The following association news was provided to Structural Engineer by the organizations, and all articles have been abbreviated for length. To read the full articles and other association news, visit www.gostructural.com Associations with news relevant to the structural engineering community are encouraged to send press releases to Editor Jennifer Goupil, P.E., at jgoupil@stagnitomedia.com.

AASHTO committee outlines essential requirements for fabrication certification programs
CHICAGO —The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ (AASHTO) Subcommittee on Bridges and Structures, at its recent 2009 Annual Meeting, passed a resolution endorsing national technical institute certification programs as meeting the essential requirements for certification of personnel, production, and other quality processes related to fabricated structural bridge components. Technical institutes, according to the resolution, “develop consensus standards for their industries; sponsor relevant research; draw upon and energize established technical committees; publish technical training, design, and standards manuals; have staff positions held by engineers and subject experts; and qualify and monitor their third-party independent auditors who are trained to provide critical assessment and bring consistency to their work.”

Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) and the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) have jointly prepared a “Quality Systems White Paper” describing in detail the essential requirements highlighted in the AASHTO resolution.

PCI and AISC believe that, to be effective, a certification program must be part of a complete quality system with broad industry involvement, well-established collaborative relationships, and forums for information exchange.

Strategic Development Council focuses on BIM
FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. — The concrete industry’s Strategic Development Council (SDC) held its regular fall meeting with focus on Building Information Modeling (BIM), performance concrete, and self-consolidating concrete. During the meeting, BIM was discussed at length, and SDC secured a total of $75,000 from the Charles Pankow Foundation and the RMC Research Education Foundation. SDC will use these funds for strategic planning and development of roadmaps, with an immediate goal to provide interoperability standards, whose absence is an obstacle to wider use of BIM in the concrete industry.