Perhaps the biggest advantage of the SI Certs Reinforced Concrete Course is the ability to study at any time, from any computer. Users of the course find this flexibility extremely convenient. So the next obvious step for us was to make sure it functioned adequately on a tablet device.

Through some innovative coding efforts by our technical support, the course now functions entirely on a tablet device. Users can log in, go through each module as they did before right on their tablet, click on the illustrations and see the enlarged version, take the practice exams, and even play the integrated audio guides that expound on the teaching, assisting those geared toward auditory learning methods. With the new iPad being released with double the resolution of the previous model, examining the plan enlargements will work even better now with more digital surface area.

Earlier this year when the new ACI technician publication was released, we made updates to our ACI content online to reflect the most current publication out. While there weren’t many changes, we noted and made the few described. It was easy enough to change the text, but the video needed updated as well.

Since the filming and editing of the first ACI videos, SI Certs has wanted to reshoot with better (HD) equipment and better on-screen graphics. Having waited until the new publication came out, we recently reshot and edited the content for accuracy according to the latest publication and to provide another easy, helpful reference to all our viewers. Our narrator is Mr. Jeffery Goss, a sales representative and accounts manager at Geneva Rock, a quality and consistent concrete provider here in Utah.

You can find our videos on our ACI page, as well as on our youtube channel entitled sicerts.

We’ve updated our ACI page to reflect the new 2011 CP-1 ACI technician workbook. Not a lot of changes, but the following ASTM standards were updated:

Slump: (ASTM C 143-10)
Last year used C 143-08

Air Content: Pressure Method: (ASTM C 231-09b)
Last year used C 231-09

Air Content: Volumetric Method: (ASTM C 173-10)
Last year used C 173-09

Slump

Under Section 5.2, the ASTM now states that the tamping rod can range in length from 16 inches to 24 inches, but not be greater than 24 inches. Last year’s publication specified the length at 24 inches. Under the 2011 publication, you will see an added note stating that the new dimensions conform to ASTMs C 31, C 138, and C 173.

Air Content: Pressure Method

They’ve reversed the metric and inch-pound units throughout the text, stating the metric measurements first, then the inch-pound measurement equivalents in the brackets. Also, under Section 4.4, the ASTM removed the requirement of the calibration vessel’s inside depth to be 1/2-inch less than the depth of the measuring bowl. Not a big deal.

Air Content: Volumetric Method

Under Section 4.3, the tamping rod length requirement was changed from “at least 12 inches” in length to now “at least 4 inches greater than the depth of the bowl….but not greater than 24 inches..” This was done to streamline all of the tests for using one-size tamping rod: 5/8″ x 16″ – 24.” In other words, a rod falling within these dimensions can be used for all tests. This is also stated in a newly added Note 1 under Section 4.3. Also, they removed the sentence from Section 7.1 “Rod the bottom layer throughout its depth.”

That sums up the changes for the ACI 2011 Publication. ASTM C 94-09a has been updated in our Reinforced Concrete course.

I noticed two things when I first got into the construction materials testing industry:

(1) those who had the Reinforced Concrete certification from ICC were making good money, in demand, and staying busy, and

(2) many guys (and girls) who attempted to take the test failed the first and even second try, leaving them discouraged and hesitant to keep pursuing the coveted certification. And others, seeing these repeated failures, wouldn’t even try.

The question is often asked, “How do I prepare for this test?”

First, you need to have the correct references to study from. You can download the ICC National Certification Examination Information Bulletin from this direct link: http://www.iccsafe.org/Accreditation/Bulletins/National_Certification_EIB.pdf. This document contains information for test-taking such as scheduling a test, certification renewal, how the ICC scores the tests, and more importantly what references you need to study to prepare for the test. Save this pdf document for reference and find the Special Inspector Examinations categories near the end. “47 Reinforced Concrete Special Inspector” lists the references you need.

Once you have the right references, knowing what to study is the next step. The problem I find is most people don’t enjoy reading code, myself included. Who wants to sit around and read a code book?

Some institutions and individuals offer classroom instruction. This can be very helpful because there are experienced workers who can take you through the code, explain difficult portions, and add personal experience, removing the “dryness” of studying code books. This personalized instruction can come at a very high price though and is not available in most areas.

What should you look for when seeking a classroom course, or some sort of tutoring or outside help?

Checklist For Evaluating a Course

(1) Make sure the person is qualified. “Qualified” can be a very loose term, but that can simply mean the teacher knows what they’re taking about and can help you prepare for the test. They don’t have to be a degreed teacher, or even have been in the industry for 20-plus years. They need to understand how the ICC tests, what information should be the focus of study, and which instructional methods work to help you pass the test.

(2) There should be a section for test-taking strategies. Sometimes just being a good test-taker can make all the difference. Can a person who is a poor test-taker give you the direction you need, even if they managed to pass the test themselves? You’ll find that a person who understands test-taking strategies will help you be more confident during test day.

(3) The teacher should know the difference between the field and the test. There are really two different approaches to learning Reinforced Concrete Special Inspections. The first is knowing how to perform the duties in the field. The second is passing the test to obtain the certification. These approaches are entirely different. The help you are seeking must be able to differentiate between the two, because spending time in the field going through the inspection process will not prepare you to pass the test. I’ve seen this time and time again. Why do you think you come across those individuals who know how to inspect reinforced concrete, but just haven’t passed the test? Yes, plan reading can certainly be improved in the field, and should be, but your teacher should be an expert in the test in order to prepare you to pass.

(4) The course should have a firm grasp on plan-reading concepts. This is extremely important. People who can pass the code but fail the plan-reading portion of the test become extremely discouraged by the entire process. What is often missed is learning the necessary concepts involved. A good course provides a conceptual approach to plan reading, so that any set of plans you come across can be navigated and understood. A course that merely gives you four sets of sample plans can be a waste of time. You can become familiar with all four sets, but become lost on test day when you are faced with a new set of plans.

(5) Avoid cheater courses. These are the expensive courses where you sit in a room with a highlighter and highlight portions of the code that are “most likely questions” on the test. Even if you end up passing the test, you wasted your money because you haven’t learned anything. There are better options out there for actual learning and they are less expensive than these overpriced cheater courses.

A course should be an accessible, affordable option. What would I suggest?

We’ve created an entire online course that meets this checklist to help you pass the test.

The SI Certs Reinforced Concrete Course

I developed the course by drawing from my special inspector background. I’m not an engineer or someone out of touch with the day-to-day inspection operations. In fact, I still do the typical inspection tasks every day. Also, I have master’s degree in education. I previously taught students and adults of all ages and developed many tests and teaching materials during my teaching career.

I employed a graphic designer and illustrator to walk you through the necessary portions of the code and teach difficult or confusing concepts, all the while helping you become familiar with the relevant material. My bachelor degree was in journalism, which gave me the skills to edit the course materials into fluid and intelligent read.

The plans portion of the course teaches plan reading by providing the needed conceptual foundation. You will gain plan reading skills by going over commonalities among all sets of plans and then build the foundation needed to tackle the set of plans on the test. After you learn plan reading in this fashion, you’ll be able to practice your skills with any sets of plans on job sites or in the office.

The course even contains integrated audio that provides narration at key points for additional understanding. The audio is especially helpful when learning blueprint reading. At the end of the course, there are online timed practiced tests to help you evaluate your readiness to take the real test.

If you want to pass the ICC Reinforced Concrete Test, enroll in our course today.

Great humor sometimes comes at a price. There is great humor and at the same time great sorrow in some of the following true accounts. If only to share a few laughs, this would not really be worth writing. But if for the purpose of shedding light on the need for our industry to improve it’s quality and service through dependable and hard-working field personnel, it’s definitely worth a reread.

And this is not to make light of the value of services offered by special inspection agencies. Countless errors, some of great magnitude and timely cost-savings catches have been discovered first and foremost by special inspectors. So it should be clear that the value of third party QA/QC services should not be made light of. Just a few special personnel.

LIVIN’ THE HIGH LIFE

An unnamed man applying for an out-of-state position in an unnamed company wins favor and is flown into town to continue the interview process and begin training. Upon arrival, the company informs him of the plans for the week – get drug tested, go through in-house testing and training for the position, safety orientation, and become acquainted with the jobsite. Immediately from the airport, the company informed him that they were taking him to the drug testing center.

Interviewer: “I know you want to do the drug testing now, but I just used the restroom at the airport because I didn’t know we were going to do this.”
Company: “Okay, no problem. We’ll get you started with training and get you in for testing a little later.”

Because the hire was out-of-state, the company made additional arrangements–paid for hotel stay for the week, and also provided him a food allowance for each meal, each day. Four days into paid training and orientation, the company decided he needed to get in for drug testing before any more time passed. The hire had already accrued over 30 hours of non-billable time. So the hire goes to the designated drug testing center, pees in the cup, and continues with training.

It takes approximately 2 days for results to come back. On the day the results are supposed to come in, the hire asks to sit down with the manager of the department.

Interviewer: “I just wanted to give you a heads up that my drug test is going to come back positive.”
Manager: “Okay. Well what’s it coming back positive for? There are some things that carry leniency, such as certain prescription medicines, or even the amount in your system. If you were around someone who, say was smoking marijuana, you would have traces show up on the drug test, but that exposure would show up in trace amounts and we could excuse that.”
Interviewer: “Okay.. I have been doing meth ever since I’ve been here.”
Manager: “What?”
Interviewer: “Well, I had fake pee in my back pocket when I went into the drug test place, but I just forgot to use it.”
Manager: “I don’t think this is going to work out.”

DENTAL PLAN WITH MY BENEFITS?

A soils technician travels to the jobsite for the day’s work. Seeing that the jobsite activities were at a null for a while, he became bored. He perused the site and found a hole in the ground. Curious about this hole he discovered, he wondered just how deep the hole was. Looking around the site for something to test this unknown depth, he found a metal pipe of sort and brought it back to the hole. Unsure of the parameters involved and the depth he was dealing with, he inserted the tip of the pipe into the hole. Then with great force, bending over the hole, he threw down the pipe to strike the bottom of the hole. The hole, however, was not very deep. The metal object ricocheted off the bottom and with equal force traveled back out of the hole.

He immediately left the site and went in for emergency dental care to replace his now missing tooth. Sometime after the incident, frustrated with his current standings within the company, he boasted to several co-workers that if he didn’t get promoted to management in six months, he would quit.

GANGSTA INSPECTA

A certain ACI technician who will remain forever unnamed had been working on a very high-profile jobsite for the past 2 years. This high profile jobsite also happened to be right in the middle of a high-traffic public area where many pedestrians and onlookers pass by daily.

This technician’s duties included sampling and testing concrete, keeping record of the mix designs placed into the structure, and assisting field and laboratory personnel in whatever means necessary to improve field services. One certain day he was asked to pick up concrete cylinder samples and take them back to the laboratory to be logged in and cured. Now this technician had a habit of wearing baggy pants with a waistline several sizes too big. This particular day was no different from another, and he was sagging his pants on the jobsite.

He grabbed the concrete cylinders he was asked to pick up and proceeded to take them back to the lab. He was walking through the jobsite where dozens of construction workers stood by watching. His pants continued to sag as he was walking, so much so that they fell way below his waste and caused him to trip and fall. Falling on a construction site with concrete cylinders is nothing to make light of. He was taken to the hospital just moments afterward.

With each new project come the requisite plans and specifications detailing the construction and specifying the quality of the construction materials and methods. Most often, the specifications devote an entire section to the quality control aspect of the project.

Responsibilities, referenced codes and standards, and quality control functions generally comprise these sections. Additionally, the structural notes on the plans will detail quality control activities in conjunction with the project specifications.

While these documents have not changed dramatically, the method by which the quality control system is employed has. Traditionally, the owner’s representative such as an architect, engineer or construction manager has been tasked with selecting the quality control organization and providing oversight and the point of contact. Codes such as the International Building Code require the owner or architect or engineer of record to employ and direct testing and inspection. Directly linking the quality control to the owner works well in serving the interest of the owner, viz., a quality constructed project.

Of late, though, and at an alarming rate, the quality control function has begun to fall under the contractor’s duties. The reasons for the transition are simple and in at least one way, government owned projects have promoted this transition.

The Shift

Customarily, owner’s representatives hired quality control as part of their overall service to the project or they provided the owner with oversight of the quality control since they are better qualified than most owners. As market forces have forsaken much of the qualifications based selection approach, many owners’ representatives removed the quality control function from their service package to reduce fees. Continuing on this path, owners’ representatives have begun to remove themselves from the oversight function. If not paid to provide the service, why take on the task? To improve their role-to-fee ratio, many have washed their hands entirely of quality control and simply tasked the contractor with providing quality control.

Compounding this new approach to quality control delivery has been the approach promulgated by many federal and state agencies – Quality Control/Quality Assurance often termed Contractor Quality Control (CQC). This approach stems from the supposition that the party most intimate with the construction is best suited to infuse quality. Many state departments of transportation and the federal agencies have used a QC/QA specification to control their projects.

The Quality Control/Quality Assurance system is a statistically based program which compares test results from random samples and determines the probability that the sample results stem from the same population. In simpler terms, the contractor’s test results are verified by the Quality Assurance program validating the quality of the constructed item and authorizing payment. If variances occur between the contractor’s sampling and testing program and that of the QA program, construction stops until the differences can be ironed out. The program works by providing the owner with near continuous quality monitoring (contractor sampling and testing) with objective validation (quality assurance sampling and testing).

As this approach shifted into the building market, one key component has been left behind. The Quality Assurance aspect of the system has been removed leaving only the contractor quality control intact.

Quality Has a Price

The need for quality control in the low bid system is obvious. The two components, low bid and quality control, serve the owner by focusing on cost without sacrificing value. (The degree to which this system works may be another discussion all together.) The two forces approach the project from different directions each contributing to project success

Combining these unique features is at best a corruption of the construction process. The contractors, now charged with providing quality control, are quality contractors – just ask them. As with all other components to the low bid system, the quality control becomes a bid item. Quality control, by definition, cannot be tied to bidding economy. With contractors in charge, quality control is most often relegated to an after thought. Sampling, testing and inspection are conducted at that frequency which results in the lowest cost. Minimum sampling and testing frequencies were developed by designers as guidelines and not benchmarks.

Traditionally, the owner’s representative worked with the quality control firm as a partner counting on their expertise to assist in the implementation of the quality control program. More often this partnering is now lost with the contractor implementing a hierarchical project structure in which the quality control firm is one of many subcontractors. The difference is that the cost associated with this subcontractor’s work can be reduced as the project progresses by diminishing the number of samples, tests and inspections.

Real world examples include sampling the first two loads of concrete on a 100 c.y. placement because specifications call for a minimum of 1 sample per 50 c.y. The remaining loads go unattended. Needless to say, the backbone of QC/QA – random sampling and statistical evaluation – is lost. The QA component used in QC/QA systems forces the contractor’s quality control to be more substantive since QA samples are procured randomly and the results compared to verify sample populations. These approaches are rationally based upon acceptable levels of risk and confidence, not lowest fee.

If one objectively reviews this method of delivery for quality control services, one must ask the question: Is the low bid contractor the party best suited to execute a quality, quality control program? If framed to an educated owner, this question has the most obvious answer. Too many owner representatives shirk their overall responsibilities of educating the owner and providing for a quality project. This abbreviated approach to project delivery could be called Owner At Risk, leaving the project up a creek with out a paddle.

Quality has been the benchmark of American enterprise for decades. American business has a rich tradition of producing premium commodities and offering the finest services. With mounting global market pressures and evolving cultural standards, the goal of quality has been relinquished and the principle of value has been subverted.

These far-reaching effects permeate most of American business, including consulting engineering.

The new technological age demands instant results and expediency is the new god. Never before has the time value of money been so central to the construction process. The result has been new processes described by such terms as design/build and fast track. Projects are planned, designed and built inside a time-and-money pressure cooker. Owner representatives, consultants and contractors alike acquiesce to these stresses to keep their respective businesses afloat and/or competitive. Emphasis is shifted from the due proportions of quality, timeliness and economy to a focus of “quick and cheap.”

With this shift of emphasis, ignorance emerges in the form of equivalent quality/value. Quick and cheap assumes that the quality will be equal among the bidding participants: that is what RFPs and project plan and specifications control. The fallacy is in the belief that regardless of who performs the work, the quality of the design or construction will be the same. Quality cannot be specified into a project.

This concept of “equal quality at cheapest price” eviscerates the fundamental notion of value. At its core, value merges quality and cost to establish an overall worth. In real terms, utility, maintenance costs, service life and capital dollars should factor into a project’s overall value. To expect among bidding participants consistent quality with variable costs is fodder. The true value of a design certainly depends upon more than up front costs. The value or worth is defined by the quality in conjunction with the cost.

Conceptual to Practical

An example of value in geotechnical engineering follows. A given project requires a geotechnical investigation. The owner develops an RFP to which two firms, A and B, respond.

Firm A considers the available information pertaining to the site and develops a scope including: the field investigation with adequate boring density, laboratory testing program based upon anticipated conditions, ample time for engineering analysis and report preparation, a contingency to address unknowns. The proposal may also include time to confer with the owner to develop an understanding of the factors unique to this specific project and time to review design documents to verify adherence to geotechnical recommendations.

Firm B develops a proposal based upon 1 or 2 shallow test pits or borings. Very little time is allotted to project discussion or document review. The lab program proposed is bare bones and only the time allowed for analysis is comparable to Firm A’s proposal.

The price differential between these two proposals will be significant. But the question is will the value be different? Chances are that the investigation proposed by Firm A may exceed that of Firm B by 50 to 100%. Firm B, though, must use a more conservative approach to the engineering for the project since by comparison, less is known about the project and the site. Furthermore, if subterranean anomalies exist at the site, Firm B stands a far lesser chance of discovering them. In both cases, construction costs will be inflated typically by orders of magnitude greater than the savings realized by utilizing Firm B’s approach. Anomalies discovered by an already mobilized contractor become instantly expensive.

The quick and cheap method of geotechnical engineering proves insufficient as a foundation for quality service from which project value may be realized. Education and realization of the true definition of value should be the primary focus of the engineering community as we enter the new millennium.