The PCI Foundation hosted its 4th Professors Seminar in conjluction with Washington University in St. Louis May 22 - 24, 2019. Thirty attendees from schools, PCI regions and precast producers spent three days sharing how to best teach precast concrete topics and how to use industry / academic partnerships to create experiential learning opportunities.
In addition to time spent in the classroom, the attendees spent a morning at St. Louis Prestress in Glen Carbon, Illinois and with Cannon Design in St. Louis.
St. Louis Prestress gave the professors an opportunity to see first hand how a precast plant operates and understand the scope of the materials and the scope of a precast concrete operation. Cannon Design shared several case studies of precast concrete projects it has designed not only in the St. Louis area but in other parts of the country as well.
Of particular interest to the attendees this year was some new precast projects that have been fabricated using forms that have been digitally printed. This new technology is a meaningful breakthrough for the precast indusytry in terms of manpower and time constraints when it comes to some of the more complex designs that architects sometimes request from precast concrete.
The 2019 professors seminar will be help at North Carolina State in Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information, contact Marty McIntyre at info@pci-foundation.org.
