technical brief

Best Practice for Pavement: Writing Concrete Specs for Durability and Sustainability

Publication Date

March 1, 2017

Areas of Expertise

Infrastructure Delivery, Operations, & Resilience

Abstract

Concrete mixes for all applications chiefly rely on Portland cement (ASTM C150) to give them strength and durability. For this reason, specifications in traditional concrete mix designs were written to ensure that they used enough cement to meet strength and durability requirements, and often included minimum cement content requirements to be sure the buyer got their money’s worth.Unfortunately, research and practice have shown that this approach can worsen performance and carry the greatest environmental impacts—while still costing more money.