All right, guys, we're just waiting for the last few people to come in. We're seeing more participants come in right now, so we'll just give another 15 seconds here. All right. Thank you. Well, let's get going. So, good morning to the West Coast and good afternoon to those out east again. Welcome to the Post-Testing Institute's monthly webinar for May. My name's Kyle Boyd and I'm again moderating today's session. I'm also the chair of the Education Committee, which is EDC 130, which really sponsors this monthly webinar. As we've talked about in the past, if you've been on any of the previous ones, these webinars are monthly. They're the same Wednesday, that first Wednesday of every month at the same exact time. And they go throughout the year. If you miss one, you can always go online and you can watch one. We record everything, we put it online. You can watch it, take a quiz afterwards and you can get continuing education credits for it through there. So, just a reminder, this happens every month for those of you who this is your first time on the meeting. As you can see, today's topic is for PT slab on ground and recent changes to the 2024 IRC. So anyone who's really worked in this area before has probably realized that it was historically a little convoluted on how you follow the code to say, this is the flowchart that I'm really following. The code references me to this document. The IRC references me to this document, to this document, to this document. It was a pretty long, kind of convoluted process. And there's been a lot of really good changes where it's more explicitly clear on just on PTI and the PTI documents through the IRC for design. So, one of the intents of today's presentation is really going to focus in on how do you follow that flowchart? How do you have that confidence that you're actually going in the right locations per the 2024 IRC? Then within that, what are some of the updates to the codes themselves? We're not going to focus as much in the technical side of things where you're really into the design because we feel this is enough content alone. And in a future one, we'll focus more on PT slab on ground design and more of a technical presentation. So this is more code, code compliance and updates to it. So, before we get going, we always have those few initial slides that we have to go through. And the first one is the continuing education aspect of it. And if you are on today's presentation and you stay on for the entire time, and you registered online, you will get that continuing education credit. If you're in a conference room, we are still trying to work with RCEP. It's been a little bit of a process to get so that multiple people can register at once. So our recommendation is if you are sitting in a conference, just log in on your own computer so you're there. You can recognize that you're actually being part of it, even if you're in the bigger greater room with one log in there. So, and once again, if you missed today, you can go on online and watch it and then get that credit too and go that route. Copyright materials. This is just the generic slide that we always have that says, you know, vouch for my copyright. If you guys do want any content from any of our presentations, feel free to reach out to us and we can help you on that side of things. And the last part is just our protocol. So everybody here, you guys are muted with cameras off. We can't hear you. If you ask any questions, make sure you ask it through the question button in the Q&A. Type it in. We encourage questions to be very direct. The vague questions are tough for us to answer and they'll usually get skipped over at the end if it's a little vague. So be very direct in your questions is one of our requests from you guys. You do get that credit that we were talking about and everything's going to be online. So with that, we can introduce today's speaker. Today's speaker, it's a repeat customer for us on presenting, Mr. Tim Crystal. Tim's the Executive Vice President of the Post-Tensioning Institute. And so aside from being, you know, top brass over there, he's the most knowledgeable individual that we have to really discuss the code changes, why we went this way, what the intentions are, and kind of what the future's looking like in there. Tim, as you can see on the screen, you know, well over 34 years of experience in design and marketing in the structural engineering world and the AEC world there. He's a professional engineer and graduate of Purdue. So with that, we're going to let Tim take you and dive into code provisions and changes to the International Residential Code. All right. Thank you very much, Kyle. Appreciate the introduction. And of course, always appreciate your leadership of our education committee, which for those who aren't aware, is one of our board level committees, deeply involved in all the educational objectives and strategies that the Post-Tensioning Institute has going on each and every month and annually as we continue to grow the industry and the Institute. So appreciate the kickoff. So the outline of today's discussion, again, to clarify, is really focused upon this recent code change in the International Residential Code. This actually harkens back to about 2017, 2018, thereabouts, when there was first initial efforts kind of put forward to put forth a code change in the IRC to implement effective change relative to how the IRC refers to PTI specifications and standards, and ultimately how the end goal of that is to improve the quality of materials for residential PT slab on ground and the quality of construction, the installation, stressing, finishing, and all that. So that endeavor began a long time ago and ultimately culminated in a code change that came to fruition. And then it's showing itself in the most recently released IRC 2024 code. So I'll explain the code change itself specifically. I'm then going to connect the code change to our PTI standards and specifications. Like I mentioned, this is where, for those who deal with slab on ground all the time, you'll be very familiar with these documents. For those who aren't as familiar, you'll start to see the connectivity between how the International Code works its way to other codes and standards. I'm going to highlight as well the contents of those documents for you to have a better understanding what's in those publications and how they're used. I'll also have a link of clarity between those documents and our certification programs, both for plant certification and field personnel. Then really get into the deep understanding of the benefits of this code change, how it really benefits a lot of different stakeholders from top to bottom. And then also, of course, our education goals here at PTI. We have a lot of initiatives we're following up on here to help educate people out there in the world, again, stakeholders, engineers, architects, owners, and really spread the word of this change and how it's beneficial to improve things in the right direction. And obviously at the end, we'll have time for some questions from the audience. So the learning objectives for this particular webinar, again, tie into being able to explain to you the code change so you have an understanding of the specifics of it and how it relates to residential sub on ground for post-tensioning. Understand then how that relates to the specific publications. I'm going to talk a lot about PTI DC10.5, also M10.6, DC10.2. And just for clarity there, the DC stands for design committees, for our DC10 committee is our slab on ground committee, and M10 is in our materials committee for unbonded post-tensioning materials. So I'll tie into those documents and let you understand how that links. Again, I'll give you a highlight of the certification programs, the plant certification, the field personnel certification, and how that really is affected into these other publications and how that code change links. I'll talk more about, from those certification programs, specific ways you can have access to those and have a better understanding about those. Because again, one of the other educational opportunities, whether you're a person working in the field or not, whether you're simply a design engineer or an interested party or an inspector or whatever it might be, there's opportunities to gain even further education through those design, I'm sorry, through the certification workshops. And then lastly, again, a deep dive to understand the positive impacts that this code change has on the industry and how it ultimately improves quality of materials and quality of the workmanship. So one of the icons you'll see pop up once in a while here is our, actually, campaign associated with this. This is, again, an educational campaign more than anything else to try and really explain this code change and helping people understand what this does for the industry. So we have a campaign here at PTI called Stronger Standards, Exceptional Structures, and this was derived specifically for this code change. So once we get into the materials here, I'll talk more about this. And as I finish the presentation, I'll tie things all together relative to a specific website we put together that has all kinds of further information on this topic to help you research that and learn even more on your own time after the fact. So let's dive right into the fact that here's the code change in and of itself. So again, the 2024 IRC, which came out earlier this year, it's now available, obviously, for purchase from the ICC code bookstore. And what they did is they added in section 506, they added a brand new section 506.2, and this is related specifically to post-tension slab-on-ground floors. So that section 506 talks about slab-on-ground foundations and floors. It talks about that in general for concrete and foundations of residential structures. The addition of this 506.2 separates out and specifically talks about post-tension slab-on-ground floors. So the way this is worded is it talks about that post-tension concrete slabs on ground, excuse me, placed on expansive or stable soils shall be designed in accordance with PTI DC 10.5. And then in addition, they added a reference to that specific document. It's a long name, it's one of our longer name documents, but it's the standard requirements for design and analysis of shallow concrete foundations on expansive and stable soils. So the big change here is, again, now we have a direct reference to DC 10.5, and that's where this separation out of post-tension slab-on-ground from regular slab-on-ground conventionally reinforced has been distinctively added. And what it used to say before, which has now been changed, is it used to be essentially taking everything in a section 506.1, taking everything related to slab-on-ground to ACI 332, which in turn then got to ACI 360, and then kind of in a roundabout way got to DC 10.1, which is an older document, back in the DC 10 library. So the way that's been worded for years in the IRC 2021 and previous years really didn't get you to DC 10.5 like it does now. And especially the clarifying thing here is that it's for expansive and stable soils, which is a key distinctive variation to take you directly there. So again, as pointed out here, the main idea here is that this is now a direct reference to this important design standard, and it really accomplishes a lot of things because of that. So we'll move forward next to... Excuse me, I got to clear my throat here. Got a little frog in my throat. This is a diagram to really kind of graphically depict the flow of reference. So up here, we have the IRC code 2024. Down here, we have IBC 2024. I'll get to that in a second. So this PTE design reference goes straight to DC 10.5, which I'm going to spend time talking about in greater detail. And then from this document, there's references as well that kick over through this arrow to the M10.6 material spec for unbonded PTE for slab on ground. And that's where we start to get into requirements for plant certification and field personnel certification. Excuse me. And this is where this document then comes into play, and I'll dive into that in detail as well. And then also from this document, there's kind of another additional flow regarding field procedures, and this gets into the DC 10.2 document, where we get into a field procedures guide essentially for slab on ground construction. So this flow chart here kind of is trying to graphically depict how things relate to each other from the point of origin of the IRC code. The 2024 IBC and the IBC code in general, excuse me, which in this case is referencing non-resident commercial, retail, industrial type floors. That's where this also refers to DC 10.5. It currently still refers to DC 10.5 in relation to expansive soils. So there's still work to be done by PTI and others, and our DC 10 committee is certainly involved in this, trying to augment code change to further clarify in the IBC reference to this document for both expansive and stable soils. So this is where we've cleaned that up on the IRC side. There's a little bit more work to do on the IBC side. So again, on the residential side of the equation, there's been significant improvements, and that's the focus of this webinar today is the residential side. But ultimately, we're going to get there across the board and have this read the way it's supposed to and have it convey the correct message as far as what design standards should be used. So now diving into that first document, like I mentioned, DC 10.5, the current version PTI has is 10.519. It's going through update cycle as we speak during the next cycle here, but ultimately, as it stands, this is the current most recent reference. And inside that document, it's kind of broken down accordingly into these different sections. There's the scope of the document, the definitions, notation, normal stuff at the front end. There's an entire section on structural analysis and design. And again, while we're not going to get into a deep dive on how to design slabs on ground or post-tension slabs, this is where we start getting into those pieces of information regarding the design processes and design requirements for structural analysis and design. And then of course, breaking that down further into flexure and shear in sections five and six. So this is where this standard covers all these elements, gets into a discussion about stiffness and then ultimately other general information and then soil parameters. So there's obviously within this standard, there's connectivity to structural design, geotechnical engineering relative to the soil parameters, the construction aspects, materials aspects. So it's a materials aspect. So it's a multifaceted publication that has within the DC10 committee, various task groups that feed their work effort into the ultimate main publication. But specific to the key thing here is in section 10 on materials, there is a section 10.2 regarding reinforcement. And I highlighted this in yellow specifically because this is where the code change starts to reference and impact a key piece about reinforcement material. So this is where we get into what I'll highlight next as to what that code change means when it comes to 10.5 and specifically post-tensioning materials. And then of course, lastly, there's references and an appendix. So again, for those who are familiar with this document, it's a very comprehensive design standard. And as it's now being directly referred to, this allows for this direct connection, again, whether it's expansive or stable soils and all these requirements being triggered by the IRC code change. So as we dive further into 10.2 and what happens there, this is where that section 10.2 includes a 10.211 subsection where the requirement is that tendons shall conform to PTIM 10.6-15. And there's an excerpt there cut out at the bottom, same thing, that direct language. So this is where when you're linking from point A, the IRC code, to point B, the 10.5 document standard, this particular section now requires you to refer to 10.6 for material specifications. So this is the point in time where we now immediately translate that, hey, you can't just use any post-tensioning you feel like. You can't just go off on some other tangent. They have to conform to this specific specification. So for all the people out there in the audience who are going to be dealing with, obviously, contract documents, design of this type of structure, keep this in mind that this is the importance of your contract documents and your spec requirements and all the different things you put in your plans and specs to be able to require things. This is how these things are triggered. And this is an important aspect of making sure that all the PT complies with this other post-tensioning institute specification standard. So that's where we dive into M10.6, which I'll go to next. So M10.6, again, is a materials standard. This is the specification for unbonded single-strand tendons used for slab-on-ground construction. There's another document some may be familiar with called M10.2. That's a similar specification, but that's for unbonded PT used in elevated structures. So this 10.6 is specific to slab-on- ground construction. And it has three main sections, general products and execution. And within the general section, there's a section 1.6 about fabrication, which I'll talk about in greater detail. And ultimately, then in the execution section, this is where we get into subsections about qualifications and inspection and then recommended procedures. So these are the triggers, again, by virtue of leapfrogging from the IRC to the 10.5, now to 10.6. Now we trigger specifics about the materials that are being fabricated and specifics about the execution of the construction work and who's doing that kind of work, who's inspecting that kind of work, that kind of thing. So this is where now I'll move into the detail of M10.6. So once again, as I mentioned, section 1.6 on fabrication, this is where we essentially trigger the 1.6.1.1 and 1.6.1.2 clauses that come up, which talk about, finally, PTI certified plants are equal. So not getting into the or equal at this point yet, just talking about the PTI certified plants. This is the requirement now attached to this whole thing where your materials, which have to meet the material requirements of M10.6, have to be manufactured from a PTI certified plant or equal. And I'll get into that detail here later on about the program itself and what that entails. But this is a key element. And what this really does from standpoint number one is it really improves greatly the quality of the materials. So this is our first take-home point of extreme significance is that the materials, of being a higher quality, meaning a higher level of standard, this is where ultimately the end result of these projects is going to be bringing that to bear. If you're dealing with inferior materials, something that doesn't have to meet a specific fabrication standard, something that isn't coming from a certified PTI plant or certified plant that's got a process that's uncertified, you never know what you might get in terms of the sheathing, the PT coating, the anchorages, the components, the wedges, all that stuff that comes into the PT system that's used in the slab-on-ground project. If it's not coming from a certified plant and not coming through this process, there can be issues that arise on a project that ultimately lead to trouble on a project and lead to a lower quality outcome. So this is the big point here first and foremost about plant certification. But then equally important is execution. So this is now we talk about the installation, stressing, finishing, and inspection. This is all the field side of the equation, people doing the work, people inspecting the work, and all the different stages of installing, stressing, finishing, all that. This is where the execution piece now has to meet requirements. So this 3111 talks more about, again, now the certification program related to installer-stressor slab-on-ground. The name of that program is now really installer-inspector, but ultimately the slab-on-ground certification gets triggered by this requirement. And then there also is a direct reference in relative here from M10.6 over to the DC10.2, which is that field procedures manual I mentioned earlier, which I'll talk about next. So this 3.0 and this other half is the second giant take-home, which is now we're trying to greatly improve the quality of the workmanship in the field. We're trying to make sure that all this work being done by the contractor and the people doing the installing of the tendons, stressing the tendons, and also, of course, the people doing the inspection work and all the elongations and all that good stuff, that's actually being done by certified personnel under the supervision thereof, and it's not something being done by untrained people who learn how to do whatever they learn from somebody through word of mouth or just passing along tips and tricks from an uncertified mindset. We want to make sure from this standpoint that we're greatly improving the quality of the field procedures and performance. So these two main triggers out of M10.6 are critical as we move into then the first trigger again, the plant certification. This is where we get into one of our key programs at PTI, the plant certification program, and I just point out two key documents associated with that here. This is where we have on our website if you look under PTI plant certification, the G1 and G2 documents, and what they outline is the overall structure of the program, all the different specifics. So the G1 document, which is shown here to the right, which is the manual for certification of plants producing unbonded single strand tendons, has various different sections about products, execution, record keeping, the program administration itself, and various other appendices. So just to again be clear, the program itself is a certification of the process. There's plants that do extruded strand only, there's plants that extrude and fabricate tendons, in other words, cut to length, do dead ending of dead end anchors, they do further processing steps than just someone who does extruding, and then these different classifications of plants within our program associated with the kind of work they do. And so they're governed by this certification program and the processes they have to follow, the quality control, the quality assurance. They ultimately are as well going through a multiple stages inspection on an annual basis. So they're going to be having their plan inspected or various plants depending on the supplier inspected, both in a scheduled way and in a surprise inspection. And all these different things are keeping everyone on track relative to the processes they have to follow to maintain quality materials, quality of fabrication, and things of that nature. To clear up a misnomer a lot of people have out there that they somehow have latched onto is the idea that PTI is certifying the materials themselves. That's not what's happening. If someone's supplying PT to a project, those materials aren't per se certified by PTI to be, you know, in some people's minds flawless, or someone's saying, hey, these have this seal of approval that says that everything about them as a material itself has been PTI certified. That's not the point. The point is the plant is certified, process they have to follow is certified. And again, this is specific to unbonded single strand tenons. So not to also be confused by some of the other certification stuff that comes out of our other programs relative to multi-strand systems, PT systems, that's our CRT 70 program and things like that. The G2 manual, which ties into our certification advisory board, this is where we also have this document affiliated with all of our certification programs, and this one as well, the quality statement, policy statement, description of legal status, ultimately the certification programs, and other appendices. So this is again kind of an overarching manual that talks about the logistics of all of our different certification programs. So the main takeaway here is something to understand that this is a huge thing to engage with to really help improve the material quality and the materials that are supplied to these slab-on-ground projects that go through this are significantly better than the ones that are coming in from other sources that aren't coming from a certified plant. This is again CRT 20, just to mention that again, a committee specifically focused on this. Our CRT 20 committee is the main certification committee that oversees this entire program. So now as we dive back into the flow where we were at M10-6 and we flowed one more time, this is now we flow to DC 10.2. So this is now the field procedure side. This document is the construction and maintenance manual for post-tension slab-on-ground foundations. It's a very extensive document that really dives into everything you can think of relative to the field procedures. So it goes through document control, the material acceptance, delivery, handling, and storage, building pad prep. Then I've highlighted section five for installation, which I'll talk about on the next slide, which talks about the specific installation personnel requirements that kick in. Encapsulated systems, this goes into that whole conversation of standard systems versus encapsulated. So in the slab-on-ground world, we still have both systems happening. Some of the most typical single-family houses you see out there with a post-tension slab-on-ground more commonly would have a standard PT system without encapsulation. All the other characteristics are pretty similar. You've got your pre-stressing steel, your PT coating, your sheathing, your anchorages, your wedges. But ultimately, a standard system is one category, and then the encapsulated system is another watertight system that has additional components and features, including an encapsulation cap at the end that makes it different. So there are certainly residential projects that will specify encapsulated. The concrete placement itself, things related to that, especially placing concrete so you're not disrupting the tendons and placing at the anchorages and things. So there's sound concrete at the anchorages where you're transferring all that force to the structure. And then section eight, tendon stressing. Another piece I've highlighted that talks about the critical importance of personnel certification for stressing tendons in that stage of the construction process. And then further elements about elongation measurements, tendon finishing, which is a critical item relative to the durability of a PT slab, making sure it's finished correctly. And then there are other elements about job site troubleshooting, property owner maintenance, landscaping, example plans, so on and so forth. So this is a very comprehensive document, again, governed by the DC-10 committee, and it really captures all the different steps in the process of building a post-tension slab on ground. And like I say, I'll dive in next to the important aspects that this talks further about as far as personnel certification. So now, again, from this document and from the linkage back to M-10-6, this is where we get into the critical thing. It talks about field personnel certification. As I mentioned, huge takeaway number two, you've got these great materials that have come from a certified PTI, certified plant, so high-quality materials handled correctly, stored correctly, ready to use, but it doesn't continue the quality story unless we have the right personnel using these materials and putting them into the structure correctly. So proper installation, proper support of the tendons on the subgrade, making sure all the details are installed correctly, and then ultimately stressing those tendons, finishing them, and then the overarching, obviously, even inspection of that work, pre-pour inspection, making sure everything complies with the installation drawings, the special details, working around slab penetrations at corners, at re-entrant corners, at steps and drops and things of that nature. All that stuff has to be done in a high-quality way, and by having the right personnel certified accordingly, that's where the great materials now are installed in a great way, and now we have the double benefit of high-quality materials and workmanship. So this is where the PT and rebar installation supervisor is listed as a requirement to be level one or two slab-on-ground installer certified, so this is directly tied to, again, our PTI workshop to work with slab-on-ground installation and inspection, so that certification comes from that slab-on-ground workshop, which I'll talk about, and then the OR element here is a level one unbonded PT certification, so there's our primary workshop we have that a lot of people take is our level one unbonded PT workshop, which its focus is on elevated work, but ultimately it's got a lot of fundamentals about working with unbonded PT, and the highest quantity of certifications we give out every year is level one unbonded, so the caveat here is you could have either one of these certifications as a training step to work your way into this supervisory role. When it comes to stressing operation personnel, this is when those personnel involved in that are going to need to be, again, either slab-on-ground installer certified or the level two of that unbonded PT installer, so this is where, again, the way this is documented, either OR option, but it's really important, especially on stressing. It's a very dangerous activity. It's important to do it correctly to transfer the force to the structure to begin with, but it's also very, very important to do it safely and securely so you don't wind up having someone who's inexperienced and untrained out there dealing with extremely large forces like 33,000 pounds of tensile force when they're a novice and they don't know what they're doing, so that's the stressing certification requirement, and then inspection level two slab-on-ground inspector or level two unbonded PT inspector, another element referring to our workshops, so as I dive into these further, the big takeaway here, too, is you can see if you don't have these requirements, if you've got a contractor and their foreman and their work crew and everyone out there is just doing this kind of construction without proper training, without proper education, without the wherewithal to know how to do this stuff as it's meant to be done in a high-quality way but also done safely and done for long-term durability reasons, the outcomes are unknown, so it's a matter of really trying to improve and amp up that side of the equation as well and make sure that the people have the right credentials to be able to do this work. So touching on that workshop I've been mentioning here, this is the slab-on-ground installer student workbook kind of shown off to the right, this goes along with the class, it's a two-day workshop and it's a thorough education on everything that our, in this case, our committee CRT 30, which deals with workshops of this nature, put together and is constantly enhancing and augmenting so we can provide a really good training and education for the people that are doing this kind of work, so this is where kind of working through the general modules that are included in this two-day training, we kick off with an introduction to prestressing and post-tensioning, some of the fundamental things people need to learn, we get into unbonded and bonded PT and the differences and other PT applications, we talk in great detail about system components and fabrication so we get everyone a full understanding of what's, what are the pieces and parts of an unbonded tendon, how is the manufacturing process accomplished and what's the important elements of each one of those components and how they all fit together, we even talk about forces and losses, we talk about imparting that PT force on the slab through the stressing operation and then ultimately talking about how there's a initial force and then a final effective force and how that pre-compression and how that prestressing benefits the slab structure and how it actually does its job to perform the prestressing operation, so we get into that, we spend a lot of time on shipping, handling and storage, this is where again the plant can do a great job manufacturing but then ultimately that has to go from the plant to the job site and be handled correctly and be protected from damage and be ultimately installed in the project and maintain its quality nature that it was manufactured with, so we talk a lot about that for the field people and then an entire section on contract documents, plans, specs, submittals, we spend a lot of time rolling up our sleeves and going through a set of drawings, explaining how the drawings are laid out, what they mean, what specific details are all about, what all that, what all that has to do with in terms of a typical project to really help prepare the mindset of these folks so that when they get into their own real projects in the real world they've had experience looking at these drawings and looking at specifications and understanding what they mean and how they need to apply their knowledge to that project they're working on after they take the class. Another huge module is on installation, spend a lot of time about the proper way to install PT, obviously how to support it on the chairs, how to anchor it, how to avoid misalignments, how to do the right things to sweep around slab penetrations, all that kind of stuff. Concrete placement, as I mentioned earlier, even though the people installing PT and rebar may not per se be the people placing the concrete, there's elements of that the contractor needs to be involved in to ensure proper consolidation at anchorages, proper concrete phase construction so that ultimately the post-tensioning can work with that concrete to perform as desired, and then the critically important stressing operation I've talked about which is where in this case slab on ground tendons, you've got this window, a lot of times you'll see a partial pre-stress accomplished even in a 24-hour period and then ultimately no more than seven or ten days later the full pre-stressing is applied to the slab and so that stressing operation is where we finally apply the force to the structure and it's got to be done correctly in all regards. Elongations to confirm, the elongations measured against a calculated elongation that was set up on the drawings and then tendon finishing where they're going to cut tails and grout pockets and in the case of encapsulation they're going to have a encapsulation cap and other requirements as well. And then lastly some other troubleshooting items and then the exam itself, so the day two afternoon where they take the exam, multiple choice and the combination of attending the workshop, going through all the learning exercises, and then passing the exam is all encompassing part of the whole process of being field personnel certified for slab on ground installer inspector. The level one and two differential, level one is a basic requirement going through the program and passing the exam. For level 2, there's a higher exam score required, higher percentage correct answers required, as well as an affidavit required for your work experience to get to level 2. So when people get into these workshops, that's all explained to everybody as to exactly how that plays out. But again, it's a very thorough education, very thorough training. Ultimately, certification they get is going to have a four-year term. And so at the end of that four-year period, they're going to go through a renewal process through other additional things with PTI online, additional exam, just to keep up to date on the newest standards and things that may have changed over the last four years. So this program is huge. It's, again, super critical that we get the benefits out of it that come from the people being properly trained and educated that are doing this kind of work. I'll refer you to our website, again, for a deeper probe into understanding more specifics about our certification program for plants. Again, there's also an opportunity there to be able to look up certified plants through our website. You can enter in specific regional information or plant type based on what kind of work they do. And you can find certified plants through our website. So that's something you can look at after this webinar and go check that out. And then, of course, our personnel certification. There's several different workshops. Obviously, there's the level one unbonded I mentioned. This specifically, the slab on ground installer inspector is the focus of this discussion because of the nature of this webinar. But there are obviously other workshops on multi-strand PT. There's repair and rehab workshops. We've got every other possibility there that you can think of related to the PT industry. And we're even adding more as it comes in the future things down the road. So just as a highlight, too, and actually as we speak right now down in Houston, Texas, there's a certification week going on right now where there's people there learning these things. While we're in this webinar, they're learning things in Houston physically on site. We've got other upcoming certification weeks, Miami, Denver, Austin. So if you are interested in attending one of these workshops, don't think of it as you have to be a field personnel person or a contractor or a PT installer stressor. You can be a LDP engineer. You can be an architect. You can be a person who's an interested party that might be a home builder, might be someone who's on the ownership side. Whatever it might be, these workshops are available for everyone to be able to learn more. Obviously, you get PDHs as well through the workshop. So I put that out there simply to let you know that that training opportunity is a furtherance of our educational objectives here at PTI. And lastly, there are special request workshops. There's companies that have come to us that want to get their entire crew or something certified at their location. So we can do special request workshops as well that aren't part of our weekly setups and help train large groups of people as well at your home office or location. One second. So again, what's the key here? What's the ultimate point of all this? Kind of touched on it a couple of times, but our major benefits that we were trying to achieve from this entire coaching is that we started this journey six or seven years ago, was, again, higher quality materials first and foremost. We want to improve upon the materials that are being used on these types of projects. We feel strongly that a material coming out of a PTI-certified plant is going to be of a much higher quality and is going to have gone through a certified process that ensures that and make sure that you're getting the best materials possible to use on this type of construction. And then secondarily, as I mentioned, higher quality installation, stressing, finishing, inspection. So when people are properly trained and know how to use this material, know how to correctly place it in the forms, place it on its chair supports, and work it around MEP penetrations, and do the right things with backup bars at the anchored zones, and proper things to follow the details and drawings that they're using for installation, not to mention stressing and finishing, the outcome is obviously going to be of a higher quality. When someone is inexperienced and they just learned it from someone who learned it from someone and it's all word of mouth but not anyone properly certified, there can be trouble, there can be challenges, and there can be outcomes we don't want to see. So that's critical. Safety is another huge byproduct. Again, when you have a great appreciation for the kind of forces you're dealing with, trying to understand that and the people that go through the program to understand that's a large force, you have to do things correctly and safely. You can't be standing over the jack. You can't be putting yourself in harm's way. If concrete isn't placed correctly, or something happens with stressing incorrectly, you could have blowouts. You can have various other things that aren't safe. So that's an incredibly important thing that we want to improve upon. We also see schedule savings. When you've got people that are more efficient and better trained, it inevitably avoids a lot of challenges, a lot of rework, a lot of other problems that may have to be rectified. So you save schedule. Any crew that's properly trained like this can work more efficiently and quickly. So while we don't identify any kind of a cost differential between the way things were and the way things will be when this is incorporated, we do see a schedule savings. I mentioned troubleshooting. Fewer incidences, fewer troubleshooting issues. And that goes for during construction, even shortly after construction, things of that nature. So we want to have that improvement. Ultimately, improve structural durability. This is, again, with better finishing techniques and a better understanding overall, you're going to have a more durable outcome for the long haul. And that passes along from the home builder or the apartment builder, whatever it might be, onto the people that live there. And when they inherit ownership of that and inherit that whole thing going forward, improvements in that realm are really important. And then lastly, of course, relative to home builder warranty issues and risk mitigation, we see there being a great value in that regard as well. So this all ties into our education objectives and goals. This is where PTI is spending a lot of time this year. In keeping with this code change and with our campaign of stronger standards and exceptional structures, we want to go out and educate. And this is part of that. Educate engineers, architects, design builders. Educate them on what this code change means, the importance of it, and have them understand the value of it and what it means. Obviously, we know each jurisdiction is going to adopt ultimately IRC 2024 in different stages. Some are still working on an IRC even pre-2021. And it takes a while for those things to adopt. One of the emphasis I put on that is if I talk to engineers and talk to those in control of the contract documents, is nothing's stopping you from incorporating these requirements that are spelled out in DC 10.5 and M10.6 and DC 10.2. Nothing's stopping you from incorporating that into your specifications in your contract documents now. It isn't only something you have to wait for the umbrella of the IRC code being adopted in your local jurisdiction for you to incorporate that into your project. So we're going to spend a lot of time educating these engineers and folks to make them understand it and leverage the benefits. Municipalities and building owners and inspectors, this is, again, another key. The inspector side needs to have a better appreciation of what this means, understand the nuances, and be able to enforce those requirements as they do in their inspection work. Homebuilders, contractors, subcontractors, again, the ones that are going to be having the personnel that are working on their projects, understanding the benefits, understanding when they're buying PT from suppliers and however they've got the construction project structured, whether it's self-reformed or subcontracted or whatever might be an important aspect for them to have a grasp of what this all means and how it changes things for the better across the board. And then lastly, again, even home sellers, real estate agents, homeowners, this is where a home builder can even use this to their advantage to say, look, we adhere to higher standards. Here's the benefit you're going to get for your house foundation. So many people spend time looking at brick and windows and front doors and doorknobs and all these architectural things, and then obviously the inside of a house and how it's finished out. And they just kind of take for granted that the superstructure and the foundation is all going to be just fine, and it's got this 10-year warranty or whatever. But what really comes down to it is when someone has a better understanding of how this greatly improves the structure overall that this house is sitting on, it's going to be something that can be promoted as well by these home builders and people selling a house that's been built this way and so on and so forth. So great benefits trickle down from the people that design them, the people that build them all the way down to the people that live in them, whether it's multifamily, single family, whatever it may be. So I'll kind of wrap up here and encourage you to check out the microsite that we put together with more information. It's called ptstrongerstandards.com, and it takes you to this, again, other microsite that PTI has created, has all kinds of other information on the code chains, some of the things I've talked about today, other references and resources. And ultimately, it just continues to grow upon the idea of explaining this to the stakeholders that are involved, explaining it for educational reasons and to enhance everyone's understanding of how a simple addition of a clause to the IRC 2034 has a very important trickle-down connectivity to these other standards and codes and requirements and how that ultimately benefits the industry as a whole. And one last comment is this actually is a picture here, snapshot from a video I provided our marketing staff of my house when it was being built back in 2020. And you can only imagine how much fun the contractor had having me be the homeowner when they were building my house. So with that, I will wrap up and leave us time here for some questions and turn it back over to Kyle to kind of moderate those. Perfect. All right. So we have a handful of questions here, Tim. First one goes to, you were talking about online on PTI's website, there is a way to go in and look at the certified suppliers that are in there. Is that just in the list form or is that you have to put in the actual name of the supplier for them to see? You can look up by city, state, type of plant. There's different little checkboxes and other criteria to input, but you can look up. If you wanted to just look up all the people in California that can do such and such type of fabrication or supply or whatever, you can look at it in a lot of different ways. You don't have to have the full-blown name of the plant to insert or only one, there's not just one way to look things up. So it's kind of a variety of ways you can look up a certified plant using that tool. Perfect. And then, so field personnel certification, you talked a lot about those certifications, the courses and that. Is it the same cert for doing a residential home like you were just showing as it would be for more of a commercial slab-on-grade post-tension application? Right. So the slab-on-ground workshop is not only for residential. So that, yeah, I mean, obviously I focused on it in this context for this discussion, but our slab-on-ground workshop applies to all slab-on-ground construction. It gets into the specifics of slab-on-ground. If it was on a retail, commercial, industrial slab versus a residential slab, those principles carry over. The only thing different is, again, if you're talking about elevated structures, multi-level elevated structures, which, again, in their case, exclusively use encapsulated systems, that's where you get into our level one to unbonded class. It's a different workshop that really talks about elevated. But from the slab-on-ground standpoint, the answer to the question is, yeah, it's applicable to different types of slab-on-ground, not just residential. Perfect. And a couple of kind of technical following the code questions that we have on here. So R506.1 is that first section in the IRC that talks just generally about post-tension, or I'm sorry, about slab-on-grounds. And then R506.2 talks about post-tensioning. Is there any conflict between the two when you have a post-tension slab on slab-on-ground expansive? So do you just instantly go to R506.2? Do you have to also be working with R506.1, which, you know, hands you off to ACI? How's that kind of interaction between the two work? Yeah, the R506.2 added in to be separate from R506.1 is intended to specifically single out post-tension slab-on-ground. If you have a conventionally reinforced slab, any other type of slab foundation under a residential structure, whatever, that's tied back to R506.1. But when you get into post-tension slab specifically, the R506.2 was added for that reason. So there are, again, like I mentioned, if you look at IBC, there are some things there that still need to be cleaned up, but still talk about ACI 332 and relative to stable soil versus DC 10.5 for expansive soil. So on that side of the equation and how that links back to ACI stuff, a little bit of other thing is forthcoming. But in the IRC, the specificity of R506.2 is to really treat PT slabs differently. Yeah, and make it clear this is where you go to. Yeah, great, great question. Another one is, so R506 in the IRC is for floors, and obviously these are floors, but they also double as foundations systems on there. Is there any thought to section four, which is foundations, how does this interact with it? Is R506.2 good for both the floors and the foundation aspect of this system that we're installing? Right, and that's a great question, and I know who may be asking that, I knew that would come up. So that's another tricky thing that's kind of also out there dangling a little bit for clarification when you see the way the IRC is structured. So that's another item that we have the terminology of foundations versus slab on ground always has been kind of lingering over the years. And so that's being looked at closer by DC 10, revisited as well. Ultimately, from what we've, discussions we've had with the ICC officials and other even building officials have, from their standpoint, have seen clarity with the way the 506.2 does its job. But I do understand that there's some other items in chapter four and some other sections that blur the lines a little bit when it comes to the term foundations versus slab on, or floors on grade or slab on ground. So that's a great question. The answer I have is that that's still maybe a slight work in progress on a few other dangling gray areas, but we'll ultimately get there. So. All right, so just kind of move on a little bit. But as you guys can see, to recap, today's presentation was really focused on, are you doing it right and not the technicalities of the design? And, you know, that's something we often lack as we're, you know, whether we're a designer, a supplier, an installer, are we doing it right? Especially if nobody taught you how to do it previously. And so as you go into PT slab on grounds, today's presentation is one you can go back, you can reference, you can really see, yeah, from the design standpoint, this is the process I follow, all the way from the ICC international resident code down to the PT documents, PTI documents on there. And the same with the material certifications, you know, are you using a certified supplier on the material? Then the installation, just how important that is on the projects, you can really hound in and show, you know, the project team, these are the requirements that you're really looking for from the install side. So today's presentation gives you that confidence that you're just doing it right and you're following the right process. The way PTI is set up is it's definitely not a cowboy, just do it this way. My dad taught me this way, his poppy taught him this way. There's a very stringent process that we're trying to get across there. So with that, now we've set the foundation, then future ones, and we are planning on doing future ones that get more into the technical part of PT slab on grounds and the technical design side of it on there. So there will be future ones coming in months on that, since we now have this basis of understanding for the process as a whole from start to finish. So for the next three future ones coming up, June 12th, resilience of PT segmental bridges. So we're stepping away from the building side of things, we're going to the bridge side of things. July 10th, then we're going to evaluation of existing PT concrete structures. So we're going away from the initial design side that we're always so focused on to how do you evaluate the existing structures. And this is something that comes up a lot, and there's a lot of older PT buildings out there that are getting retrofitted and you're doing design analysis to see if the new occupancy case can work. So this will be a strong presentation for designers out there. And then August 14th, a personal favorite topic of mine, but dual banded tendon layouts. We're talking about elevated post-tension slabs now. You know, you traditionally have the banded and the uniform distribution. Now we're going banded-banded, and we're talking about the updates, testing that's been done, how we're looking at code provision changes. So that's definitely an exciting one for August. With that, like I said at the beginning, if you missed this or had to leave early, you can go online, you can rewatch it, you can take the quiz, you can get the crads for it, you can do it for any of the previous ones. If you have more questions that pop up, you can get a hold of Tim through his information there. You can also get a hold of Post-Tension Institute at that info at post-tensioning.org. Either one of those will get you to it so we can get those technical questions answered. We usually receive several at the end of this. And we will see you in a month from now on Wednesday, at this first Wednesday of the month at the same exact time. Thanks for showing up, guys. Have a good one.

Kyle Boyd

webinar

Post-Tensioning Institute

2024 IRC

PT slab on ground

code changes

PTI standards

material certification

field personnel training