Tuesday, January 31, 2012 1:11 PM
World of Concrete 2012
The final tallies of exhibitors and attendees have yet to be posted, but in my humble opinion they are far less important than how these groups felt about the event and its value to their respective businesses. So here goes my quick-and-dirty summary of WOC 2012.
While I heard tale that the show was larger than either of the last two years, it didn’t seem that way to me. Rather it felt a tick down, both in floor space and attendance, but before you take those as negatives, allow me to put them into perspective.
In terms of exhibition space, I’d like to suggest the term “economizing” in the use of exhibit areas. Instead of a broad range of wares, exhibitors knew what it was they were there to showcase and kept things simpler and more direct than in the past.
As for attendees, they knew what they were there to see and perhaps purchase rather than wander the halls as a diversion from trips to and from the casinos.
The major focus for powered equipment of all kinds was Tier 4i, both in terms of what was done to achieve compliance and what benefits the manufacturers have incorporated to partially offset the sticker shock that the price penalty for meeting the emissions goals is bound to provoke. My sense of things is that, for the most part, the majority of the heavy lifting has been accomplished so that relatively little remains to be done to meet Tier 4 final.
The largest traffic jams seemed to take place in the technology areas featuring software and machine guidance and control systems. We’ll be focusing attention on these in upcoming issues, but suffice it to say that the lid is now off on the levels of sophistication in both areas.
If what we saw at WOC is any indication, 2012 is going to be a very interesting year.