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LaFarge precast concrete products. august 2015 | 21 Building Envelope photography by vic tucker photography/courtesy lafarge canada inc. building designers with science-based principles for thermally efficient, water and air tight building enclosures, with an emphasis on ensuring long-lasting high per- formance," says Brian Hall, managing director at CPCI. The series continues this Fall in Toronto and Montreal. CPCI believes that raising awareness is essential to the sectors growth. In fact Hall adds that advancement of energy codes has resulted in designers approaching envelope design differently. As a result, CPCI is seeing increasing demand for precast concrete. "Precast concrete's edge-to-edge insulation, combined with the noncon- ductive connectors between the interior and exterior concrete layers, can create an efficient thermal break that prevents heat and moisture from penetrating the wall assemblies," says Hall. "By its very nature, precast concrete provides many high- performance attributes and, when precast concrete solutions are properly designed with effective building envelope strategies, designers can further enhance the per- formance of their building." Don Zakariasen, director of marketing, concrete products for Lafarge Canada Inc. in Alberta, agrees that the concrete sector will continue to see growth, despite the recent significant oil price plummet. "It has decimated the energy related engi- neering and design community," he says. "Lots of people who specialized in the design of oil and gas facilities have simply left the province." However, the long-term nature of many industrial/resource-driven projects is helping to keep companies such as Lafarge busy. "We have a backlog of work cur- rently on our plate, and the effect of oil prices to date hasn't been too severe for our precast group," says Zakariasen. "We also foresee an increased demand in assisted living and other projects catering to our aging population; they especially need the precast building envelopes that we supply." Zakariasen doesn't need much prompting to sing the praises of precast enve- lopes, and for good reason; Lafarge precast and pre-stressed concrete is widely used in a variety of construction projects where the repetitive use of standard compo- nents manufactured in a factory can be fully utilized. "Concrete has superior per- formance attributes, fire resistance and sound-control features, and the envelopes contain no material that would be a food source for mould, which makes them ideal for institutional projects – or construction in locations where flooding occurs, as Calgarians living or working in buildings with concrete envelopes discovered dur- ing the aftermath of the floods a few years ago," he says. Architectural precast concrete panels currently offered by Lafarge include con- ventional (with and without insulation) and insulated sandwich (with and without drainage) types. The walls can also be load or non-load bearing. Various materials may be incorporated on the face of the panels to supplement the colours and tex- tures attainable with exposed aggregate finishes, and in some cases natural stone and clay masonry have been attached to precast panels to provide an additional choice of exterior or interior finishes. Then there's Kingspan Insulated Panels, that offers dynamic and flexible com- mercial wall systems, including exterior and barrier walls. Contractors experience up to 50 per cent faster build times because these single component wall systems need fewer trades for installation. Both the metal and brick KarrierPanel barrier wall systems can be applied to many building applications, including new construction and retrofit project.

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