit for these types of innovations. And we have really smart people working in the industry to improve upon what we’re currently doing. And so I think in five years, 10 years, we’re going to look back and see even more incredible things that are hitting the concrete industry.

Gregg Lewis:
It’s really interesting to me. People outside the industry I think look at concrete and cement as same as it ever was. And frankly, nothing could be further from the truth. At least that’s been my experience, and, of course, you’ve been working in this field for a good long time. And obviously your team with 200 years of experience… I’m assuming that that’s not the majority your experience, you’re still a young guy, so it’s spread around pretty good across the seven team members at Pave Ahead. So with all of that experience, clearly you’ve learned a lot, and you have a lot to offer as do the other Pave Ahead team members.

So for the listener, I guess in particular, Brian, they have an opportunity, they’ve had an opportunity over the last half hour or so to hear some of the things that we do as an industry, as an association to provide support for projects and for the kings that are trying to constantly improve the work that they do. And obviously we can help them do that with concrete. But if you were to leave the listeners of this podcast with just one thing that you’d like them to remember, what would that be?

Brian Killingsworth:
Well, I think what I would say is that there are ready mixed products available to suit every need in the paving market, whether it be new construction or rehabilitating an old worn out pavement, or whether we’re talking about a small parking lot or a city street or a massive hub airport or a large coastal port, ready mix has a role to play. And so what I would do is just say, contact us, get in touch with one of us and we’ll help you figure it out for your project.

Gregg Lewis:
Excellent. Brian, I want to thank you for taking the time today to chat with us on Concrete Credentials.

Brian Killingsworth:
Thanks Greg for having me today.

Gregg Lewis:
And I’d also like to say if our listeners have feedback for us, either about the content or what you’d like to hear in upcoming subject areas, we look forward to that feedback so that we can improve the content and deliver value to you for the time that you all spend with us here on the podcast. Feel free to send an email to [email protected]. Thanks again for listening and remember you can download episodes of Concrete Credentials wherever you get your podcasts.