In our last newsletter, we told you VRMCA was starting to offer Webinars to members. And we did! Turnout was good for our first Webinar which focused on the Concrete Design Center. We’re planning more and we’ll let you know when we have the next one lined up! Today we wanted to tell you about the Webinars we’ve offered to our industry partners and others outside the organization.

First up was a Webinar we held in May entitled “The Case for Building Resilient, High-Performance Schools.” This was offered in partnership with the Build With Strength coalition and the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association to engage architects, engineers and general contractors here in Virginia. We consider this an “external audience”. The content was pre-approved by the American Institute of Architects and we were able to offer continuing education credits for AIA members who attended. This presentation focused on ICF  construction, why and how it works, and offered examples of resilient school construction.

Our second external Webinar was held in mid-June and again focused on school construction. This Webinar was titled “Why Build Resilient, High-Performance Schools?” In this case, we targeted school administrators: superintendents, school board members, finance and operations directors. Those who we consider end users/owners. We tailored the content for them by removing a lot of the technical information and hitting the high points of what this type of construction offers. For this version, we included definitions of resilient and zero-energy construction, strategies to get there, success stories, and some high-level information about ICF construction. Our goal was to offer information/educate rather than sell any given product. But of course it was important to at least touch on concrete as a key element for success. VRMCA members were also invited to attend to learn more about the key talking points we used for this audience.

When all is said and done, we were happy with the turnout for both Webinars. More than 64% of those that attended the Webinar in May were architects, engineers or GCs. And although we had hoped for a bigger audience for the June Webinar, 75% of attendees were school administrators!