Concrete Perspective June 2018

Internal News

BIBM held its annual General Assembly on 11-12 June in Vienna, Austria. Austrian Member Association, VÖB hosted the meeting and kindly organised an exhibition tour and a dinner the day preceding the meeting.

The programme started with an exhibition called SOS Brutalism that presented buildings from the trend “brutalism” all over the world and pointed out their particularities. The exhibition was followed by a summer night outside dinner at “Schreiberhaus” which is a typical Viennese wine Restaurant.

The following day the meeting took place with some guest presentation and an interactive survey concerning the review of the Strategic Exercise.

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Construction Sector 

  • The Concrete Initiative held an internal Marketers Workshop on 6 June in Oslo, Norway. The meeting offered a platform to see best examples of concrete promotion and how to meet challenges.

The summary of the event can be found here. Pictures ad presentations are available following this link.

  • On Thursday 7 June 2018, the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) President, Mr Vincent Laflèche, together with Construction Products Europe President, Dr Heimo Scheuch, CEO of Wienerberger AG, co-signed the Statement of Achievement of the Smart CE Marking CEN Workshop Agreement.

The full version of this press release can be found on the CEN-CENELEC website.

The report argues that new procurement models, sustained funding for R&D and digital transformation could drive faster-than-expected change in the sector.

Cement is responsible for roughly 8% of global CO2 emissions and is used to make concrete – one of the most consumed substances in the world. With global cement production projected to increase to over five billion tonnes by 2050, cement is expected to play a key role in the expansion of the built environment particularly in developing countries.

Even though progress is made, reducing cement sector emissions is more challenging than it is for other sectors. More than 50% of emissions are inherently linked to the cement production process. Emissions cannot be reduced simply by changing fuels or increasing the efficiency of plants and instead require the transformation of cement itself either by blending it with alternative materials or by developing novel low-carbon cements.

The report finds that development and deployment of low carbon cements is happening too slowly. There has been lots of R&D, particularly in China, but only some low carbon cements have reached commercialization while none have reached widespread application.

Today, new types of cement are rarely as cheap as traditional cement, and they face a number of barriers. The report also identifies new opportunities that can help to eliminate these barriers, such as digitalisation, new procurement rules etc.

The paper concludes that if we want to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement, the cement and concrete sector needs to act now.

Live from the European Union

Austria takes over the rotating presidency of the Council

As of July 1, Austria will be the president of the Council of the EU for the next six months, last member of the trio programme next to Estonia and Bulgaria.

Main priorities of the presidency will be to fight against illegal immigration, secure competitiveness through digitalization and the neighbourhood policy.

Austria wants to strengthen the industrial policy and are closely working together with #Industry4Europe campaign (of which BIBM a signatory).

Representative of the Austrian Presidency were present at the last plenary meeting of the Industry4Europe group and talked more about the priorities in terms of competitiveness.

Priorities include strengthening the EU’s industrial policy, Digitalisation and digital single market, Artificial intelligence and robotics and the necessity of skills.

The website of the presidency can be found here where you can learn more about their programme for the next six month.

MEPs calls for better implantation of Public Procurement directive

The European Parliament’s Internal Market Committee initiated and recently adopted an own-initiative report on Public Procurement. The key issues pinpointed in the documents are the excessive use of the lowest price as the primary award criterion and the need to support SMEs’ participation in tenders.

Internal Market MEPs are deeply disappointed by the pace at which many member states have transposed the 2014 public procurement directives and by the many delays, urging them to swiftly complete the transposition without any further delay.

They ask the European Commission to better and more clearly organise the guides and other tools developed to help member states with the implementation of the public procurement framework in a more accessible and user-friendly way.

The report will be voted in plenary in September.

For reading the whole article, please follow this link.

National Award Project

Precast structure in shopping center wins TEKLA award in Lloret De Mar, Spain[1]

Category Commercial Projects

Year 2018

Country Spain

Organization ROANSA

Author ERNEST TONDO

Co-authors XEVI SAUQUET

Client GESDIP

Place of construction LLORET

This is an accomplishment of the precast structure, perimeter walls, precast stairs and some middle walls for the shopping centre formed by parking of 3 floors and commercial building located in Lloret de Mar. The building was complemented by metal structure and wooden deck. This project contains the modelling of the structure, the rebar of the elements, the metallic accessories for the strut of the precast elements, the production sheets and the programming of the assembly with the “tool sequence”.

[1] https://construsoftbimawards.com/estrucutrua-prefabricada-de-hormigon-en-centro-comercial/

Pictures: https://construsoftbimawards.com/estrucutrua-prefabricada-de-hormigon-en-centro-comercial/ ​​​​​​​

News in brief

Agenda

JULY

3 July 2018

CPE Sustainability Working Group

Brussels, Belgium

10-11 July 2018

EU’s vision for a modern, clean economy – Stakeholder event

Brussels, Belgium

AUGUST

30 August 2018

CPE Sustainability Assessment WG

Brussels, Belgium

SEPTEMBER

3 September 2018

Concrete Initiative AhG

Brussels, Belgium

4 September 2018

TF Eurocode 2

Brussels, Belgium

5 September 2018

CPE – CPR working group

Brussels, Belgium

6 September 2018

NEPSI Employers

Brussels, Belgium

24-25 September 2018

ECO-Binder GA

Lyon, France

26 September 2018

CEN/TC 229 WG1 and WG 4

Brussels, Belgium

To the Newsletter of Construction Products Europe please follow this link.

To read the Newsletter of CEMBUREAU, please follow this link. You can also subscribe directly following this link http://www.cembureau.eu/newsletter/subscriptions.

To read the Quarterly Newsletter of The Concrete Initiative, please follow this link.

List of Acronyms:

CPE – Construction Product Europe

CSC – Concrete Sustainability Council

DG GROW – Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs

ECP – European Concrete Platform

EMA – European Masonry Alliance

IPHA – International Pre-stressed Hollowcore Association

TF – Task Force