Umicore Ranks In Top 10 Of The World’s Most Sustainable Corporations
Based on key performance indicators, such as innovation, diversity, and eco-friendly productivity.
January 26, 2012 (Raleigh, NC) — Umicore, a global materials technology group and the parent company of Umicore BuildingProducts USA in Raleigh, NC, has been included once again in the top 10 of the world’s most sustainable companies.
Corporate Knights, an independent magazine focused on promoting sustainable development, published the rankings this week.
The “Global 100 Most Sustainable Companies” ranking is based on key performance indicators such as innovation, diversity, and productivity related to a set of environmental factors. Ranked eighth out of 100, Umicore was praised for the significant role the company plays in the metal recycling chain and the development of materials for clean energy applications.
This accolade follows Umicore’s recent inclusion in the innovative Living Planet Green Tech Index launched by WWF, the Living Planet Fund Management Company, and Chevreux.
Umicore is also a long-standing component of the FTSE4Good index, which measures performance of companies that meet globally recognized corporate responsibility standards.
“The inclusion of Umicore in these rankings and indices is a recognition that our strategy and business philosophy do meaningfully address the priorities of society today,” said Umicore CEO Marc Grynberg. “We have a strong focus on products and services that provide environmental benefits, such as recycling, automotive catalysts, and materials for rechargeable batteries. This is complemented by ambitious objectives to further improve our environmental and social performance.”
“It is great to be involved with a company that takes a strong stance on sustainability, as well as representing an architectural product that contributes to that equation,” said Daniel Nicely, market development director for Umicore Building Products USA, the manufacturer of VMZINC® architectural zinc.
For more information on Umicore’s sustainability strategies and practices, visit www.umicore.com/sustainability.
For more information on Umicore Building Products, visit www.vmzinc-us.com.
About Umicore:
Umicore is a global materials technology group. It focuses on application areas where its expertise in materials science, chemistry and metallurgy makes a real difference. Its activities are centered on four business areas: Catalysis, Energy Materials, Performance Materials, and Recycling. Each business area is divided into market-focused business units offering materials and solutions that are at the cutting edge of new technological developments and essential to everyday life. For more information: www.umicore.com
About Umicore Building Products USA:
Umicore is a world-leading producer of VMZINC® architectural zinc. For over 160 years, Umicore has been providing innovative solutions for building owners, architects, and contractors. Umicore has offices and representatives all over the world. In the United States, Umicore Building Products USA, Inc., is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. For additional information: www.vmzinc-us.com.
Two 2012 AIA Honor Award Winners Feature VMZinc Exteriors
Architectural zinc adds to beauty, sustainability of two projects.
January 17, 2012 (Raleigh, NC) — Two of the nine projects from around the world that recently received 2012 Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) feature VMZINC® exteriors.
The award-winning Carnegie Mellon University’s Gates Center for Computer Science and the Hillman Center for Future-Generation Technologies were designed by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects of Atlanta, Ga., with special attention to energy and water conservation and other sustainable practices.
The two centers’ zinc exterior skin and distinctive window openings differ from the predominately yellow brick, historically influenced buildings on the CMU campus. Yet the jurors believed the zinc skin and window openings “surprisingly relate beautifully to the campus fabric without being literal.”
Last year, both centers received LEED® Gold certification. The use of architectural zinc contributed to the certification because zinc is manufactured using very little energy, it lasts an average of 80 years with very little maintenance, and it is completely recyclable, both during construction (construction scraps) and at the end of its use.
Another award-winning project with a VMZINC exterior is The Poetry Foundation in Chicago, designed by John Ronan Architects. The building’s outer layer is VMZINC’s black ANTHRA-ZINC®. Since transparency was an important issue in the design, the ANTHRA-ZINC is perforated where it borders the garden, allowing visual access to the garden from the street. Inside the garden, the zinc screen wall internalizes the garden experience and provides a sense of removal.
The Poetry Foundation was featured in Architectural Record in November, prior to winning one of this year’s AIA Honor Award.
“We talk a lot about the sustainability of zinc, but there’s also the aesthetic quality,” said Daniel Nicely, director of market development for Umicore Building Products USA, the manufacturer of VMZINC®. “Architectural zinc allows architects to easily create interesting and innovative forms. We’re proud that our product played a major role in the striking design and sustainability of both of these award-winning project.”
For more information on the 2012 AIA Honor Awards, go to www.aia.org/practicing/awards/2012/architecture.
For more information on VMZINC, visit www.vmzinc-us.com.
About Umicore Building Products USA, Inc.
Umicore Building Products is a world-leading producer of architectural zinc. For over 160 years, Umicore has been providing innovative solutions for building owners, architects and contractors. Umicore has offices and representatives all over the world. In the United States, Umicore Building Products USA, Inc., is based in Raleigh, NC. For additional information, visit www.vmzinc-us.com. VMZINC also maintains the blog ZINCsense and an active Facebook page.
Umicore USA / VMZinc New Offices
Check out the new offices of Rapid Materials partner Umicore USA / VMZinc.
Are You Kidding Me?
When we questioned this great service to the sales manager, he offered this equally great response, “Yeah, I can see where that might be frustrating to you, but the salesman is also frustrated because you only buy based upon price.”
Are you kidding me?
Talk about a company with their head in the sand. The market is tough right now. Those of us that compete in the subcontracting business are almost always required to be low, plus provide payment and performance bonds, plus have the best schedule, plus agree to onerous subcontract provisions, plus be able to finance the material purchases and labor until the material is on the wall.
That adds up to a lot of pluses on top of having a low price.
My suggestion to the valued supplier is to give us a reason to buy from you on something other than price.
Is your product better in a meaningful way?
Is your service better?
How long has it been since you visited and brought to us a lead on a project?
Has your tech service developed any new fabrication techniques for your product that would make our work more efficient?
And finally, how long since you offered a thank you for the business we have given you in the past?
I know the challenges of the current market conditions are making all of us a bit testy, but if price is the only differentiator in your offering, then you have got to be low. Let me assure you that your customers (subcontractors and fabricators) have to be low and offer all of the pluses outlined above.
Tool of the Week, Day, etc. – For those of you who participate in the construction industry and have a focus in metal, you may want to attend the Metal Construction Association 2012 Annual Meeting in Clearwater Beach, Florida later this month. You can learn all about the meeting at: http://www.metalconstruction.org/meet/index.cfm?pg=meet_annual.htm.
15 Things I’ve learn in 15 Years
- If you’re reading this blog, you likely spend most of your days in a heated/air-conditioned office and are pretty comfortable. I only have extensive field experience in my time here on one project, but it was a big one, and I have a pretty good idea of what our field crews go through on a daily basis. These panels are heavy, they are sharp, and they want to take off like a Frisbee in the wind. It is either hot or cold and it is hard, dirty work. It is also pretty spooky being high up on scaffolding and lifts and roofs. I am lucky to work indoors, out of the elements, and I sure appreciate the hard work our field crews do.
- Ted Miller has a saying that goes, “You’ll never work in this town again….until you’re low.” This is so true. Everyone in our industry seems to come back around at some point. The company or vendor that you used to partner with all the time will fall out of favor with you, or you’ll fall out of favor with them, but at some point, everyone lets bygones be bygones and is willing to team up again on the right project.
- One of the most dynamic changes in construction has been the way that documents are shared. I vividly recall spending most of my early days here in the dark, huddled over a scan machine, looking at drawings on microfilm that would arrive daily in the mail. When we wanted hard copies, we drove to a printer and paid a lot of money for them. I still remember how actual blueprints would irritate my contact lenses and make me sneeze occasionally. Sometimes, to save money, we would take our scales and calculators to plan rooms and do takeoffs there. Now, with various online plan rooms, FTP sites, and a plotter/scanner just down the hall from me, it is practically instantaneous to share and view drawings with customers and vendors and it is much less expensive to do so.
- One of the best things about construction is getting to see a project in person after initially seeing it on your desk years before. This is especially true when I’m on vacation somewhere and my tolerant wife puts up with me driving out of our way to see a building for the first time.
- One of my favorite Jimmy Buffett songs has a line that goes, “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.” Humor is invaluable. I cannot count how many times we have been here working late on a bid deadline and took a five minute break to watch a funny YouTube video and successfully broke the tension.
- This is not unique to me and would apply to any industry and anyone with children, but nothing clarifies purpose like having children. If I feel distracted or unmotivated, I need look no further than the pictures on my bulletin board of my sweet little boys to snap me back to reality.
- The disappointment of a project lost far outweighs the elation of a project won. It often feels like a relief to close a job, instead of feeling like the celebration that it should be.
- As a follow up to #7 above, dwelling for more than about 24 hours on a project lost is counter-productive. There is ALWAYS another project to bid. Even in this down economy, we can barely keep up with the bidding.
- There are crooks in the industry and there’s nothing you can do about them. For example, I have seen companies use “smoke and mirrors” to mask true ownership of the company in order to help obtain contracts set aside for women and minority owned companies. I also know that there are General Contractors who present falsehoods about true costs to building owners. And, I don’t know how many times I have walked a jobsite of a competitor and seen firsthand the shortcuts that were taken. However, just like dwelling on lost projects, it is counter-productive to waste energy complaining about these practices. Just move on.
- Most drawings these days are weak. That’s all there is to it and that’s putting it nicely. But, on occasion, you get hold of a really good set of plans and it is a joy to work with them. There are column lines and sections provided on the elevations, skewed elevations get their own “straight ahead” look, dimensions are clear and match from sheet to sheet, and there is just an overall orderly flow to their layout. Some of the best firms at this are Perkins & Will, Cooper Carry, TVS, and Hawkins & Hall.
- Techies run the world. Our company would be lost without our in-house IT person, Jonathan Ethridge. From maintaining iPads that our field crews use to input field dimensions, to overseeing our enormous server, to ensuring that we have a functioning website, he truly is indispensable.
- The older I get, the more I realize what I don’t know. I know nothing about HVAC, plumbing, or electrical construction. I have only limited knowledge of the structural components that go into a building. I don’t even know AutoCAD. When I want to gripe about bad architectural drawings or a GC who doesn’t fully grasp our scope of work, I need to remember that they have to have a working knowledge of multiple scopes of work and that I’m just one small cog in the machine.
- Construction is cool. When I was a kid, I liked Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys and now I get to participate in a grown-up version of that. When people ask what I do, I invariably ask them, “Well, have you ever seen the _____ building? That was ours. Everything on the outside skin of it and all of the associated framing was by us.” We have done so many projects in so many cities now that I can usually even cite a building to an out of towner that gives them a frame of reference. It’s not much, but I like to think that a little bit of my legacy from my time on earth will be that I worked on some office buildings and airports and stadiums and museums and hospitals that will be around long after I’m gone.
- This isn’t construction specific, but you spend more time with your co-workers than your family, so you ought to get to know them and care for them. Last week, several of us attended a memorial for the mother of one of our engineers, Paul Roberts, and I feel closer to him now having learned about his mom and shared a small bit of his pain. When my own mother passed in 2007, I can still recall the hugs from my co-workers at her funeral and how it drew me closer to them. It’s about bids and sales and dollars and cents, but it’s really about people and connections.
- I am lucky. I like to think that I work hard, but I am also extremely lucky and I realize that. Before I came to Miller-Clapperton, I was doing unfulfilling work in a warehouse for a fraction of what I earn now. Ted and Zeke Miller reached out to me for an interview and that changed the course of my life. I guess I showed a good head for numbers and displayed effective written skills in their evaluation, so they took a chance on me, and for that, I am thankful. Later, they encouraged me to complete my degree and for 15 years have been nothing but good to me. I have had the opportunity to see and do things that my parents could never have dreamed of and I owe it all to this company.
Alucoil ACM Enters the Americas with Intrabond LLC Purchase
Intrabond LLC, manufacturer of aluminum composite material (ACM) located in Manning, South Carolina USA, this past 30th of September 2011 by Alucoil S.A., of Miranda de Ebro, Spain.
Rapid Materials Secures METALCON 2011 Booth
Rapid Materials has secured their booth for the 2011 METALCON show in Atlanta, GA. The show will be at the Georgia World Congress Center during October 11 – 13, 2011.
You’ll be able to visit us at Booth # 848. See you in October!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Rapid Materials is a blessed company. Part of our blessings we enjoy are; those companies and individuals with which we conduct business, our current, past and future customers.
Therefore, let me take this opportunity to wish you and your families; a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
Zane S. Miller
Rapid Materials
Three Big Announcements from Intrabond!
With three big announcements the past two weeks, there is a lot of excitement coming from the Manning, South Carolina based metal composite material manufacturer, Intrabond.
Leading the announcements is that Intrabond is now accepting orders for Fire Retardant (FR) core material. They have recently passed both the NFPA 285 multi-story test and UL 1715 Test at SW Research. The FR core material is available in 14 standard colors, 50″ and 62″ widths, and is now available now at www.rapidintrabondusa.com.
In other news from last week, Intrabond has recently added all fourteen (14) of their new standard colors to Rapid Materials. Intrabond has been able to gather the best mixture of colors from the industry leaders, which allows them be the perfect substitute to other manufacturers.
Intrabond’s most prominent announcement comes to us today with the appointment of Robert (Bob) Taylor as Director of Sales and Marketing for Intrabond LLC in the Domestic US and Canadian markets.
For more information on Intrabond, please visit www.rapidintrabondusa.com
VMZinc’s Corrugated Sheets Now Available!
