EP #156: Is Rebar Killing Your Concrete Schedule?

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ON THIS EPISODE OF THE CONCRETE LOGIC PODCAST
Everyone wants concrete work done faster.
But what if one of the biggest schedule killers is not the pour, the weather, or the labor shortage?
What if it starts with the reinforcement choice?
In this episode, Seth talks with TJ Lambert of Forta about how reinforcement decisions affect labor, sequencing, inspections, procurement, finishing, mix design, carbon reporting, and overall project speed.
They discuss where fiber-reinforced concrete fits, where it does not, and why engineers, producers, and contractors need to think beyond “replace the bar and move on.”
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
- Why reinforcement choices can slow a concrete project down before the first truck shows up
- How fibers can reduce labor, congestion, inspection steps, and field coordination
- The difference between microfibers, macro synthetic fibers, and steel fibers
- Where fiber reinforcement makes sense, and where traditional rebar still belongs
- How concrete producers handle fiber dosing at the plant or into the truck
- Why fiber-reinforced concrete can help contractors place more mud faster
- How EPDs, LCAs, GWP targets, and Buy America requirements are showing up in reinforcement decisions
- Why finishing fiber-reinforced slabs still depends on timing, mix design, vibration, and field conditions
- How Type IL cement may affect finishing timing, saw cutting, paste, and surface performance
- What engineers need to know about ACI 544, ACI 360, ACI 330, and ACI 318 when considering fiber designs
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction: Can reinforcement choices kill your schedule?
04:02 What Forta does and how fiber-reinforced concrete fits
05:01 Why reinforcement choices affect schedule more than people realize
08:42 What fibers look like in the field
11:57 Matching fiber type to the right concrete application
13:26 What fiber use means for concrete producers
16:45 Fiber loading, truck mixing, and added time at the plant
17:17 How much time can contractors save by eliminating bar placement?
19:47 EPDs, GWP, and carbon reduction with fiber reinforcement
22:13 Why finishers struggle with some fiber-reinforced slabs
26:43 Type IL cement, paste, timing, and fiber finishing concerns
30:05 Fly ash, slag, mix design complexity, and owner expectations
31:54 What engineers need to understand before using fibers
35:03 TJ’s main takeaway: Start with design, not just substitution
37:06 How to contact TJ Lambert
GUEST INFO
TJ Lambert
Sales Engineering Manager, Forta / Helix Steel
Profile: https://www.concretelogicpodcast.com/guests/tj-lambert/
Forta website:
https://fortacorp.com
Helix Steel website:
https://helixsteel.com
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If you want to better understand mixes, specs, reinforcement, troubleshooting, field problems, and how to make better calls on real projects, check it out.
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CREDITS
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Music by Mike Dunton: https://www.mdunton.com/
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Seth Tandett (00:01.398)
And welcome to another episode of the Concrete Logic podcast. And today I have TJ Lambert with Forta. He's a sales engineering manager for them. And we're going to talk today about... What are we going to talk about today, TJ? I had it here. here we go. I got it. I got it now. So as, you know, as the industry is right now, everybody wants their...
TJ Lambert (00:19.806)
Yeah, I think that... Okay.
Seth Tandett (00:29.688)
concrete faster, but if one of the biggest schedule killers on your job isn't the poor, is not the weather or the labor shortage, but wonder if it's about what you selected as reinforcement. Maybe that kills your schedule from day one. So today we're going to talk about how your reinforcement choices affect construction speed, labor.
sequencing, inspections, and overall project flow and why this topic deserves a lot more attention than it usually gets. So TJ is going to help us out with that today. But before we get started, as always, I want to remind you how you can support the show. First off, I hadn't been doing a very good job the last a bunch of episodes on telling you or asking you how you can support the show as far as the easiest thing for you to do.
is if you enjoy the show or you get something out of the show is share it with a colleague or a co-worker. You know, it spread the word about the podcast. It's definitely got a lot of folks listening to it. And I assume if you're listening to this, you know other folks in the industry. So please share it with folks. The next way you can help me out is if you go to www.concretelogicpodcast.com
On the home page, there's a couple ways to get a hold of me. The first way is at the top, there's a menu at the top. And at the top, there's one of the selections that says Ask Seth. If you click on that, it opens up an email form and you can fill that out. And what I'm looking for on that is topic or guest suggestions. So reach out and tell me what you want to learn about.
who you want to hear on the episode. And I'll make sure to chase that down for you. And then there's another way you can get ahold of me in the bottom right hand corner. There's a little microphone icon on the same homepage. You click on that. You can leave me a voicemail if you prefer to do it that way. topic or guest suggestions that will help me out. And then the next thing you can do is on the same homepage, there's a donate button in the upper right hand corner and
Seth Tandett (02:51.085)
What what I'm looking for there is any donation amount and the way you can think about is Put out the podcast put out these episodes and if you learn something and it's worth something to you Just send that value back. I don't know if that's a dollar at five dollars five hundred dollars However much it is to you you put it in there and it shoots back sports podcast keeps me from putting Advertisements
within the podcast because it does cost money to run a podcast, believe it or not. It's not free. And then the next way, if you're looking for like lunch and learns or professional development hours and you enjoy the topics on the show, check out ConcreteLogicAcademy.com that will have the courses and things and some other things for you in there. So go check that out. But I'm done. I'm done selling today.
TJ Lambert (03:34.131)
I mean
Seth Tandett (03:46.69)
TJ, we're going to get right in the topic at hand. So TJ, you're you're with, you're with Florida. Do you want to give people a little quick background on what Florida is? So they're like, we really need to listen to TJ. He knows what he's talking about.
TJ Lambert (04:02.634)
Yeah, I know I appreciate you me on Seth and for those of who don't know, Florida, we are, what mainly we do is, I like to say engineering, but realistically it's we have fibers. We have microsynthetic fibers, we have macrosynthetic fibers and we have steel fibers.
You know, we, we work on all the engineering side of it. And then we have people in the field who come in and help deliver on what our engineer designs are for those fibers. our steel fibers is called the Helix steel product, twisted steel fiber. then our Fortifero is the bundled macrosynthetic. Those are probably our two mainstays. So yeah, we do a lot of fiber reinforced concrete. And I think this goes great with the topic about, how maybe removing some of
that rebar in different applications will help with the time schedule and health and safety and everything.
Seth Tandett (05:01.099)
Yeah, that's a perfect segue into my first question. So why do reinforcement choices affect schedule more than most people realize?
TJ Lambert (05:08.978)
Yeah, and we see this a lot when you're looking at a design, right? You see that they put down a mesh or some sort of reinforcement. And I think a lot of people feel that a slab on grade is the only place you can utilize a fiber reinforced concrete. And that's not always the case. I mean, we do everything from a slab on metal deck to pavements. We even have the ability to replace steel in certain foundational elements. So pad foundation.
duct banks, different structural elements, mat slabs and everything.
where it really hurts a lot of these jobs is not just the time it takes to actually tie the reinforcement and the labor to tie the reinforcement, but procurement as well. We're seeing shortages in procurement at bar and you're needing to find a solution to help. I know one of the big driving forces out there as data centers right now, and they're trying to put these things up faster than we even know what to do with. So the time is critical.
But more important when it comes down to what the actual reinforcement just replacing the reinforcement is are we being as efficient with the design that we can be for these different elements, right? A lot of times, know, and coming from like an engineer mindset like I have, we go in and we design something and a lot of times that design may be, you know, either slightly over reinforced or, you know, the design comes out with number four.
is at 15 and a half, right? Well, how many times you see them placing 15 and a half? So we rounded up to fours at 12. So I think there's a lot of variation in what we do from a design and a placement and how, you know, utilizing something like a fiber can come in and kind of clear that schedule up a lot, meaning that the time it takes to lay bar, the safety aspect of it, right? You don't have any bar. Your inspection actually happens when...
TJ Lambert (07:17.202)
the reinforcement, helix or the ferro or whatever synthetic or steel fiber you're using at that time gets put into the concrete, which is usually the day of the placement. So from a time scheduling standpoint, it really increases it. And what it's, it's really hard to say in a spreadsheet how much savings you're actually gonna get until
you use it on a real project, right? And I think most people out there have probably used some sort of fiber on a project, but there's more than just your standard flat work. Like I said earlier, you know, we're using in residential basement walls, you know, wall foundations for mixed use buildings, pad foundations on big oil and gas facilities. So there's a lot of different things that will help kind of speed those schedules up and maybe
make the design more efficient than it even was because we can get down to the nitty-gritty with a fiber.
You can't always do that with rebar, right? Rebar is really good at what it does. There's no question about it. But getting as efficient as possible and increasing the speed and the time and everything that's involved from that end. I think utilizing an alternative material like a fiber is going to be really important for the future of what we're trying to do out there.
Seth Tandett (08:42.699)
Yeah. Let's talk about what it looks like in the field. can you describe most of, well, people watch this on YouTube, so they can see if you want to use your hands and stuff. But a lot of people listen to the show. Can you describe the fibers, what they look like? Let's start with that.
TJ Lambert (09:03.816)
Yeah, I mean, there's there's all different types and sizes of fibers, right? mean,
For ours specifically, have the microfibers, the microsynthetic fiber is mainly for what I like to call surface cracking, plastic shrinkage, for those of who are familiar with it. It's just talking about providing enough material at the surface of the concrete so that as the concrete cures on the surface level, it's able to hold those cracks nice and tight, almost not visible to the eye if you're standing there.
And then you go into like a macrosynthetic, right, which is a little bit bigger. It's longer. It's anywhere from an inch and a half to two and a quarter, right? So it can vary in size. Material can vary, know, polypropylene, you know, sometimes they have, you know, different types of materials that it actually can be. And they come in either bundles or they're just flat, different shapes. And I think it's important to understand that not all the products are created equal.
I mean the different fibers can do different things. And then you get on the steel side and I think, know, ours is a twisted almost like a screw style. But then there's other hooked ended products out there. There's straight steel fibers. So each one of them kind of has its place but the performance is very different when it comes down to it.
And again, I truly promote the engineering behind the products, right? The product should all have some sort of third party evaluation report to back it. You know, whether it's testing, ICC report, UES, IATMO evaluation report. You got to have that in the engineering to back what you're trying to do with those products out there. But the types of products that are out there, they can be different sizes, right?
TJ Lambert (11:01.529)
inch long, two inches long, inch and half, two and a quarter, especially on the steel and the macrosynthetic side.
even the geometry of like, especially steel fibers important where like a rectangular cross-sectional shape of the end of a steel fiber versus a circular, the rigid and the corners of that are going to lock into the concrete better than maybe something that's circular would, right? And the idea is you want something that's going to lock into those, that concrete better.
stiffness within the macrosynthetics is important. You want it stiff but not too stiff to the point where it's going to almost lock up on you. You want some flexibility so that as that macrosynthetics is going to hold and it's going to pull apart and it's going to almost like flex enough that's going to allow that concrete to move but not enough to where it's actually going to pull apart. So there's different elements to the actual fibers themselves.
Seth Tandett (11:57.996)
Yeah, and then each, I assume each type of fiber has a different application, right? So they don't all do the same thing. The reason you have different fibers is for different reasons. So you hit a little bit on the shrinkage cracking. There's, there's, on the application, that's how you determine which fiber you want to use.
TJ Lambert (12:14.004)
Yeah.
TJ Lambert (12:21.15)
Yeah, your more structural applications are always going to come in for a steel fiber, historically, especially, you know, for our steel fiber, we're one of the few, if not the only ones that is able to do like a structural replacement for a footing. You know, we've done wall footings and column footings for big tilt warehouses and different applications like that. But even macrosynthetics, mean, they do a lot, they carry a lot of strength in a test that's called an ASTM 1609 beam test. They can carry a lot of
what we call residual strength. So they can carry a lot of post-crack capacity, right? The load that's going across that crack. So you have your macros that perform very, very well in those tests.
and some macros that perform well, they all have their place and types there. But yeah, your macros are going to be more your flat work, right? Great for pavements, great for interior slabs. You're still going to be the more structural based applications. And then obviously you touch on the micros being plastic shrinkage applications.
Seth Tandett (13:26.923)
Yeah. So, know, the big one, a good advantage of the fibers is you either reduce or even eliminate traditional rebar reinforcement is kind of one of the selling points. But let's talk about what does that look like on the supplier side as far as the concrete producer, sorry, concrete producers.
TJ Lambert (13:56.829)
Mm-hmm.
Seth Tandett (13:57.134)
What additional steps or labor that they have to take on for us to use fibers?
TJ Lambert (14:08.842)
Yeah, no, that's a good point. mean, a lot of the concrete producers out there, you know, we do take away the bar, right, which helps.
everybody on site obviously, but then you start adding fibers to a truck or into a mix and now that adds a little bit more labor, right? But a lot of what we do from the fiber size try to optimize that process when you get into adding the fibers into the mix. And one of the ways we do that is with our macrosynthetic or our synthetics, we have a dissolvable bag that happens. So the minute that that bag hits water, it dissolves the fiber.
disperse it's mixed into the drum right post loaded after all the concrete is already mixing in the drum itself so usually it's a conveyor bags these dissolvable bags on the conveyor goes up falls in bag you know essentially disappears right and then all the fibers disperse
So we try to keep it as easy as possible for these guys, for the people actually loading the fibers into the trucks. that includes, you know, we do a range of different bag sizes as well, right? So, so a typical macro dosage is probably somewhere between three pounds per cubic yard and seven and a half pounds per cubic yard. So we really try and optimize the bags, right? 10 yard load. You got a five pound dosage, right? You know, 10, five pound bags and be on your way.
you know, make it easy.
TJ Lambert (15:45.215)
for the people who are doing this to try and all that labor and everything that we took away on the job site, we don't want to add it back. So we try to keep that process as simple as possible, keep the mixing as simple as possible. And with a lot of steel products, us specifically, it's hard to put steel into a bag. You got a lot high carbon steel, they're pretty pointy, right? So ripping through a bag is always a possibility.
case it's somewhere, something like a brown box, right? And in the same concept, instead of just throwing a bag onto a conveyor, it's just dumping that box onto a conveyor, right? So we get it down to, mean, if you want to be very specific, our goal is depending on dosage. And again, for the steel fiber, it's going to be between nine and probably 30 pounds per cubic yard. We try to keep it somewhere, you know, 45 pound boxes, nine pounds would be too
Seth Tandett (16:38.017)
Wow.
TJ Lambert (16:45.068)
45 pound boxes on a 10 yard load. So empty those two boxes, shake them onto a conveyor, let it fall in, mix the drum, right? There's some rotations that have to happen. Usually you're looking for 100 to 200 rotations after the fibers hit the concrete on the inside. But, you know, trying to keep it as simple as possible. And on those lower dosages that we use, we try to keep it, know, between one to two minutes per load. That's what you're trying to accomplish. On the higher ends, you're four minutes, five minutes.
maybe is kind of what you're looking for. So you're not adding a significant amount of time and labor. You usually have, you know, a singular person at the end. Just add in fiber and what that saves is, I've always liked this stat because we got it from a contractor for a large fulfillment warehouse that we did back in 2018. He had number three bars at 16 on a six inch slab.
And he said for tying bar, was like every 10,000 to 20,000 square feet was roughly about a day of time saved.
is kind of how he equated it. And that was just always something that stuck in my mind, right? So on a million square foot warehouse, if you can save a day every 20,000 square feet or even if it's 30,000 square feet, that's a lot of time saved when you go back on it. Even if, because you're not decreasing the amount of concrete, if anything, these contractors are getting up and going farther. When I don't have bar, I can...
I can dump faster, right? I can direct discharge. I'm not having to have a pump in here or some poor person who's got to have a hook. If you've ever seen those guys with the hooks trying to pull like a mesh up or like cage bar up as the mud's hitting the ground there.
Seth Tandett (18:37.355)
Yeah, if they make the effort to do it.
TJ Lambert (18:39.114)
Or you got people, you're driving on the mat of bar and you got somebody as they're backing up trying to chair it as fast as they can, right, before the concrete hits it. So direct discharging, know, if you can increase your pour from a 30,000 square foot pour with bar to a 40,000 square foot with fiber. Talk about, you know,
deliverables, right? Your time, you know, it's important. And a lot of these guys have, you know, if, if you don't hit your deadline, you owe me X amount of dollars per day after. so I think that's, that's an important part. That's kind of overlooked is you can go farther because instead of having to pump or tele belt or whatever the case is, I can put five trucks, discharge. at one time you get me, you know, sometimes I've seen them up it's from one to two laser screeds that are working in there.
really going to town just trying to put down more mud to get out of this building.
Seth Tandett (19:39.723)
Yeah.
Seth Tandett (19:47.522)
Yeah, I was going to ask you too, by the time this episode comes out, we've released our, did an episode about the EPDs. that come up as far as a comparison to traditional rebar? How does, how does fibers, I guess, has that been a choice because of there's a global warm, a GWP that
TJ Lambert (19:56.04)
Mm-hmm.
Seth Tandett (20:13.345)
folks want to hit on a particular job has that come up on any of your projects yet?
TJ Lambert (20:19.098)
Yeah, I mean, we see that a lot. So we do a lot of work in like the energy sector as well as the mission critical data centers. And I think that's a big part of where the GWPs and the carbon reduction comes into play. All of our products do have an EPD.
All of our products have an LCA as well, Life Cycle Analysis. So we actually run carbon reduction calcs for our clients who ask for it. And what you typically see is, depending on what the original design is, know, a single mat of number threes versus a double mat of number fives is a very different carbon, you know, calculation. But you're typically anywhere from 20 to 60 % carbon reduction based on the, you know, the
to fiber conversion right especially with a macrosynthetic it's very it's a very
You're talking steel to essentially a plastic, right? So the steel takes a lot more energy to actually manufacture. So the macrosynthetic is a great option for looking at something that's lower carbon than what an original design is. And then another factor about that is where is the product coming from, right? You know, our manufacturing is located, we got Michigan and we got Pennsylvania for our two manufacturing, know, something where maybe coming from overseas or coming
from a different location, it affects how much carbon you're actually utilizing. in the case of some of our power jobs that are federally funded, you're looking at, you know, by America. That comes into it too. So all that plays a role into the actual total carbon reduction and environmental sustainability that we're providing.
Seth Tandett (22:13.721)
I think we were talking before we hit record, Florida was on episode 22 and one of the things we talked about back then and I still hear today that was back in 2022, so over four years ago, was finishers having difficulty finishing slabs that have the fiber in it. What additional
like education, you think needs to be out there about fibers and that effort that needs to be made or maybe it's blown out of proportion as far as finishing with fibers in the mix?
TJ Lambert (22:55.92)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a that's always the you get all ends of the spectrum, right? When, you know, I've traveled across not just the country, but the world watching different people finish, finish fibers. And I think the big the big thing is making sure, you know, in all finishing and not just fibers, but making sure that conditions are good for finishing.
I think that's a key part of it. But I think one of the nice things, because I talked about earlier with the synthetic, the rigid fibers versus like a more flex that has something more flex or not as rigid fiber, is the non as rigid, not as rigid fiber, similar to like the one we have, it allows you to work it in a little bit more. The more rigidity, right, the harder it is to work them into the concrete itself.
point about it is, know, our fibers are gray, the synthetic side are gray, so a lot of times it blends in very nicely with the concrete where if it's white or a different color it sometimes sticks out a little bit. But I think it's all about making sure you have the right conditions, it's the right mix, right? As you start to get into the higher synthetic dosages you start to to worry about maybe not necessarily losing water, but you need to make sure you have the optimal amount of water or paint.
right, to work that higher dosage of a synthetic into the concrete and that's all something, you know, our engineering team we like to do like a full mix review designs and everything to make sure that your dosage is gonna finish the way you want it to, right, because we all understand, you know, an owner walks a slab that doesn't look good, right, and
there's a lot of people very unhappy. So it's all about getting together beforehand, making sure we have the right tools out there, you know, making sure we the right mix design and optimal finishing. And that's for our synthetic. And then for our steel fibers, I always say that you got to have some form of vibration. You know, and typically you see like a laser screen into a bowl float. with steel fibers, a lot of it comes into timing.
TJ Lambert (25:10.418)
meaning that if you wait a little bit longer and you start to see aggregates on the surface, you're going to see steel fibers on the surface. The steel fibers are going to move like the aggregates move. Most steel fibers are more dense than the creamer paste.
Therefore, as they start working and vibrating it down and the aggregate starts to settle underneath that paste layer that we want on the surface, that's where the steel fibers or the helix will as well.
If you over vibrate and you get segregation where aggregates are at the very, bottom and more paces at the top, you're going to get a lot of steel fibers down towards the bottom as well. So it's just about timing like you would with a normal slab. And then same thing as you start to saw cut, right? Timing you get, you hit a saw cut right and some of the aggregate starts to pop out on there. You're probably going to get steel fibers that pop out as well. That's something you don't necessarily have to worry about with synthetics because
Seth Tandett (26:07.789)
Mm-hmm.
TJ Lambert (26:10.7)
of they're not as stiff as the steel fibers are. You can usually can cut right through there, but the steel fibers are high strength steel typically, meaning that you're going to saw cut right through most synthetics and not rip them up with some of the steel. If it's not a good sharp blade, if skid plate isn't on, you know, it's not a newer skid plate, it's going to start maybe ripping them up. So it's just making sure that we're on the same page and we relay all that information.
from the beginning.
Seth Tandett (26:43.042)
Gotcha. Speaking of mix design, was going to ask you, as far as I'm trying to not piss a whole lot of people off that are listening to this show, talk about Type 1L cement. As far as it having less paste, have you seen any difficulties with Type 1L mixes? Because you mentioning paste is kind of key to using the fibers.
Has that been a challenge for the fiber folks?
TJ Lambert (27:15.626)
I don't know if challenge is the right word. think it's been, well, let's say I think it's been a challenge for a lot of people and trying to understand exactly what the timing of 1L looks like, what type of water you're going to get, what's curing time look like. It's going to take me longer. It's going to be faster. How quickly do I need to jump on a slab? From our end, it hasn't changed too much to be completely honest with you.
I do know it does change when you start to change the timing of the finishing. That's where, you know, we have to work with them to make sure that, Hey, you still got to make sure you're hitting all your timing correctly with the fibers because of the potential issues I mentioned before, right?
If you don't have enough, you know, if you're not getting on it at a certain time and working the synthetics or working the steel fibers down, you could get more at the surface than what you typically had because of the different timing from like a one, two perspective and the different types of, and not as much paste that you're getting. I've seen a great example is, and I'll go into the steel fibers is that when
When I started here over six years ago or six years ago now, with the 1-2, you could wet cut within four or six hours after completing the finishing process. And you would blow right through those saw cuts. They would look clean. They would look crisp. They would look great. Now if you do that with 1L,
you start to see more of what we call raveling, whether it's aggregate raveling or raveling of the fibers itself to the point where, you know, they get done finishing at two o'clock on Tuesday and they're coming back Wednesday at six a.m. to saw cut. You know, so when you talk about the
TJ Lambert (29:17.098)
Trying to speed up the process, right? I mean, these are just things I've seen out in the field. You know, I don't have, and I want to be clear. don't have data, all this data lined up showing that it is the one L that that's happening. I'm just going from real life experience of what I've seen, you know, six years ago to today. Um, but I would think everything with the fiber, it's less about the mixing and, and, and more about the timing of, of everything shifts a little bit, depending on where you're at. Again, there's a lot.
things that affect the timing of finishing, but that would be what I've seen personally from the fiber side of it. And maybe adding in a little bit more like mid-range or something that's going to add a little bit more water to the mix.
Seth Tandett (30:05.484)
Yeah. Yeah, just I was wondering if there was anything when you said you review mix designs to see the, I assume, compatibility with your fibers. If that's, obviously we're all dealing with it. You don't have a lot of choice out there right now, but like if it's a fly ash mix, it's got fly ash in it or slag, are those things that you can work with or are those things you're like, we might have to change the
TJ Lambert (30:21.204)
Mm-mm. Yeah.
Seth Tandett (30:34.786)
the mix design itself for the fibers to work.
TJ Lambert (30:38.152)
Yeah, that's a really hard question because some of the owners that we deal with regularly like to see or are changing mixes for the sustainability aspect of it. But we have said, I've seen some designs that came come back that are 50 % replacement.
It's kind of, you know, we, we definitely put out some sort of, I don't, I don't want to say warning, but just, know, this is going to be a very tough slab to finish. Guys, you know, with or without fibers, I think it won't be a very easy slab to finish. but you add fibers and it just makes it's just another level of like complexity to finishing, to finishing a slab. And that's, that's the part of this where.
Seth Tandett (31:21.432)
Yeah.
TJ Lambert (31:28.904)
We, we, we tiptoe a fine line of making sure that we are happy and, and excited about what they're putting in there and it's going to work well. And, you know, but you also as a fiber, you got to be kind of self-aware of that. Maybe this is a mix we don't want to get into because of like the complexities of finishing it. and just making sure that the owner is going to get what they want at the end of the day.
Seth Tandett (31:54.095)
Okay, I think that's good for engineers out there that are considering to hear that. So I appreciate you, Sharon. Is there any, if an engineer's listening, I know there's engineers listening to this, if an engineer that's listening to this show wants to consider using fiber, is there any changes in code or anything they need to take a look at that maybe they don't do normally if they're used to using
traditional rebar reinforcement. Is there something they need to educate themselves on?
TJ Lambert (32:29.477)
Yeah, I mean there's a couple of different code paths that that we we can go down It sounds weird, but the main fiber reinforced code that you'll see used regularly is is ACI 544 This specifically for fiber reinforced concrete that's gonna give you We can go there it's referenced in ACI 360 which is slab on ground right? That's where we look at
providing replacement for slabs and then you have ACI 330 that allows you to use fibers, right? It's more of a plain concrete design meaning.
you're utilizing the plain concrete as your essentially the modest rupture for your concrete and you're providing bar for temperature shrinkage, right? Or crack control or something that you're utilizing maybe some load transfer across the saw cuts for. That's where we can come in with our products and help out from there. But there's also this pathway that we use with our steel fibers where we can actually go into, I believe it's,
Chapter 1.10 and ACI 318 where you can use an alternative means of methods section based on having third-party approved evaluation reports to provide more structural steel. So any sort of mat slab design, foundation-based design. Now there are limitations to what we can do. There are limitations to what that code allows, right? When you get into seismic, it's a whole different ballgame. But there is that code path that allows you to look at these different designs for
For fibers, know everything from 544 into 360 Those are gonna be more your flat work based approaches and then 318 is gonna be more of your actual structural Approaches that's usually more of the steel fiber route where you can look at actually taking out What we'll see steel that's in bending potentially so
TJ Lambert (34:30.122)
We use all three of those pathways every single day to provide, and then if you want to throw pavements in 330 there, we use all four of them technically daily to come up with our designs and to give the engineer calculations that make sense, that they can back with the code, with the testing, our product testing, and then put it in their plans of saying, hey, this is a code certified way of doing design.
and I'm comfortable with it.
Seth Tandett (35:03.918)
Cool. All right. If there's one thing you want everyone to remember from today's episode, what would that be,
TJ Lambert (35:13.04)
my issue is I talk so much and then I forget what I talk about. no, I think the, I think the big thing is, that, you know, fibers have a good, good place and they can help with, with a lot of things. but it is still important to make sure that the engineering behind it and, and, and that you're, coming up with the most efficient designs, you know, don't just accept that, you know,
taking out the bar and putting in this dose is just going to work. Get with your fiber supplier and actually work with them on coming up with a true
ground up design, right? Can we take the loads? Can we take the subgrade? Can we do everything in our power to make this the most efficient way possible while still meeting those codes we mentioned and still making, meeting it from a calculation standpoint? Let's think outside the box a little bit here to help with all the constraints that we're seeing out there from procurement to time to safety. And I think that's going to be the important thing moving forward is working with
people and seeing what the best strategy is. Because where I feel we do the best work is when we can sit down and talk and say, what do you guys actually want here? What are you looking for? What's the owner looking for? Can we come up with something that makes more sense than what's here? Or maybe it is as simple as just, hey, take out the bar, give us a dosage, we're going to call it a day. But I think having that conversation and talking about a more innovative
or creative way to do it while staying within the codes and the design is important. that's kind of, that's why I like what I do is because I get to have those conversations and still get to use the engineering side of my brain regularly.
Seth Tandett (37:06.55)
Yeah, that's great. Yeah, so I think that's perfect place to pause for today. If people want to learn more about what you're doing and learn about Florida, what's the best way to reach out to you, TJ?
TJ Lambert (37:20.242)
Yeah, yeah, you can. I think my LinkedIn's gonna be somewhere, somewhere in the...
in the notes section here, but you can call me, you can email me. My email is thomas.lambert at helixsteel.com. Feel free to text me, call me 734-864-6904. Happy to talk, happy just to talk general fibers with anybody out there. So feel free to reach out. Ford's website is out there as well. So take a look at what our products do and you can reach out through there as well.
Seth Tandett (37:53.455)
All right. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show today, And like you said, well, I'll have, if you didn't catch all that contact information, check out the show notes. I'll have a link to TJ's profile for y'all. But yeah, thanks for coming on the show, TJ. Yeah. And until next time, folks, let's keep it concrete.
TJ Lambert (38:08.303)
Thanks for having me, Seth. Appreciate it.



















