EP #155: EPDs, Data Centers, and the New Paperwork Hitting Concrete Producers

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1:02It's for concrete people want to get better at the work, not theory, not recycle conference slides. Stuff you can actually use on the job. Go to concreteschool.co and get free access while it's open. Again, that's concreteschool.co What's the most used man-made material on earth? I'll give you the answer. Concrete. This is the concrete logic podcast. Have you ever stopped to think about the sidewalks, driveways, bridges, or the buildings around you? They're all made from concrete. So why don't we discuss it more? In each episode of concrete logic, we'll explore a unique concrete related topic with the help of industry professionals shaping the trade's future. We'll talk with suppliers, contractors, architects, engineers, specialists, and even proponents of competing materials. We'll get their views on concrete and their visions for its future.

2:03So get ready to mix things up with concrete logic. Where we turn the spotlight on the material that's everywhere but often overlooked. This is the concrete logic podcast. And now, use your host, Seth Tandett. And welcome to another episode of the concrete logic podcast. I'm excited today. We have Liza Sanderman with Pathway. She's one of the co-founders of Pathways and you're like, what's Pathways? Well, they are a technology company, I would say, that helps ready-mix suppliers with EPDs. And you're like, what are EPDs? Well, we're going to answer that for you too today. So stick around. We'll explain what EPDs are. Why you should care about EPDs? Who's asking for EPDs? Yeah. So stick with us. Before we get into the topic again, I just want to remind everybody how you can support the podcast. If you go to the concrete logic podcast.com website, there's a couple of ways you can get a hold of me.

3:08If you're on the homepage and you look at the top of the page, there's a menu that runs across. And one of those menu options says, ask Seth. If you click on Ask Seth, it'll open up an email form and you can fill that out. And what I'm looking for are topic or guest suggestions. So if there's something you want to hear, what you want to learn about, please reach out. Let me know if you don't like the type. There's another way you can get a hold of me in the bottom right hand corner of the same homepage. There's a little microphone. You click on that and I'll start recording your voice right off your computer. How cool is that? And you can leave me a voicemail. People have been doing that lately. I appreciate it. I love hearing from the audience. And then the next way you can help me out is this podcast is supportive on the value for values system. Liza, she's a fan of Adam Curry. I'm a fan of Adam Curry. Some of you will get that know who Adam Curry is and why I brought that up. But anyways, value for value. So if you get some value out of the show, what we do is we ask you to send some value back in the way you can do that is through a donation.

4:11So you click on the donate button and another page will pop up and you can put any amount in there you want. It doesn't tell you how much to donate. I don't know how much the podcast is worth to you. I shouldn't tell you how much is worth to you. Tell me when you put that in there. And then another way you can support the concrete logic podcast is we also have the concrete logic academy. If you go to concrete logic academy.com. You can join there as a member and we have courses in there. So if you're a professional engineer, you need professional development hours, you know, education units, we can supply those that there as well. If you're a concrete producer or a concrete contractor and you just want to get, you know, want to learn more about the industry and things that you can actually use on the job. You can go there and learn there. We have we have courses quizzes. We have resources. We have a place you can post your question.

5:13So if you have a question that maybe you don't want to put out on LinkedIn, but you want someone within the concrete community to help you out. There's a place to post those questions. Please check it out concrete logic academy.com. That's I think that's all I got Liza. Liza, thank you for joining us today. Can you you explain or could you introduce yourself a little bit better than I do and explain what you are up to over a pathways? Well, first of all, so thank you so much for inviting me on here and for everything you're doing to kind of push the push the industry forward. I absolutely love the work on the concrete academy, especially. I guess, you know, you already introduced me. Well, I'm a huge material nerd and I think of my mission as building great technology to make the life much easier for everyone who's out on the front lines actually building our societies and really practically. I do that through helping generate a lot of this documentation you need today and especially these environmental product declarations, right? That's really where I've started out solving real problems for manufacturers.

6:18Yeah, so let's start there. What the heck is a EPD? You said it really quickly. What does it stand for? Yeah, EPD, environmental product declaration. I think of it as like the environmental nutrition facts, but instead of calories and carbohydrates, we're looking at chemical and carbon. Ultimately, what this document, typically a PDF, a few pages long tells you is of the particular mix of concrete you have put that day. What is the environmental footprint and what are the other biodiversity impacts of actually that cubic feet of concrete? Okay. And all summarized into a nice document. And who's asking for these? Yeah, so typically most of our customers, I mean, ready mix concrete producers with anything from one plant to 50 plants have a number of different types of customers who might be asking for this, right? A lot of where EPD saw originated from was cities or you have like the New York authorities

7:21say, well, we want to reduce the carbon footprint of the big infrastructure projects we have. We're building a new airport and we're expanding the harbor. How do we do this in a way that doesn't break the environmental bank, so to speak? Now, however, we're seeing this really perforate throughout American society. And the biggest demand we're seeing among our customer basis from data center, which also happens to be the biggest growth area in American construction. You know, well, while you might be looking at the front news and you're like, you know, I certainly have investors who are like, it's as environmental first in this product declaration. Have you not read the news? You know, you're not following along and I'm saying, well, listen, this is not about, this is not just about the climate. This is about good business for very real producers who are trying to win bits every day out in the market. Yeah. So they've been out these EPDs not that long. It's like a handful of years when I started first hearing about them. How long have they been around in? Yeah, they started as more of like an academic exercise, right?

8:23Like how typically a lot of this stuff starts it, the environmental product declaration is underpinned by what's called the life cycle assessment. I get it. Everyone listening now is like, oh, no, not another acronym. LCA's LCA's exactly. And what this basically says is, well, figure out what all your input materials are, figure out how they're transported to your manufacturing site and then figure out what you do with them at your actual manufacturing site. And you know, you sum all these together and that tells you what, you know, for example, what's the waste water production or what's the water that's been used in this? So what's the biodiversity impact in our local environment? What's the global warming? And that started around 10 years ago, but then formalizing this into something that actually has, you know, driving, deciding power in purchasing decisions is really something we've only started seeing the last handful of years. Yeah. And so are they using these to compare concrete to other materials? Is that what they're doing with the APDs? Yeah. They're doing a few different things. They're both comparing different materials.

9:24And then they're also comparing different concrete from different suppliers. So what we're seeing a lot often, anyone who makes concrete as already makes produce, I won't be surprised when I say this. A lot of this comes from who you're buying your cement from. The reality is there's a huge difference right now in the market in the footprint of these different cements. But there's also a big difference in terms of, you know, your strength, class, what else you're putting into the concrete SCMs, what do you have access to in your local environment and how far of a distance do you need to transport it? And all of these things are things that drive that ultimate number and how buyers might be comparing you to other producers. Okay. So are you getting data from the cement manufacturers to as far as? Yeah. We've loaded into the back end of our platform. All cement producers in the U.S. and what their respective EPDs are. So now you're starting to see it, you know, you're adding the cement EPD and the amount, the quantity of cement you're using with the EPD of that cement,

10:25the aggregate and the aggregate EPD. You might be using some ad mixtures or, you know, other component tree and that's the, that's the big matrix of data that we try to pull in on pathways and make it a lot easier for for anyone who needs to do this. Okay. So there, you have an EPD that covers concrete itself and then each individual material within concrete, you got EPD as well. Yeah, that's exactly right. Basically for every single material, it's like a safety sheet or some other kind of production, production information, you need that at the specific component tree level. Okay. No, that sounds like a lot of math. Yeah, exactly. It's a lot of math and, and, and unfortunately, if we look just a few years back, or even a lot of producers now, it's a lot of manual work being put on, you know, owner operator, so QC manager. So, you know, a driver at the end of that day to then collect all this dates and make sense of it. Yeah, when it, when I'm vaguely remembering when it first came out, it seemed like everyone was using like a generic EPD.

11:27So each producer was using the same EPD. So there was no difference from producer to producer. So obviously that's gotten, I don't know, better, where's what, how everyone look at it, but everybody has a different EPD now. Is that right? Yeah, because the reality is the EPD, I think of it as like, it's that nutrition label, but it's just a mirror of your exact production site. Right. And what most producers realized was, well, if I use my actual own data, it's a lot better than these very conservative averages I've been using, which means you're starting to actually get wins out of making real improvements. And if that can make you, you know, 20% more likely to win that data sense of job, that's real, that's, that's, that's millions of dollars. Yeah, that spurred a bunch of questions. Let's, the question I wanted to ask you next was, okay. So I'm trying to remember now. So you're comparing producers, oh, I know what I wanted to ask you. So EPD, you got EPDs from each material, cement, sand, rock.

12:30What other data goes into a concrete EPD? Yeah. So three, this is a three key pieces. It's hard to say, but we're not over again. I was a real chunk to a style is putting on myself. No need for me to make the three here, but it is in fact three. You need first, all of the input materials. And that's where, you know, what we get from our, uh, uh, from a radio mix producers, we just asked them to send us their supplier lists. They can do this fully on format. We will then match it with all data that's been published in the US to make sure we kind of have the right input. So that's one input materials. Number two is how it was transported to your site. We can do most of that as well because we know where most of most suppliers are located, but did this come by barge? Did it come via terminal? Did you happen to get some end out of yet nan via terminal? And then, you know, transported part of the way or by some other means. And then what actually happens on your site, you know, your water bill, your fuels, your electricity, anything else that goes into your production. If you have those three pieces of data, you basically have

13:32a perfect mirror of your production process. And I was on a call with a radio mix producer a few weeks ago who saw our platform and who said, well, that's just my production process. And I said, that's exactly what an EPD is. It's just summed up what your production process actually is. If it looks different than your production process, something has gone wrong. I gotcha. So you're, you're getting utility information where their power comes from. So how their power generated. Does that affect the EPD? Yeah, it does because the reality is that there's a huge difference and the grid mix and then how power is generated across, I mean, even from city to city, right, neighboring plants can, can look different if they're tied up to a different grid. So it's, so you would have a difference between plant to plant, but also obviously region to region as well. But what's the wind owners said data center? We won't name names a hyperscaler is asking for an EPD. Is there, are they comparing producers to each other?

14:33Or is there a bar that they say they want to be under as far as the environmental impact of that particular concrete mix? Does that question make sense? Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. It's like, what are the buyers actually asking for here? Right. And what are they mentioning against? And unfortunately, the answer is it varies a little bit from hyperscaler to hyperscaler and it varies a little bit from GC and architect working with that particular hyperscaler. But we see two different things. We see, actually, we see three different things. We see in some regions where EPDs are still so nascent that just having the document means you're beating out your competitors because you might be the only one who puts in an EPD with the bit. Great. That shows hyperscaler. Well, you've gone to the effort of actually understanding what your production process is, at least we have some data. And, you know, this gets a little bit like accounting. They need to just report something back, having something is better than nothing. Then we see the next level where we have different benchmarks for the

15:33different mixed strengths being put out by NRM and NRMCA and, you know, also GCCA, so global cementing and concrete association. And these benchmark are increasingly being used to, you know, think about what is reasonable for different strength classes. The reality is, though, you know, anyone who's in this business knows this. It's not like a hyperscaler can be like, well, now let me just get concrete from someone who is 10,000 kilometers away. So you got the landscape you got in your local region, which is why you typically end in that last category, which is it becomes about comparing versus your versus kind of anyone else who's in that region and becomes a really localized comparison. Okay. And then you mentioned earlier, life cycle analysis. So when does that start for the EPD and when does it end for that EPD? Yeah. We do it for a year of data. So we basically average out, you know, you'll wall to use it across a year and then we say, well, over the last year, how much did you produce in total? And that becomes kind of what you think of as the base data

16:35behind. But then every time you produce a new mix, you know, a new mix is a slightly different ratio of the same things and new EPD is generated. Once you're on to our platform and been unborted, typically what we do is we integrate into QC systems. So let me take a good example with our friends at Stonefront. Our goal is actually not that anyone necessarily goes to pathways. Once they're set up, they can do everything they need to do in their native QC system. No additional clicks push the data. We pull that makes information into our system. We generate the EPD and we push it back to them that way. It can become fully integrated into the existing flow. We all know how busy people who make concrete are. They don't need additional software or so interfaces. I got you. I guess, let me reframe that question. So lifecycle analysis for concrete for that EPD is it start from when a shovel is putting a ground to pull that rock out of the ground for that concrete? Yes or no or yes, yes. The short answer is yes, it goes all the way down to the data

17:37input of what like aggregate query did you get this from the reality is that data might sometimes a little harder for our actual producers to get and we are able to provide most of that. But yeah, it does cover the full material. Okay. So from from pulling rock out of the ground, saying sand out of the ground or wherever you're getting your sand from where and then as far as cement is it pulled from? Do you have you seen that cement? I've assumed you've seen a cement EPD. Where does their where does their measure start for lifecycle analysis? Yeah. So for cement EPD, what typically is the most intensive part of creating that actual analysis and we at pathways have created multiple is around clinker production. I mean, that won't surprise anyone who's kind of been close to a cement site. That's where that's where the heat is going. And what obviously is key there is what are the different inputs mainly again here around energy sources. So on the cement site, it's less about suppliers for concrete. It's really about suppliers for cement site. It's more about what's the fuel usage?

18:38Okay. All right. So I understand the start. Okay. And then that EPD for concrete, it measures everything up to the point where it's produced and put in place, right? Is that where the EPD ends going forward in the future? Do you think EPDs will be expanded to include how long concrete lasts like a certain mix actually last like we all assume concrete when it's made a last for decades at a time. What I'm asking is for concrete that certain mixes out there in the world may not last that long. Do you think that'll be considered an EPD one day or is it? Yeah. Yes. So in Europe, we see standards that are now expanding to what they call end of life, right? So how likely is it, you know, then a producer has to figure out from there by what's the average recycling rate? So how long does this actually last or what's kind of demolition rate for? We all know this also really varies by strength class, right? And by end use, the reality is today, this is mostly assumptions.

19:43I then it's assumptions based on some data. But again, what what we see the focus on and what I frankly as like a very pragmatic, pragmatic kind of business owner, think about is what's within the power of the producer? Because what happens once you've solved that concrete and what's it's put, it's kind of, you know, it is kind of out of your hands. What's not out of your hands is how do you recycle your water? Where do you buy your fuels from or which cement are you using? That's very much within your hands. And I think we sent a lot of our focus and also as we give input and feedback to like regulatory drivers in the space that that's kind of where our focus is. Yeah. I was more curious on the different mixes, but also when folks, I had by the time this comes out, I had Doug Mooton on the show, he's a consultant for many of the data center builders out in the world or owners. And what we were, we, I think we briefly talked about and you mentioned it earlier is comparing concrete to other building materials. So the life cycle analysis gets to the point where that

20:47material is delivered on site, right? Yeah. And then the and then what was the term used for the Oh, end of life. End of life. That's what it was. End of is to have an acronym for that one too. They should have we might come up with one right here. Seth just to get another one in the mix. I just there's still there's still information out there that bad mouse concrete. And you were asking me before we hit record why I started this podcast and what this is one of the reasons is that people are misconstruing the carbon footprint of concrete. They think it's it's bad for the earth because it has such a large footprint and it's essentially because of the volume used across the world. It's a very. It's on most used material in the wealth like I might like the intro of the podcast is. Yeah. So that there's a difference between volume and the actual intense energy it takes to produce a building material.

21:49You're you love material. You know this. You worked for steel company before you know where I'm going with this. That's so there's there's there's more work to do on that. Sort of thing if that's going to be a if that's going to be a desire or a requirement from these these folks that are building data centers or whatever large commercial projects is end of life is going to be the next thing right. It's super interesting. And I mean we've all read the news of like well Amazon is going to build a data center out of what all you know we're going to see this like mass timber structures or we're going to create different types of foundations. I think the thing and I'm a material girl like I love materials. I think they're awesome. I think it's it's critical that we build the right infrastructure and the right housing and what people what people ultimately need. But I'm also really pragmatic like I don't think that there is a silver bullet to any of these challenges.

22:50I think there's a lot of slivers of silver and the reality is if we can shift one product like we've shifted you know had concrete producers on our platform that have you know change supplier choice in terms of who they get cement from and their footprint drops by 20% that has real signals down their supply chain. Yeah. And that is a huge impact like you know that's a major major impact and I think that story is often lost in you know the black and white. Yeah. That's sorry to put you on that tangent but well all right so it sounds like you well recognize that a lot of what's built in the United States is built by producers that are have you know they're from two to ten folks within the entire plant you know the dry the owner the owner of the plant he he's jumping in a truck and driving the truck on the road. So if they want to get involved with projects that require

23:51these EPDs it sounds like with the data that's available out there that they have more we can work with that right. I absolutely and this is like the part that like keeps me up at night it's that you know a lot of our competitors or what we see out in the in the market basically requires a owner operator to be an IT department for week and I'm like a week that's a week of loss of sales dispatching site visits like you have any idea how expensive that is. So one of our big philosophies and there's a few different tenants through this first we've built technology so we can take data in whichever format our customers have it. That means you got your fuel bills just send us the fuel bills no need for you to sum it up in an Excel no need to like do the manual work we we've built tech on our end and this is where like I don't think there's any need in like flashing our bay I but it can be really helpful on our back end to actually deliver it number two we always only a phone call away most people still prefer to do things in a phone first way and there is nothing

24:54worth worse than having like you know being able to have five minutes between different site visits or different dispatches and action now is when you could communicate it and you're stuck having to you know email someone coordinated teams meeting to provide some data provide some information and you know these are like you know very small things but it's why we've been able to unboard and you know just just got pulled pulled this data before this call like 25 producers in less than 30 days right from like us even signing them up to having fully verified documentation that they can just generate in their QC systems on our platform and like I just I don't want own operators were out there doing real work to be stock putting in data in Excel spreadsheets or templates. It's just such a waste of time. Yeah it's definitely if you can feed I assume the backbone is some AI that y'all built but it's amazing what you can do with AI if you give it the right information definitely don't want to send it out on a dog like a dog and tell it

25:57tell it to no hallucination I'm like we're just talking good old fashioned machine learning scraping real data. I was like let's not make that data here. Yeah yeah but like crunching real numbers that's good. Yeah so is there in the in the future where do you see these EPDs going is there is there even for folks that are out there that are familiar with EPDs and kind of have the process down do you see anything coming down the pipeline here that you think people should be aware of and making sure they're collecting that data as well. Yeah I mean I think there's a few different things I think first of all it's like we did quite an expansive survey with concrete producers and 50% of them are saying they're expecting EPD publishing to increase this year I mean that's just a you know someone saying this doesn't feel like a wave it feels more like a tsunami and one of the things that you know I just told briefly about QC system integrations ensuring that you then get support as a small

26:59producer in a way they really works well for you you know this again is like you know set set set set with all all the respect and admiration I think you know average average age is between median age is 45 to 50 using systems and views for a long time like let's get something that plays nicely with those existing systems we can put all the fancy technology on the back end but but make sure it works really well in your existing workflow so that so that you can keep your operations running and then I think this awareness frankly that increasingly buyers are looking at the actual numbers in the EPD which means you might have to start thinking about you know what's my different supplier options because this can start mattering matter for for actual deals but as far as do you see anything like like the type of fuel you use at your facility or anything like that that is beyond a current APD do you see anything like that coming down

28:02or have seen that or are we still just trying to grasp the current APD environment right now yeah no I mean the the the relatives I would think of the environmental product declaration as just the sum of what you're actually doing and everything you're doing that can improve your production this is kind of like a new measure of how your production is doing so new fuels that are coming in which we are seeing a lot of drive down that number that makes you more competitive but the framework of the EPD stays the same okay like how you calculated the science of that doesn't really change you're just getting new inputs right so we're seeing new cms come up every day I'm sure you're getting you're getting a bunch of bunch of these as well coming coming in you win bucks and they're just a new input right calculation matter framework stays the same okay all right well did we cover everything that you want to cover today you can always come back you're very I like you you're very excited about concrete so you definitely love it well if if folks want to reach

29:04out to you and learn more about what you do what's the best way well I said we're we're really phone first so I'm going to my phone numbers eight four five five nine nine four eight eight and then can also catch me on my email which is Lysa L E I S E at pathways AI dot CEO you know Google pathways EPDs and and will come up and you can catch us on all kinds of media yeah and if you all didn't catch that I'll put it a link to her in the show notes for the episode so you can check that out as well why is that I appreciate you coming on the show today thank you was such a privilege and pleasure thank you so much you're welcome and folks until next time let's keep it concrete thanks for joining us for another episode of the concrete logic podcast if you got value from the show here's how you can provide value back to support the show visit concrete logic podcast dot com and click the

30:05donate button to send value back all dollar amounts are truly appreciated and now to close out the show here's Mike Dunton bring that a lot of things couple hours open up the side puts a diesel in the lights and wakes up trucks roll up and this ain't how those folks live their lives sweat working overtime while the time their ties for the nine to five so we're out here changing these skylines with one iron and mud we work hard for color give thanks to the Lord above and make a man do something you can't prove hard work calls for a drink or two expect more

31:08it's written in our blood with food iron and mud from the swan's to the city from the long star heat to the woods of the Georgia pine you don't pause and girls you wait afraid to get dirty food clean if you want to see the fire in a roll man's eyes the hot summer sun while the boys caught the days and nights working hard to get that job done with food iron and mud we work hard for dollar give thanks to the Lord above the color of the colors ain't white or blue we're all gray color through and through expect more it's written in our blood

32:08with food iron and mud we work hard for color give thanks to the Lord above and make a man do something you can't prove hard work calls for a drink or two expect more it's written in our blood with food iron and mud

33:12with food iron and mud with food iron and mud we work hard for dollar give thanks to the Lord above and make a man do something you can't prove hard work calls for a drink or two expect more it's written in our blood with food iron and mud