Tudor Van Hampton/ENR World’s Longest. Chinese boom placed concrete outside Las Vegas at Manhattan West.

Contractors at the first major industry event of the year woke up on Jan. 22, the show’s first day, to the Federal Reserve board’s 0.75% discount interest rate cut, which many felt was a panicky move. That, on top of a tumble in industry stock values,  left people wondering what construction markets would have in store this year.

Still, the four-day World of Concrete show in Las Vegas held some surprises. “It’s going to be a transition of at least 12 to 18 months before we work our way out of this” unsettled market, said Dale Jones, president of Terex Corp.’s roadbuilding unit, which expects flat sales in 2008. However, Terex’s business in Latin America was up 10% to 12% last year and remains strong. “Pretty much everyone has seen a significant downturn except the South American markets,” Jones said.

Across the 900,000-sq-ft show floor, buyers said they were holding off from making major purchases. “I’m not buying hardly anything until the second quarter,” said Don Ahern, owner of Las Vegas-based Ahern Rentals and Xtreme Manufacturing, a telehandler exhibitor. He plans on “waiting to see” how markets pan out.

Tudor Van Hampton/ENR Despite housing woes, exhibitors spent millions to display their wares at the 900,000-sq-ft event.

Show managers likewise had diminished expectations after booking a record attendance last year of 91,628. Partly due to the cooling economy and the upcoming CONEXPO-CON/AGG megashow in March, their initial prediction for turnout was nearly a 13% decline. But show officials, who are still assessing the numbers, said in an upbeat tone that day one only saw a falloff closer to 10%.

Of the 1,700 vendors, the largest exhibitors each paid about $200,000 to buy their spread, which represents on average just a quarter of their total promotional costs. Despite the full show, the fallout from the collapsing housing market permeated the atmosphere.

“A recession is looking like more of a reality into 2009, with recovery not occurring until 2010,” said Edward J. Sullivan, chief economist of the Skokie, Ill.-based Portland Cement Association.

But Sullivan noted long-term cement use is expected to grow by 43% to 183 million tonnes by 2030. This anticipated growth across all construction sectors is already fueling investments of $6 billion in capacity expansions the equivalent of 25 million tonnes now under way throughout the U.S.

“Sixty-three million more people will be living in the U.S. in 2030, and they will need homes, schools, hospitals and roads,” Sullivan said. “This construction will boost demand for cement to record levels.” Highways, which account for 30% of consumption, will grow by a minimum of 400,000 lane-miles to serve 50 million more motorists.

Demand for “green” construction materials also may increase cement use. The greater use of insulated concrete-form walls will add 8 million tonnes to cement intensities (cement use per dollar of construction) by 2030 and account for more than 30% of new homes, up from 7% today, Sullivan predicted. These walls cut energy bills by as much as 44%, he claimed.

Tony Illia/ENR

Tudor Van Hampton/ENR Fast-handed masons competed for a new pickup truck as others tore up power tools at the annual concrete exhibition.

There was no shortage of competition among vendors looking to sell, though many said they were waiting until CONEXPO to unleash their latest. That did not stop pump-truck suppliers from hustling in true Olympic spirit. China-based Sany Heavy Industry Co. Ltd. on Jan. 23 shuttled conventioneers outside the city to a $350-million, mixed-use project called Manhattan West, where it demonstrated a 66-meter boom, the world’s longest. The 141,000-lb rig is not road-legal in the U.S., but Sany said it is working with Mack Trucks and will roll one out stateside later this year.

Putzmeister America Inc. announced it is building a 70-m boom on a Kenworth tractor-trailer that will be shipped to a U.S. customer in May. Schwing America Inc. said it is not chasing world records. “We’ve got our 61-m today, [but] we’re always developing new products,” explained Brian Hazelton, vice president of sales and marketing.

Elsewhere, contractors got a free demonstration of Alibaba.com, a China-based online trading Website of 24 million members that hooks up buyers and sellers around the world. Caution is advised. “Don’t give them a range of specifications, or it goes straight to the bottom,” said Sivert Mysse, who runs Titan Oil & Gas Services Inc., Havre, Mont. Also busy displaying was Rodney Coomer of Campbellsville, Ky., a veteran contractor who displayed “Finishing Slicks,” a $50 overshoe he invented to help prevent pesky footprints in wet concrete. He sold out on the first day.

Finally, the American Concrete Institute updated ACI-318, the first major revision to the building code since 2005. In addition to no longer requiring design pre-approval for admixtures, the code revamped seismic requirements for most categories. This includes a detailing option for diagonally reinforced coupling beams that allows for either confinement of the individual diagonals or additional reinforcement around and through the link beam. It also raises the design yield strength for confinement reinforcement to 100 ksi.