Ecocem director of concrete technology deployment John Reddy is the new president of the Institute of Concrete Technology (ICT), the international professional body for concrete technologists and engineers. He is the first Irish person to attain the role.
Reddy was appointed to his two-year term as the institute’s 14th president last at the ICT’s 53rd Annual Convention Symposium, on May 29th.
Speaking on his appointment, John Reddy said: “Now is perhaps the most exciting and critical time to be a concrete technologist as demand is increasing for concrete in terms of performance, volume and net-zero ambitions. I am honoured to take on the leadership of the ICT and it is my ambition to elevate further the status of the ICT internationally and to see concrete technologists develop their roles in delivering solutions to improve further the concrete we use today.”
The annual symposium was conducted against the backdrop of mounting efforts by the concrete industry to develop and adopt new technologies and pathways which can accelerate industry decarbonisation at scale.
This challenge was reflected in the theme of this year’s ICT symposium, The Pursuit of Net Zero Concrete: Materials, Design and Practical Applications, with speakers drawn from industry and academia in both Ireland and the UK. The event was chaired by Professor Mark Richardson of University College Dublin, while Trinity College Dublin’s Professor Roger West – a central figure in the teaching of concrete technology in Ireland – delivered the keynote address entitled, “Concrete epiphanies”.
Reddy’s links to ICT date back to 2009, when he joined as a corporate member of the organisation on attaining a diploma in advanced concrete technology. He subsequently served on its council for several years including as chair of marketing and as vice-president for the last two years. He became a chartered engineer from Engineers Ireland in 2010.
In 2015 he completed an MSc in Advanced Concrete Technology in Queen’s University Belfast, where his thesis was an investigation into thermal activation of low carbon cement. A regular speaker at international symposia, he has published a number of international research academic papers and trade articles on concrete technology.
“Concrete may not be an obvious passion for someone to have,” says Reddy, “but as a third-generation member of my family to work in the concrete industry, it was something I was exposed to from an early age. My father worked for Roadstone and then for Ireland’s national research and standards body. As a child, he taught me how to crush concrete cubes which gave me my love for concrete, and it was subsequently through the ICT pathways that my career developed.
“Concrete has been an essential component of humanity’s built environment for millennia, no other material can match its versatility and durability. With an ever-more urgent need to tackle the planet’s carbon emissions, there is an increasing responsibility on the industry to develop new ways to reduce its environmental footprint. For me, there is a deep sense of purpose and mission to the future development of the concrete industry.”
‘We need not only to attract more women into engineering and Stem studies, but to address the issue of why a proportion of those women do not subsequently pursue a career in engineering’
That sense of mission is mirrored in Reddy’s day to day role at Ecocem, where he is working to deploy the company’s new breakthrough scalable technology ACT, which can reduce emissions in cement by 70 per cent. Cement is the main ingredient in concrete and accounts for 95 per cent of concrete’s emissions. ACT achieves this deep decarbonisation by reducing the need to burn limestone to produce clinker, the key ingredient in cement, and using alternative supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs).
“ACT is a scalable global solution, so this is an exciting time to be in the cement and concrete business,” he says.
Although only at the start of his two-year term as president, Reddy is already looking to the future and, in particular, to supporting efforts in the industry to achieve greater levels of gender balance in the fields of engineering and concrete technology. As president of the ICT, he will be joined by Veronika Elfmarkova as the body’s new vice-president, in advance of the latter becoming the ICT’s first ever woman president in 2027. Elfmarkova is head of commercial RMX at Holcim.
“We need not only to attract more women into engineering and Stem studies, but to address the issue of why a proportion of those women do not subsequently pursue a career in engineering. It would be nice to think that career pathways and opportunities would be such that someone like my daughter might one day consider becoming the fourth generation of our family to work in the concrete industry.”
