EP #161: Should We Stop Designing Concrete for 100 Years?

Seth (00:01)And welcome to another episode of the Concrete Logic Podcast. And today I have concrete atom Adamus. Is that what that says? Concrete Adamus. Adamus.Concrete-Adamus (00:08)Concrete Adamus. It's kinda likekind of like Nostrid Damus. I'm just reading tea leaves here, buddy. See in the future.Seth (00:15)Uh-huh.I I gotcha. that's Dr. Belkowitz, if you don't recognize his voice, but he's back with us today. And he brought something to me that we're gonna talk about today is kind of rethinking a hundred year design life and maybe thinking about maybe shortening that up. because you know, in a hundred years it's hard to plan what we what will be going on.Concrete-Adamus (00:18)Mm-hmm.Seth (00:41)and for instance, today we're gonna talk about Hoboken, New Jersey, right? That's what we're gonna talk. Okay. So that's a good example today. So stick with us. We're gonna we're gonna talk about that today. before we get started, like I always do on every episode, remind you how you can support the show. a couple things you can do. First, if if you enjoyed the show, you learned something from it, please share it with a colleague or coworker. That helps out tremendously.Concrete-Adamus (00:45)yeah. Yeah.Seth (01:07)And then the next thing you can do is if you go to the concrete logic podcast dot com website, there's a couple ways you can get a hold of me. There's up at the top, there's a menu selection that says ask Seth. Click on that and one of those email forms pops up and you can fill that out. And what we're looking for is a topic or guest suggestion. 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He's a longtime supporter. b he goes back almost to the beginning of the podcast.So Tom, thank you. I appreciate that. and then the last way is if you enjoyed these topics and you want to learn more and and kind of absorb these topics even more, you need to go to concrete logicacademy.com or go to concrete school.co. There's two ways to get there. And we we have the topics on the academy platform. In addition to that, we also havea quizzes that will quiz you on the topics that are in there and there's 25 or 26 courses in there right now. there's also there's articles, there's white papers, there's posts we post on there just like you would on LinkedIn. So if you you got a question or anything, you can post on there. right now I think we're floating around 60 members. So it's growing yeah tremendously. SoConcrete-Adamus (03:16)Congrats, congrats.Seth (03:19)Please join. there's different memberships and things on there. They give you access to all the courses and and things like that. But if you want to get in there for free for a limited time, just go to concrete school dot co. All right.Concrete-Adamus (03:30)Don't forget tocheck out our LinkedIn channel or your LinkedIn channel too. ⁓ there's some great information from the Academy. And for those of you who are professional engineers, you have until next month to get all your PE credit in. And I I don't remember if it's the middle or the end. And if you don't get it in in time, you'll have to be subject to a board review and then some stupid fines. Concrete Logic Academy has some great courses for yourSeth (03:35)Yeah.Concrete-Adamus (04:00)CEUs, PDHs, whatever the hell they're called. I use them as well as some of my colleagues. So sorry for stealing the micro there.Seth (04:06)Yep.No, you're good. I appreciate that. Yeah. So and we track all those PDHs for you on the platform. So if you need if you get o what did they audit you or something and they say, Hey, did you really take these classes? Yeah, so we well, we would have record of all that of you listening to those ch topics and taking those quizzes. SoConcrete-Adamus (04:12)Mm-hmm.Yeah. Yep.Well they they wanna see the certificates and Seth not only sends you the certificate and Whitney when Whitney got it in the mail, she was so happy to give it to give me the certificate. Seth laminates them for you. so that I I mean you you gotta keep it. It goes from file to frickin' file, but yeah, you send them pictures. and you only have to do it like every two years, but yeah, you've got to yeah, send them proof. So the certificates that you said, the blue and white ones are frickin' great, man. Great job.Seth (04:55)Yep. Well, cool. All right. Well let's get to the topic at hand. So let's let's we'll we'll what we want to do is Dr. John, if you want to give us background on this, but we're rethinking the hundred year design. So we ⁓ you know, I g civil engineers are taught to design concrete for seventy five to a hundred years and Doctor John i is here today have us kinda rethink that and see if that's maybe the best thing.Concrete-Adamus (04:55)Great job.⁓I don't know, I have a very cynical view. You know, Daniel calls me the fatalist of our group. Right? And I I just got this Daniel Alexis McCoy. it's it's you know, the hundred year design life, you know, the way that I think it was pushed was based off of certain software packages that academics had created through the Federal Highway Association.Seth (05:26)We're talking about Dan Dan McCoy.Uh-huh.Concrete-Adamus (05:48)And if they plug and chug certain amount of numbers in, it'll tell you if that mixed design for your specific region and the use based off of these tests is going to meet a certain design life. And that happened like in the early 2000s, right? Now what we're finding is is that a lot of these a lot of the civil infrastructure is failing not at a hundred years, but at twenty years.So th that was the motivation behind this. And and the funny part about it is, and I had ChatGPT help me out with the saying, I call her Sasha Juliet. I had her I had her put together, I asked her to put, can you create a a cynical way ⁓ or the cynical takeaway that engineers use the 100-year design life?So I didn't write this, Sasha did, but you remember she learns from me, so it's you know, John Belquit's tone of voice. Engineers love a 100-year design life because by the time the design no longer works, everyone who stamp it has retired, is unreachable, or dust in the project archive. How poetic. Right? It's so so lovely. ⁓ butSeth (07:06)Mm-hmm.Concrete-Adamus (07:08)I don't like the the the one hundred year design life and it has nothing to do if the concrete fails because the argument can be made, well what happens John, if the concrete was made so well it lasts a hundred years. Okay, great. I I still don't like it. And I used the Hoboken, New Jersey example as as a case study. So before I go any further, I just wanted to highlight why I don't like it. Is that okay?Seth (07:37)Yeah. Do it.Concrete-Adamus (07:39)I don't like designing for time. I like designing for use and maintenance cycles. Right? When we design in 1922 for what's going to happen in 2022, not all of us are as good as I am at reading the tea leave, as my nickname has been Concrete Adamus. We don't know what's gonna happen in 2022. Hoboken really came to a head back in 1922.With the culmination of the Lacquanna train station. It was the largest train station, I believe it was the first major train station in the United States, and it's gorgeous. Tiffany Windows, da da da da da. It was mothballed, I want to say, sometime after World War Two. I mean, gorgeous. They're bringing it back to life because we need more infrastructure in Hoboken. We gotta use what land is available, but bear in mind.All of this was designed in 1922 with no idea what was gonna happen in 2022. And yes, I use Sasha Juliet or ChatGPT and and ⁓ Seth and I were talking about how AI it looks, but holy moly guacamole, if this is not a great representation of one of the main streets. Now the problem is is when you design something that has a hundred-year gap.you commit yourself to that infrastructure. What you're saying is I've made a decision here in 1922 that people in 2000 have to use, definitely have to use, 1980, 1990, they have to use it. 2022, they can make the decision to get rid of it. But bear in mind something that you put in place for a hundred years, it's really hard to get rid of it. It's really hard to build on top of it.When we already have building on top of it for the last hundred years. So my problem is we can't predict the future. And I've got case studies that show things that have been built for a hundred years that only last five, ten, twenty years, what happens. But what I would rather do is design for a 20-year decision.Seth (09:57)huh.Concrete-Adamus (09:59)Does that make sense before I go any further?Seth (10:02)Yeah, I think ⁓ I kinda think we already do that. I mean I think in in in and and ⁓ and I this is I'm gonna push back on you a little bit here. Yeah, yeah. So ⁓ I think ⁓ in a way we we say one thing but we really do another. So we say we're gonna design for a long period of time. ⁓ but in reality I it maybe that twenty year version seems a little short, but I think ⁓Concrete-Adamus (10:13)That's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Seth (10:31)I think ⁓ we designed so we know that ⁓ at some point we're gonna have to tear it down and put it back up. For instance, say a bridge that goes over a b a body of water and they put it at a certain height and then all of a sudden we decide that hey the water's ⁓ getting really close to the bottom of that bridge and we need to make that bridge taller. So now we're gonna rip it all down and and make it taller. ⁓ so I think it c it weWe say one thing but we do another. But ⁓ I d I don't know. I'm I'm I'm curious to hear more about Hoboken. I'm not familiar with Hoboken, so ⁓ pleaseConcrete-Adamus (11:11)Sure.Sure, sure, sure. ⁓ why don't you can you pull some pictures of Hoboken up that are real pictures? And I would look at, you know, Hoboken and 10th. or, you know, the train station there. ⁓ there's ⁓ a bar called Sully's. that's a good place to look too. Parking in Hoboken, but while you're talking about that.Let's go to a prime example here in Indiana. Indiana, we are big on fifty year design life. Well, it's not hundred, John. It's only fifty. Same thing. Fifty, hundred year. A lot of our bridges are failing. When I say bridges, it's not the entire bridge, it's part of the infrastructure. Whether it's the deck, it's the columns, it's the rails, it's failing. It's going into maintenance cycle because I think that's what we're confusing.Is there's preventative maintenance cycles, and as it turns out, Virginia Department of Transportation. And folks, the reason why we talk about DOTs, it's a similar reason why we talk about navies and history. As it turns out, the Department of Transportations record a lot of history and they keep a lot of history about their infrastructure. Whether it's the mixed designs, the failures, the successes. So that's why we talk about theDOT in a similar way that historians talk about the Navy because navies used to keep great and still do keep great freaking records. there's a difference between maintenance cycle and design life. the last set of conversations that I was out last summer with different folks from the House of Representatives here in Indiana, it was more about can we make this last to thirty years?It wasn't a discussion about fifty years anymore because the concrete was in such a failed state. And the engineer of record said, Hey man, I can guarantee ten more years. And the House of Rep said, But how about thirty years? I can only guarantee you ten more years. So you're right, I don't think the fifty year design life is talked about anymore. And that's not because people don't want to. I think they still want to design for fifty years.But I think there have been so many problems, and I won't talk about the materials, but in the last five years, there have been so many problems with concrete that we've gravitated away from the 50-year design life into how do we just survive without our concrete falling apart in the next year and a half? and I'm I'm not happy about that. I want to go back to the hundred-year design life. ⁓ butThat's just not a concern anymore.So you're right, but I think you're right for other reasons, not because we just don't care about the hundred year design life anymore. I think it's because we have to care about other things. Look, I'm pushing back.Seth (14:10)Uh-huh. Good job. SoConcrete-Adamus (14:12)Thanks.Seth (14:13)so you're you're I think you're what we were saying, ⁓ or what you were saying is that you want to design for a twenty year life with zero maintenance.Concrete-Adamus (14:24)Zero.Seth (14:26)Zero maintenance. ⁓Concrete-Adamus (14:27)Which I think is harderthan a hundred year design.Seth (14:30)I would think so too. So what a what does that look like?Concrete-Adamus (14:33)Accountability, responsibility, more expensive concrete, maintenance package, ⁓ quality management system that you can put sensors in there. I fucking love sensors. I think they're used the wrong way. We use maturity sensors. They never understood maturity sensors. Like if anything, use the temperature sensor or or use the the you know my favorite maturity sensor was the the Intelerock. I still have one of the whole systems with the gauges, butI I think it's more using ⁓ sensors, big data, and wireless communication to create maintenance systems that look at our bridges. But the design criteria should be more performance, and it should be what are the things the performance should be based on what are the things that we care about ⁓ to last that 20-year design cycle. And it's not necessarily compressive strength or a flexural beam.Right? You know, it's here in Indiana, freezing and thawing and de-icing salts. You know, it's abrasion resistance under de-icing salts and brines. ⁓ it's you know, wetting and drying cycles, it's alkali silic reactivity now. You know, there's there's a lot more things outside of compressive strength, which is the most forgiving of concrete tests, whether you're taking a cylinder or a core. ⁓ but I think design criteria needs to change to reflect what we care about.And if we shorten that I care about it lifecycle to 20 years, that hey, I put a bridge in that has a hundred percent or a pavement. You know, there's something called the PCI. I often confused it with the PVI, but the PCI is the pavement condition index. When I put it in on day one, it has a 100% value. As it deteriorates over time, that percentageDecreases. When I hit a I think it's the 60% of the original pavement condition, I have to make a decision to repair it or replace it. Now, if I decide to do nothing and I allow that PCI to go from 60% to 40%, every one dollar that I would have spent at one at 60%, now I have to spend four dollars.And that's just because now I'm dealing with a shittier concrete and I have to do more to either rip and replace it or rehabilitate it and repair it.So again, I understand we want these structures to be in place like the Romans, but bear in mind the reason why Roman concrete has lasted so long is it's in Rome, where it's 70 to 77 degrees 365 days out of the year. You have an earthquake once every 2500 years. If you put that same concrete in Hoboken, New Jersey.Or Alexandria, Virginia, it wouldn't last one season. Especially with the mag chloride. Like, holy shit. Mmm. So yeah, I think holding the engineer accountable within a 20 year lifespan, that means they have to evaluate it every couple of years. At least towards the end of that life cycle, if not during the whole life cycle. And why not? They live there, they should be driving over.Seth (17:45)Yeah.Concrete-Adamus (18:08)And by the way, for people who don't know what to do with their lives for occupation, for there are these amazing free programs through the Federal Highway Association that are for free that teach you and qualify you to become a bridge inspector, a tunnel inspector, an aggregate inspector, and they're all free. Unless you want to go to the advanced stages and then they're like a thousand bucks each, but at that point you should be making money. ButThose jobs are a plenty. Sorry, that was a tangent.Seth (18:42)It was. But that's good career advice for someone.Concrete-Adamus (18:46)I'm getting it just because I wanna be a bridge inspector. I wanna understand there are bridges out here in the state of Indiana that are a year and a half old that have recently been inspected by the feds and they've been designated as like twenty-six year old bridges.Seth (18:51)Yeah.Concrete-Adamus (19:01)How do you w like, okay, it's not that I don't believe it, but I don't believe it. And I wanna learn the technique that they're using to justify that. And then what the heck are going on with our bridges that are a year and a half, two years old?Seth (19:16)Mm-hmm.Well let's stick with how butConcrete-Adamus (19:17)Hey, but don't worry, they're gonnalast a hundred years.Seth (19:19)Right?Trying to find good pictures of h ⁓ HoboConcrete-Adamus (19:21)Does myHoboken? I don't know if you're ever gonna find that. I wasn't a fan of Hoboken. ⁓ I mean this really is a good representation of Hoboken.Seth (19:26)Here.Here, here'sYeah. Here I could show you a new a newConcrete-Adamus (19:35)I II was only there for three years. Whitney went to school there. We both went to school at Stevens. ⁓ parking was horrendous. Pizza was amazing.Seth (19:41)You see that?Concrete-Adamus (19:45)⁓ well well yeah, you're not gonna get that. That's the New York Times.Seth (19:46)⁓ You gotta love you gotta lyeah.You know, that's what I talk about tangents. That's one thing that drives me absolutely nuts is when someone puts a link on LinkedIn or s you know, a newsletter or something and you click on it and it's got a paywall. And you're like, Okay.Concrete-Adamus (20:04)Here you go. Here's a good picture.Open in a new tab.Okay. This is probably the cleanest I've ever seen it.Here we go. There you go. Sorry.So this is right where you make a ⁓ that left hand turn. That left hand turn with that white bus is can I zoom in on that?Where that white bus is, that is the turn that you make to go into Hoboken. So there's there's only one way of really getting into Hoboken, and it's right before you go into the Holl Holland Tunnel. You make a series of left-hand turns, and then you come down this road and you're riding right along the Hudson. And you can see there's all this infrastructure on the left for you know, these these bicycles. Behind that is likeSeth (20:30)Okay.Concrete-Adamus (20:54)Bus stop, there's a train station. Well, that left hand turn that you make, that takes you into the city proper, the town of Hoboken proper. That's the only fucking way of getting in there. And in the morning, you see what is it? Three lanes. That extreme left lane that we're looking at is the bus lane. So you can't really use that lane, right? But in the morning, so you only have two lanes and on theRight hand side that we're looking at is a bunch of fucking stores, people just park there. So you only have one lane to go through, and you have to make a left, and then what happens is this bus station or this train station over here, everybody walks. And yeah, you have crosswalks, nobody fucking uses them. Right? And it's not like you have room or infrastructure in place to build a walking bridge. Right? See, that would be one of the ideas. Is right, okay.How do we reduce the number of people? Because even when you have a green light, we have lights here, John, that controls everything. No, it does. Ooh, sorry. No, it doesn't, because people do what the heck they want. So put a walking bridge in place. But remember, this is hobogen. Anytime we've tried to build on top of the existing infrastructure, something has fallen into the Hudson. Whether it was part of a soccer field, part of a parking lot.Or part of Main Street between two huge condominiums, the infrastructure fell apart underneath and it fell into a body of water. So it's very hard building on top of Hoboken these days. So instead of optimizing this infrastructure because it was built a hundred years ago, meaning I only needed a lane and a half, right? I have a residence here.I have public transportation. I don't need that much room. It's not like I'm gonna have, you know, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand people coming into Hopoken every day. It's nineteen twenty two.Seth (22:56)Yeah. Do you know anything about the the the terminal that they're working on?Concrete-Adamus (23:03)The Lockwana train station?Seth (23:05)No, it's here, I'll show you this one.Concrete-Adamus (23:08)⁓ gosh, so where is that? Is that can you zoom ⁓Seth (23:10)Here I'll show you.Look at that. Does that tell you where it is?Concrete-Adamus (23:15)Hobookand Rail Yard, okay. Great. I mean I guess that's that's the only room you have left.Can you let me zoom in on that? Don't do anything here. ⁓ New Jersey Transject Long Slip Rail, Rail Project. So that's something that they've already had that they're just reconfiguring. But that was infrastructure that they had to build on top of the water. Now you go to see look at that Hoboken bus depot and the Hoboken ferry terminal. Renate, and then you go to the left of that, Observer Highway, Newark Street.That's the hundred-year infrastructure. That's the start of it. Like the only way that they can build in Hoboken is building out. Like there's also a walkway that they built. That waterfront walkway. That land didn't exist. They built into the water. They drove piles in, they dropped rocks, whatever the hell it was, but they built into the water.So that's what I'm saying is this is what happens when you design for a hundred years, like you can't build in Hoboken, or it's very hard to build in good this is on the outsides of it.Looking great. This is beautiful.Can you look up the Lacwana train station? It's Lakawana L A K A W A N A. Spells like it sounds.Yeah, that's on the outskirts of Hoboken. That's not in Hoboken.So I meant like in the proper of Hoboken. And what I love about Lackawanna, L-A-K-A-W-A-N-A, such a great name. What I love about Lackawanna is the history of it. And it's not just, you know, the pashi history. Like there are Tiffany windows, but I want to say it was during World War One, they painted them black. Because they were was it paint was it World War I or World War II? They painted them black.Because you know, the light was coming through and this was right on the coast. They were afraid of being bombed. And I have pictures somewhere on my computer that let me see. One of my kids was doing one of my students, sorry, was doing a an internship for the company that was ⁓ preserving it and opening it back up. And we got to walk through major sections thatYou know, the windows were still painted black. ⁓ it was just absolutely beautiful. I mean and then there were some windows that they already had cleaned up. Ugh.Did you find anything?Seth (25:55)Yeah, and there's all kinds ofConcrete-Adamus (25:57)Lakawana.Finding any pictures on mySeth (25:59)⁓ jeez. There's soAnyways.Concrete-Adamus (26:02)Anyways. Well I mean it's just it's a case study. There are so many of them, you know, around the United States where hey, we've tried to build for a hundred years and we didn't call it right. You know, we we made the mistake.Seth (26:14)Yeah.Yeah, that's tough. It's tough to think a hundred years out. We can't even think a year out. How you expect us to think a hundred years out?Concrete-Adamus (26:22)Mm.Well w you you gave me the greatest advice. Think in tens. Right? Ten seconds, ten minutes, ten days, ten weeks, ten months, ten years. And if you if they all don't check out, maybe you should make a different decision.Seth (26:30)Yeah.Yeah. Well at least if they don't check out on the back end, right? So ten years from now if you it doesn't doesn't sound like a good decision, so probably not make that one.Concrete-Adamus (26:52)How do Imake that decision for a hundred years? LikeSeth (26:55)Yeah, it's hard.That's tough. That's tough for civil engineers out there.Concrete-Adamus (27:01)But they do it. by the way, and I I just wanted to share this because it is so amazing. Here is that website that is free courses. And look, I've got one in my cart, but they teach you how to do inspection. And they give you the and I'm I'm looking for the bridge. so this is for what is that for diamond grinding?Seth (27:02)Yeah.Concrete-Adamus (27:29)There's one for if you just do inspection.Like all of these. They're all free. Like and they're amazing. And some of them are in person and some of them are not. Do that.I love these things, and they're free.Seth (27:42)And that whatwhat's what's the website again? Say that website? So people listening.Concrete-Adamus (27:47)It'sFederal Highway Association. ⁓ sorry. Here, it's National Highway Institute, NHI. So it's Federal Highway Association, N H I. So F H W A N H I dot Geniusis. That's what it is though. That's what it is. Of course. Right.Seth (28:10)⁓ Well just goo Google go go how'dyou find it again? Go.Concrete-Adamus (28:18)yeah, free courses through the feds for inspection. Here here it is. B bridge construction inspection. Right? I wanted to do bridge inspection, but okay, here's bridge construction inspection. Of course it's slower than shit to load, but anyway, yeah.Seth (28:22)Yeah. There you go.Yeah.Yeah. Well, cool.All right. Well that'll that's good. People check that out if you're interested in being a bridge inspector.Need NeedConcrete-Adamus (28:45)Especiallyif you're good at drones. You combine the two.Seth (28:48)Yeah,maybe.Concrete-Adamus (28:51)We just got a lot of bad bridges. We need inspectors. Sorry, go ahead, I apologize.Seth (28:51)All DoctorYeah.I was gonna wrap it up. is there did you wanna touch on anything before we go?Concrete-Adamus (28:59)think just the two takeaways. it was I wouldn't design for age like a hundred years. I would design more for a strategy of making decisions. And using Seth's concept and I'm I'm owing it to him now the in tens. Ten seconds, ten minutes, blah blah blah, and then do it in years. What is this gonna look like in ten, twenty years? A hundred years I can't tell butMaybe ten years I can? So I'd rather make those decisions. So I would design it more for performance and to last 20 years with zero maintenance dollars. It might be harder to make it last than a hundred years.Seth (29:35)Yeah. Cool. Well, I appreciate you coming to the show today. ⁓ folks, f if you're still listening, go to concreteschool.co. That's your free way of getting into the concrete logic academy. So if you made it this far, there's a tidbit for you. All right, folks, until next time, let's keep it concrete.Concrete-Adamus (29:38)Yes, sir.