TCA Announces Recipents of 2012 Professional Achievement Awards

The Tilt-Up Concrete Association (TCA) has announced the recipients of four professional achievement awards presented at TCA's annual meeting held on Thursday, January 26 in conjunction with the World of Concrete.

The award recipients for 2012, selected by the Association's Board of Directors after nomination by the general membership and recommendation by the TCA's Awards Committee, are:

• Jim Churchman, posthumously of Butler Hardwall and the Hardwall Design Structures for the Peter Courtois Memorial Award
• Shawn Hickey of SiteCast, Inc. for the Murray Parker Memorial Award
• Jeffrey Needham of Needham and Associates for the David L. Kelly Engineering Award
• Tiltwerks by Tilt-Up Design Systems for the Robert Aiken Innovation Award

Peter Courtois Memorial Award

An active member of the ACI 551 committee for several years, Jim Churchman was instrumental in the effort to combine tilt-up construction with the pre-engineered steel building industry through his many years at Butler Hardwall. He was one of the main developers of the Butler Delta Joist roof framing system, which was created mainly to accommodate hard wall systems such as tilt-up with pre-engineered steel framing. His efforts to produce viable solutions to upgrade buildings for a company known for pre-engineered metal buildings established another network of tilt-up professionals during a critical growth period for the industry.

"Jim was emphatic that tilt-up was the future for building types where steel deck and joist systems were being implemented," states Jim Baty, Technical Director for the TCA. "Early in my career, he was particularly vocal on the advantages he saw in tilt-up and how many opportunities there were for contractors to increase the work on projects they held responsibility on rather than hiring masonry sub-contractors to deliver durable buildings."

"Jim was an extremely talented structural engineer," said Joe Steinbicker founder and president of Tilt-Up Design Systems. "He never hesitated to question why something couldn't be done a new or better way. This search for new solutions is what led him to develop a system at Butler Manufacturing to use tilt-up effectively in combination with their pre-engineered steel buildings, expanding the market for the tilt-up industry."

Th Peter Courtois Memorial Award honors Peter Courtois, who died in 1992 after serving as senior vice president of engineering for Dayton Superior Concrete Accessories (formerly Dayton-Richmond Corporation). Courtois, an employee of Dayton Superior for 32 years, immeasurably contributed to the Tilt-Up industry through his tireless effort and dedication to several industry associations. He served on seven American Concrete Institute (ACI) committees, most notably the ACI-551 Tilt-Up Construction Committee where the concept for the TCA was spawned. Courtois played a lead role in the formation of the TCA in those early days providing much of the energy to form an entity responsible for the promotion of Tilt-Up as well as the technical advancement of Tilt-Up. He served as the initial president of TCA, for which he was made an honorary member in 1991. Past recipients include: Robert Tobin, Dave Kelly, Dr. Koladi Kripanarayanan, Bill Lockwood, Sam Hodges, Bill Simpson, Murray Parker, Bob Truitt, Jesse Wyatt, Don Musser, Tom Collins, Hugh Brooks, Malcolm Davis, Gerry Miller, Bob Foley and Sherman D. Balch.