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When someone says flooring materials have failed, where is the blame placed? Increasingly, the concrete slab stands accused, which means accusations against the supplier and the contractor. Never mind that they rarely are involved in developing the specifications for concrete. They mix and install it to the specifications given to them. Yet, in defect litigation, the finger of blame increasingly points at them.

While this is particularly common in California, it may come to your town, too, given the proliferation of flooring standards that cite nationally established and published requirements that appear to govern concrete substrates to which flooring is applied. In this two-part series, I will outline the situation and suggest a plan of action to meet this challenge.

As litigation concerning building construction has flourished, the relevance of and reliance on consensus standards for building construction has grown. Though there have been incremental technical and procedural changes in cement and concrete standards over the years, the standards developed and universally adopted by these industries have been proven effective. Not so with flooring "standards."

As flooring standards are increasingly recognized as authoritative, especially in legal proceedings, and as flooring problems have escalated in recent decades, many people have applied flooring standards to concrete construction. Even when little scientific evidence supports it.

For instance, ASTM F710, "Standard Practice for Preparing Concrete Floors to Receive Resilient Flooring," was published in 1981. Since then, revisions were published by members of the Resilient Floor Covering Committee. In defect litigation, attorneys may attempt to apply this flooring standard to residential and commercial concrete construction.