May 7 2013
Central Concrete Supply, Inc., a U.S. Concrete, Inc. company and the leader in delivering low CO2 concrete to the San Francisco Bay Area, today announced that it would be joining representatives from Google, Inc., BASF, DPR Construction, KPFF Consulting Engineers and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to discuss Transparency and Material Ingredient Disclosure – What Google is Doing to Keep its Buildings Healthy at the 2013 International Concrete Sustainability Conference, to be held May 6-8 in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Central Concrete will also co-present a technical session on EPDs: An Inside Look at the Keys to Successful Implementation and moderate a discussion on Life Cycle Assessment.
Transparency and Material Ingredient Disclosure – What Google is Doing to Keep its Buildings Healthy
Michael Fletcher , senior advisor for the BASF Center for Building Excellence, will open the panel discussion on Transparency and Material Ingredient Disclosure – What Google is Doing to Keep its Buildings Healthy. Recognizing that many building owners are seeking ways to evaluate and compare the environmental impact and contents of building materials, Fletcher will explore the role of transparency and how it relates to 'precautionary' vs. 'risk' schools of thought. Caspar Wagner , Google green team design and construction lead, will then take a closer look at the Google Bay View Project and describe how Google used these transparency principles when implementing the Google Healthy Materials Program.
The Google case study will be followed by a panel discussion. Panelists will describe current trends in transparency and material disclosure, discuss how to evaluate and respond to an owner's 'healthy building' requirements, and share information on current and projected innovations in sustainable concrete.
In addition to Fletcher and Wagner, roundtable panelists include:
- Jeff Davis , vice president and general manager, Central Concrete Supply, a U.S. Concrete Company
- Ted van Der Linden , director of sustainability, DPR Construction
- Blake Inouye , structural engineer and associate, KPFF Consulting Engineers
- Franz-Josef Ulm , PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
EPDs: An Inside Look at the Keys to Successful Implementation
As today's building owners increasingly endeavor to build greener buildings, members of the design team seek proven and verified product labels. This has led to the recent development of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) – a standardized label designed to communicate the environmental impacts of a product in a scientifically sound, streamlined and comparable way. At the International Concrete Sustainability Conference, Chris Erickson , president and CEO of Climate Earth, a provider of systems, data and services for sustainable management, and Jeff Davis , vice president and general manager, Central Concrete, will take an inside look at how Central Concrete became the first ready-mix supplier in the U.S. to adopt and receive external verification of its EPDs.
Life Cycle Assessment
Ryan Henkensiefken , business development engineer at Central Concrete, will moderate a technical session on Life Cycle Assessment. The topics to be addressed are: Comparative Analysis of the Life-Cycle Impact Assessment of Cement Mortar Mixes Using the Green Concrete LCA Tool presented by Arpad Horvath , University of California Berkeley; An Approach for Analyzing Cost and Energy Performance Trade-offs in Residential Building Wall Systems presented by Jeremy Gregory , Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and 10 Questions LCA Can Answer about Concrete Buildings presented by Frances Yang , Arup.
Related Resource
Why Scalable Environmental Product Labeling is Key to a Sustainable Economy: A Case Study on the Development of Central Concrete's EPDs. Produced by Climate Earth.
About 2013 Concrete Sustainability Conference
The 2013 International Concrete Sustainability Conference, sponsored by the National Ready Mix Association (NRMCA), provides learning and networking opportunities on the latest advances, technical knowledge, continuing research, tools and solutions for sustainable concrete manufacturing and construction.