Abstract
Concrete is the most widely used building material in the world, contributing approximately eight percent of global CO2 emissions. It is also the material that has defined my undergraduate experience at the University of Virginia, as a member of the Concrete Canoe Team and as a civil engineering student. My technical capstone project and my STS research paper both center on concrete, though they approach it from different angles. The capstone project, completed collaboratively with Giselle Alas, Brayden Carroll, Gabriel Estrella, and Nyla Gordon-Crocker, addresses how concrete canoes are physically fabricated. Specifically, whether injection molding can replace traditional mold techniques. My STS paper examines how public procurement policy shapes the adoption of low carbon concrete in public infrastructure. While the technical work focuses on how concrete is constructed and the STS work focuses on how it is governed, together they reflect a shared conviction: that the way we design, build, and regulate with concrete has profound consequences for both performance and sustainability.
The UVA Concrete Canoe Capstone project is composed of two parallel workstreams: the technical design of an injection mold system and the development of a project management (PM) framework for the Concrete Canoe Team. The injection mold component addresses a persistent challenge in concrete canoe fabrication, that traditional male and female molds produce inconsistent hull geometry, surface damage during demolding, and unpredictable thickness. The project sought to demonstrate that an injection-based approach could offer superior geometric control, repeatability, and high surface quality. Over the course of this project, three prototype iterations were designed, water-jet cut from foam, and tested with a gravity-driven concrete pump and flowable mix designs. Testing included ASTM-guided segregation and void analysis, which confirmed that injection molding with multiple ports produces homogeneous, well-distributed concrete with minimal segregation. The PM Framework component addresses the organizational challenges of managing a large, multidisciplinary student team. Drawing on survey feedback from team captains and members, the framework formalizes leadership structure, an annual competition cycle, sub-team training modules, a master schedule with critical path, and a centralized communication system via Discord. Together, these two workstreams produce both a technical proof of concept and a replicable organizational foundation for future teams.
My STS research paper argues that public procurement policy is a primary driver of low carbon concrete adoption in the United States, as illustrated by the Buy Clean California Act (BCCA). Passed in 2017 and implemented in 2018, the BCCA was the first U.S. government policy to establish environmental performance standards for major construction materials through the use of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and Global Warming Potential (GWP) limits. By requiring contractors to submit EPDs and meet GWP thresholds to compete for state-funded projects, the BCCA creates market incentives for both contractors and material producers to adopt lower-carbon alternatives. However, the paper also demonstrates that procurement policy alone is insufficient: California initially excluded concrete from the BCCA due to cost concerns and implementation complexity, and a 2021 amendment to include concrete ultimately failed in the legislature. Comparison with New Jersey and New York's Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act (LECCLA) reveals that policies combining enforceable emissions standards with economic incentives can be more effective than regulatory requirements alone. I conclude that while procurement policy can function as both a driver and a constraint for low carbon concrete adoption, its effectiveness depends on how well it navigates cost barriers, industry opposition, and regulatory complexity.
Working on both projects simultaneously revealed connections that neither project could have surfaced in isolation. Most significantly, the technical work deepened my understanding of why low carbon concrete remains so difficult to regulate. While researching the STS paper, I encountered arguments that Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) for novel concrete mixes are limited due to the novelty of the product itself, this resonated directly with my capstone experience. Designing an injectable concrete mix that balances flowability, segregation resistance, and structural integrity required far more iteration than anticipated. I came to appreciate that the challenge is not simply one of scientific knowledge, but of standardization: without reliable, reproducible mix data, it becomes difficult to produce the EPDs that procurement policy depends on. In this way, my hands-on work with concrete mix design gave texture and specificity to what might otherwise have been an abstract regulatory argument. Conversely, my STS research shaped how I thought about the capstone's PM Framework. Studying how procurement policy involves networks of stakeholders like government agencies, engineers, contractors, and material suppliers made me more attentive to the organizational complexity of our own team. Both projects ultimately convinced me that technical solutions and institutional structures must develop together: a better mold means little without the organizational continuity to implement it year after year, just as a more sustainable concrete mix means little without the policy infrastructure to incentivize its adoption at scale.
