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2 CTLGroup of Skokie, Illinois is a leading consulting engineering and materials consulting and testing firm with a heritage spanning more than one hundred years. The company has worked on several noteworthy projects – including the tallest building in the world – and takes pride in its well-educated staff, comprehensive services and wide reach. CTLGroup enters its next century with a confident outlook and a plan to expand its services and personnel while enhancing existing facilities. 3 Written by Nate Hendley TLGroup serves an array of markets including buildings and facilities, Ctransportation and rail, energy and resources, water and waste water, green solutions, litigation and insurance and materials and products. It also offers such services as building performance assessment, repair and rehabilitation, building and infrastructure sustainability, failure investigation, materials consulting, nonde- structive testing, structural engineering and evaluation and mass concrete consulting. Structural health monitoring (SHM) is “a growing business for us. We do work on projects that involve what I would call remote sensing – using advanced digital technology to assess the behavior of a structure or the materials in a structure. That can involve using sensors and digital technology to measure movement, deflection, vibration of structures. We’re also involved with evaluating moisture content and moisture movement in concrete – how that affects durability and service life,” adds CTLGroup Chief Operating Officer Tim Tonyan. CTLGroup’s services are all-inclusive. “We provide expertise and consulting services through the full life cycle of the building “CTLGroup performs or infrastructure facility, meaning that we help with conceptual materials testing at a planning, we help with the detailed design, we help during the con- series of labs located struction process, and then we help or we assist clients through the life in Skokie.” cycle of the facility itself,” says Tonyan. CTLGroup workers do not actually perform construction services themselves, but the company will do construction administration – providing oversight of the contractor and helping the owner evaluate a bid. The firm has worked on projects in all fifty U.S. states and in roughly seventy foreign countries in Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Middle East. Tonyan estimates that international work makes up about twenty percent of the company’s business. 4 CTLGroup performs materials testing at a series of labs located in Skokie. These labs are devoted to concrete and concrete materials, analytical chemistry, petrography (the science of classifying rocks) and structural analysis. The company also runs a lab in conjunction with another company in the Middle East nation of Qatar. It has a regional office in Austin, Texas. CTLGroup also has individu- als who work for it in the Philadelphia region and New Hampshire. In 2015, it acquired a consulting firm called Williams Building Diagnostics in Bradenton, Florida. Williams specializes in building investigations and consultation, repair solutions, expert witness Science for Solids testimony and building materials and systems analysis. The company will do research projects when requested and has been involved with efforts to create standard reference materials for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). CTLGroup began in 1916 as the Research and Development Laboratories of the Portland Cement Association (PCA) and was focused on concrete and cement technology. Over the decades, a range of engineering consultation and testing services were introduced. In 1987, the firm was incorporated as Sample Preparation for Construction Technology Laboratories, Inc., a wholly-owned Cement Industry PCA subsidiary. It began operating as CTLGroup in 2005. The company owes its longevity to the quality of its work and workers and the fact it is focused on a key building block Heat Treatment Elemental Analysis of the modern world. CARBOLITE-GERO manufactures an RHF High Combustion analyzers are designed for accurate Temperature furnace that can go up to 1600 °C. and reliable determination of Carbon and Sulfur in It can be used to test variance in raw materials by Cement, as well as Coal and secondary fuels. “Concrete is the lifeblood of testing burnability or free lime content of the clinker ELTRA’s CS-2000 with induction and resistance at different steps of cement production by using furnace in ONE analyzer, determines not only low infrastructure and economic RHF 16/8. With high quality silicon carbide elements Carbon and Sulfur with the induction furnace in providing a long working life, RHF is ideal for this cement at temperatures up to 2,200 °C, it also development for industrialized application. provides dependable results for higher Carbon contents in fuels such as coal, coke or secondary society worldwide.” www.carbolite-gero.com fuels with a resistance furnace at around 1,350 °C. “Concrete is the lifeblood of infrastructure and economic www.eltra.com development for industrialized society worldwide,” says Milling & Sieving Tonyan. “Concrete has been at the forefront of improving Quality Control laboratories rely heavily on the data provided by XRF and elemental analysis of samples. quality of life and prosperity for people around the globe. With many samples to process, the demands of We have engineers and scientists that focus on the science throughput, reliability, and flexibility are crucial and technology associated with concrete. We are fortunate characteristics for the equipment relied upon to provide the analytical sample. The RETSCH RS 300 XL to always have a very strong demand for our services. That Vibratory Disc Mill is specifically designed to meet was the case one hundred years ago, and that continues to these requirements with the ability to process samples be the case today.” sizes from 100 mL to 2 L, fast processing times, and parameter programming for reproducibility. www.retsch.com That demand stems from CTLGroup’s reputation for hiring top- notch employees. Verder Scientifi c Inc. 11 Penns Trail · Suite 300 · Newtown · PA 18940 · USA Phone: +1 866-473-8724 · info@verder-scientifi c.us · www.verder-scientifi c.com VSc_Advert-GB-USA-210x297_Cement.indd 1 02.08.2017 16:48:22 5 Science for Solids Sample Preparation for Cement Industry Heat Treatment Elemental Analysis CARBOLITE-GERO manufactures an RHF High Combustion analyzers are designed for accurate Temperature furnace that can go up to 1600 °C. and reliable determination of Carbon and Sulfur in It can be used to test variance in raw materials by Cement, as well as Coal and secondary fuels. testing burnability or free lime content of the clinker ELTRA’s CS-2000 with induction and resistance at different steps of cement production by using furnace in ONE analyzer, determines not only low RHF 16/8. With high quality silicon carbide elements Carbon and Sulfur with the induction furnace in providing a long working life, RHF is ideal for this cement at temperatures up to 2,200 °C, it also application. provides dependable results for higher Carbon contents in fuels such as coal, coke or secondary www.carbolite-gero.com fuels with a resistance furnace at around 1,350 °C. Milling & Sieving www.eltra.com Quality Control laboratories rely heavily on the data provided by XRF and elemental analysis of samples. With many samples to process, the demands of throughput, reliability, and flexibility are crucial characteristics for the equipment relied upon to provide the analytical sample. The RETSCH RS 300 XL Vibratory Disc Mill is specifically designed to meet these requirements with the ability to process samples sizes from 100 mL to 2 L, fast processing times, and parameter programming for reproducibility. www.retsch.com Verder Scientifi c Inc. 11 Penns Trail · Suite 300 · Newtown · PA 18940 · USA Phone: +1 866-473-8724 · info@verder-scientifi c.us · www.verder-scientifi c.com VSc_Advert-GB-USA-210x297_Cement.indd 1 02.08.2017 16:48:22 6 “I think it’s important to note the talent and the people that we “We want people that are passionate about the great engineer- recruit. Back in the 1930s and ‘40s, some of the most famous ing and scientific challenges of our day – infrastructure renewal, people in our industry – concrete engineers and scientists – climate change, sustainability. We want people that can work were here at the Portland Cement Association. Over the years, together on a team. We do care about work life balance,” adds we’ve continued to recruit those types of highly skilled people, Tonyan. “We respect people’s needs for having a life outside with PhDs from top universities from across the country, and the walls here, but when they show up [for work], they’d better we continue to promote through leadership and outreach be locked and loaded.” within the company,” states Anthony Bentivegna, materials consultant and laboratory manager at CTLGroup. “I think that’s All employees are expected to embrace a quality-oriented how we continue to stay at the forefront of our industry.” ethos. “Quality permeates our culture and everything that we do. We’re understood in the industry to have a very high Roughly ten to fifteen percent of the company’s staff have a standard of quality, and we take that very seriously,” states Ph.D. – primarily in engineering or materials science – while a Tonyan. “We maintain a very rigorous portfolio of accreditations further forty to fifty percent have at least a master’s degree, esti- related to quality.” mates Bentivegna. CTLGroup has approximately 110 employees at present, up from roughly one hundred a year ago at this time. These accreditations include ISO 9001 certification for overall business and organizational practices and ISO 17025 for labora- Besides brainpower, CTLGroup wants new hires who show tory practices. “Consistent with that ISO 17025 accreditation is “a balance of practical and scientific interest. We like to see our AASHTO accreditation. That’s the American Association of people that have enthusiasm and passion for the industry, State Highway and Transportation Officials.

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