THE SOLUTION TO COMMODITIZATION? IN A WORD, PASSION
My father recently celebrated his 80th birthday, and as often happens at gatherings I’m involved with, the conversation turned to concrete.
It isn’t easy living with a construction materials evangelist. My wife and children quickly developed coping mechanisms for my concrete enthusiasm.
My youngest son, Ben, age 19, rolls his eyes heavenward and walks away. His older brothers, Marc (age 25) and David (age 22) not-so-gently place their hands on my shoulders and remark they “can’t take me anywhere.”
My wife, Chris (a child-bride and ageless beauty), pre-apologizes for the passion she knows I will bring to the discussion. At my father’s birthday party, my parents smiled and searched for the earliest opportunity to change the subject.
Yet passion is precisely the point. Paraphrasing author/management consultant Tom Peters: “If you can’t get excited about what you do for a living, can you really lay claim to being alive?”
According to archaeologists, concrete has been alive for more than 8,500 years, starting when stone age Syrians constructed permanent fire pits for heating and cooking. Their actions lead to the primitive calcining of the surrounding rock, and the discovery of lime as a key ingredient for building materials. Central burning kilns were soon built throughout the region, and mortar and concrete were produced for floors, rubble-wall shelter construction, and cistern waterproofing.
Concrete technology had arrived.
Quality and Passion
Quality and consistency were important initial goals of the new concrete technology … and they remain important today. But quality, defined as ongoing conformance to specified requirements, does not assure the success of the ready-mix industry in the 53172 delivery area. Today, specification conformance is what Peters calls “your ticket to the dance.”
You won’t be asked to bid without a track record of quality. But other factors, both tangible and intangible, also come into play, including knowledge, skill, experience, style, craftsmanship, flair, delivery expertise, communication skills, enthusiasm, service, and sales and marketing savvy.
In a word, passion.
Paraphrasing Kosmatka and Panarese, authors of the thirteenth edition of the Portland Cement Association engineering bulletin, Design and Control of Concrete Mixtures, “Fundamentally, concrete is a simple mixture of two components – aggregates and paste.” Quality concrete depends on the conformance to specified requirements for each of these components as delivered to the job site (and to fundamentals of good practice in the placing, finishing, curing, and protection operations of the concrete contractor installing the quality product).
But as long-time readers of this blog know, concrete is more than fundamental. It is no less than the most beautiful, durable, practical, versatile, affordable, available, inspirational, permanent, and environmentally-friendly building material in the history of our planet. No other building materials can provide such outstanding long-term benefits and value.
Ready-mix producers able to passionately communicate the long-term benefits and value of their quality product can stave commoditization. The rest are consigned to eroding profits, casualties of marketplace capacity discontinuities.
Wisconsin ready-mix stakeholders, the commoditization ball is yours to control. Will you convey your natural passion to the 53172 marketplace? Or are you content to be order-takers?
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POSTSCRIPT
Last week’s post included information on LEED for Homes. Click HERE to download the PCA Technology Brief: Sustainable Concrete Solutions for LEED for Homes.
POSTSCRIPT 2
This is the last post in the blog series, Concrete 53172. It has been a great year of blogging and learning. Thank you for reading and for commenting on the posts.
Continued success to you, personally and professionally.