Erick Sharp - Advancing Innovation in Pavement Materials - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Erick Sharp of Cool Roof Rating Council. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Welcome to roofing road trips the podcast you on thrilling Journey across the of roofing from fascinating interviews with roofing experts to on their Adventures will unci the stories innovations c. Roof so hello everyone my name is Megan Ellsworth here at roofer coffee shop dot com I am so excited you are listening to a roofing road trip and today we're talking about pavement Materials innovation cool roofing council and ace Laboratories and I'm here with Eric sharp hello how are you hello 

Erick Sharp: How are you it’s good to see you Megan exciting 

Megan Ellsworth: Y I'm so glad to have you and I'm excited to learn about everything you Guys are cooking up in the lab let's start with just having you introduce yourself tell us a about a Laboratories 

Erick Sharp: Yeah so, I'm Eric sharp I'm the CEO and Founder Laboratories we located Enna Ohio about East of we're an independent accredited test Laboratory focus on the roofing application space Rubber as and so we seventeen five accredited lab and so we do a lot of accredited testing as well as r and d. Support for companies in those three sectors 

Megan Ellsworth: Cool very cool wow I'm excited to dive into this this is going to be an interesting topic, so you tripled your equipment capacity to perform testing for the CRC the coolers rating council how was that what was the significance of that 

Erick Sharp: Yeah so es a great opportunity for us when we first got started doing the CRC testing I think we initially got accredited with CRC end August of Twenty two and that was shortly after we acquired some initial assets that came outate the old momentum technologies Operation and brought their team over that time we had the single unit we wanted to have the capacity and redundancy to really be able to do large volumes of this type of testing and wanted to position ourselves as a as a market leader for being able to turn this type of testing around so we got six technicians accredited to do all the various methods of CRC testing and that time obviously the next bottle ne that comes up equipment capacity and so ironically we had the opportunity with another lab shutting down to require some more assets and bring them in and so we are able to bring in a couple more of these units and now have three operating CRC units for the testing we have two soiling stations now and six qualified technicians perform the test so Gives us some really good capacity to keep up as CRC continues to expand in new technologies and new areas and also new people participating in the program so I see as a continually Growing opportunity and so I want to make sure that we're always there with the capacity and the availability to support it as more people join in 

Megan Ellsworth: Totally so for people out there de don’t know what kind of testing you are doing for the CRC like what are you testing 

Erick Sharp: Ya so there's a few different programs we support them and the one being the roofing Materials which was the primary originating program that they had when it comes to roofing Materials that's the fun part is there's a large variety of things that go on roofs even more so than I realized until we got involved end this type of casting how many things go on roofs not just you know a choice between a chino and a membrane there’s Tio there's granular embedment as there's green roofs there’s a lot of coding’s too that used to over top of it and so from a testing standpoint you know on the roofing side it could be any of these different types of components and system obviously the varies a little bit between that really Gives us a lot of flexibility prepare the different ways and then they have the wall program which we also participate in its one of the few labs that are credited on that and so that's normally like your different types of coding’s and Steels that go on the outside of the wall that's going to help provide energy efficiency gain solar reflectance and admittance of the sunrise hitting the walls and not just the rooftop we also really excited about crocs exploration into the paving market and able to push that and be a part of that es it complements well with our work in Rubber Modified as end our understanding around that so I think it's a really cool concept and it makes a lot de sense when you look at a map of urban islands there's a lot of as you're going to see there 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya so you all are testing the energy efficiency of these products basically correct cool. Okay, so what kinds of tests are now more feasible efficient 

Erick Sharp: So I mean the methods to do them is where we're trying to drive some efficiency the ultimate testing that we're accomplishing is you know evaluating the solar reflectance and admittance against the Materials for the part of the test especially end like the roofing side is trying to simulate what the products going to be like on the roofing so you can take the Fresh product lay it out teste that's one thing obviously product 11 it's on the roof is not always going to be Fresh so that's where you can either do the long term or you send it out to a farm the age for years and then you're going to test it again later most people do that don't want to wait on those results solo do a rapid rating and that's where we're putting it in the soiling station we're trying to simulate how gunky this is going to get after it's been on the roof for that long and then do the solar reflectance and so we're able to do rapid ratings to hold a rating for somebody until the long-term can come back so we'll be able to do that to get initial results. 

Megan Ellsworth: Oh, that's cool that's really cool so this is really something that companies out there should be interested in having their products tested and put through this this test to as a selling point for home and building owners contractors that are purchasing these products 

Erick Sharp: Yeah there’s a lot of advantages when it comes to you know having one participating in the program and then two being able to actually have a solid rating obviously when you look at some of these buildings on the commercial side there's a lot of poll from the Architects that are trying to gain leads credits you know back from the building design which is all based upon your energy efficiency and your green credits that you're able to achieve from that so Architects have a vested interest the backend products that are going to help them achieve that so having your product rated well designing products that are going to rate well is going to help for being expected by some of your commercial Architects obviously never bad selling point direct to consumers on the Residential side too sometimes takes a little more educating the customer when you're dealing direct with consumers of understanding you know what an sir value means in terms of how much I going to save me on my Monthly electric bills more what they so being able to break it down for aspect es que 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya ti es Reilly col end sir. Es the solar reflectivity index right yes working 

Erick Sharp: Now you're getting a turn you're going to you're going to be really 

Megan Ellsworth: Into this I love. Ok, so with your simulated weathering the what did you call it the 

Erick Sharp: Soil 

Megan Ellsworth: The soil yes. Okay with that expansion end January how has the ability to simulate Environmental conditions improved what have you Guys improved upon. Oh, 

Erick Sharp: Yeah. So even Beyond just the soiling station we've done a vast amount of expansion on our general simulated weathering equipment including our z non Chambers we've tripled our size on z non capacity since January we've doubled our size on QV capacity since that time as well and those instruments are key obviously part of that Aging for the CRC testing when you do the soiling you also need to give it that for synthetic sunlight to kind of show that the harsh sunlight effect that it had on over that period of time that's also a test that's used end a lot of application for roofing and even on our polymer side of our business we have to do a lot of weather simulating so at the end of the day whether it's a roof product Rubber gasket that goes on outside of a window these things have warranty lifecycles that they need to make sure that they're going to hold up to so we're trying to simulate you know a fifteen Twenty year lifecycle of a product and get it done in three months it’s going to hold that so within these Chambers there's different Luminas of light that simulating the sun effect on that hits it will rain it will create humidity inside these Chambers and so it'll do a rain a rain cycle and then it will do a dark cycle then the sun comes out and so it's trying to quickly simulate across these life these days in the in the environment kind of cool that's the stuff I geek out on is when somebody tells me like hey I got a product and it's going to go into this application and here's the different things that it's going to see be like. 

Erick Sharp: Okay how can I simulate, and do it end such a quick period of time that they can validate always fun experiments to do 

Megan Ellsworth: Thats cool that's cool that you Guys are end the lab simulating all of this real world damage to these products I think it’s cool to be able to see I bet it's cool to be able to see the products hold up and you know do what they're supposed to be doing and kind of give that good news to the to the company yeah basically 

Erick Sharp: Yeah years seeing in un pas seeing everybody excited it's fun too to see new technologies come in the door if a we're trying a new a new type of polymer and see how it holds up and to see how it performs and stuff so one of the fun parts being in an independent test lab is that you see a little bit of everything comes in the door and normally get on the front end of innovation as people have things they're wanting to vet out and try you get to kind of kind of see those and geek out internally about what's going on then you anxiously wait for it to commercialize so you can see how it performs in industry so 

Megan Ellsworth: Love it love it. Okey, so you acquired the former go men technical lab you mentioned this earlier Laboratories and brought in a lot of new resources how do you see that strengthening croc material testing initiatives particularly in the roofing and pavement sectors 

Erick Sharp: Yeah so that’s la acquisition helped us increase our c testing as well as weathering pieces that are there which is giving us a lot of flexibility how we can grow that ulna fun thing about what we do is we're not just a test testing lab but we're also an r and d. Support lab so we can always work with companies too that you know maybe they get an sir value off of that and they want to be able to improve that and so you know we have r and d. Side of our business of working with them and hey how can you improve your sir value on a material like that and guiding them there so having the task capability increase with our existing r and d. Experience that came es kind de perfect combination for us to really take things to the next level on how we can support our CRC customers 

Megan Ellsworth: That's really cool I love that you all have an r and d. Side too and are able to do that innovation alongside your customers and not just be on the receiving end you're in the mix too yeah 

Erick Sharp: Yeah, we're too nerdy just the test we end up getting involved 

Megan Ellsworth: I love it love it. Ok, so crocs pavement ratings steering committee is currently exploring a potential pavement products rating program can you tell us a little bit about that and what that's going to look like 

Erick Sharp: Yeah so we're excited we have Rodney Armstrong who's our Engineering manager on that committee that's kind hoping guide some of the pieces of what can be done that I think it's a great idea que mentioned earlier how much pavement is in the Landscape of an urban Island it makes sense think there’s a lot of untapped innovation when it comes to pavement and asphalt technology that you know this could really lead to that innovation so obviously starting up with the program you know there's factors on you know what the test methodology is going to be how do you get the samples how do you age the samples what condition do they need to be and what needs to be all those types of things and that's what a lot of the work that the committee is doing then they got the Brilliant mind on that committee that kind of come up with those kind of exciting me on the background is like ok I know when we start measuring this then that's going to start the rat race to how do we improve it and then that's going to initiate the innovation as to how can we make better asap paving roads that are going to perform better I think it be this chain reaction that takes place and it's going to be initiated by just first coming up with how do we measure it or how do we find out what home base and then from there the innovation kicks in to see how we can do better but think there's a lot of low hanging fruit on the innovation side of how we improve solar reflectance on paving roads but it really hasn't been brought to the Surface yet as far as how we can attack that and how you measure against that so that’s really going to open up a lot of innovation for paving technology 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya I think that's really exciting too because like you mentioned the urban heat Island effect I mean I live in Denver in the summer can be brutal cut we're just absolutely surrounded by asphalt and Pave in pavement roads and black concrete surfaces so I'm glad that you all are looking into this and how can we fix that and change it um in an easy way that's not going to totally we have to pull up all the roads that's exciting someone's working on it 

Erick Sharp: Exploration projects that have been done right now es around using you that you can use on the so it almost like in a way a coding over for the top of the of an asp so you can still have your as road wouldn't have to completely rep or anything you're just going across and you're putting the homodont layer onto the paving and that homogeny layer can have you know tinting pigments in it to adjust cull so a of Studies I saw you know they were able to put homo layer over to get kind of a light gray tent on the roadways and stuff sops kind cool to kind of see how those the___14 technologies work I'm sure there's always a ongoing transition as things happen so maybe we figure how to change tent on a road to improve solar reflectance there might be downstream Effects has to be figured as we go as far as the line markings still got to work you know these autonomous vehicle tracking still has to work and stuffs a complex long-term solution it’s got to start somewhere I think 

Megan Ellsworth: That's really cool that’s really exciting that you all are just on the cutting edge and leave it to see r arc to be on the cutting edge they're just so innovative and they really care about what they're doing and they’re their reason there you know 

Erick Sharp: Per 

Megan Ellsworth: Permission yeah take care so much it's really cool. Ok, so what are some of the key challenges de both the council and testing labs like ace are working to overcome in order to maintain accuracy and relevance in material evaluations 

Erick Sharp: Think new Materials are coming about end new innovations come about always creates cur ball sometimes for methodology method developed around Materials that was there at that time as new Materials come on the Scene sometimes methods have to be evaluated adjusted Modified added to whatever it might be to accommodate material technology advancing so think that’s be the key thing is material technology continues to advance technical team is staying on top of how that affects methodology and if there needs to be any adjustments to account for that ideally the whole premise of doing this is to drag that innovative change so we just got to make sure methods keep up with 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya yak that's really important the CRC expanded its focus to include these radiative properties of pavement Materials can you share a little bit of what that expansion means end how it impacts your testing capabilities like what did this due to a Laboratories when they brought this in 

Erick Sharp: Yeah so it’s obviously not commercial yet exploratory stage we're excited que we already play a of this AST technology from the standpoint we can do trail batches of asphalt here as well doing all the other testing that comes with it so we have a lot of infrastructure in place here right now for asphalt which Ifield put us in a good spot cut we have that infrastructure and we have the CRC infrastructure and we can easily put the two together so when it comes to the point when we need to develop the methodology for this improve that concept of how we test these we can easily create batches we can prep samples we already have that infrastructure in place here so I think we can be a really strong supportive partner to the CRC as they developed this program 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya and like you said before they found you know it could be potentially a coding goes on top of the pavement and you Guys already work with that with the CRC and different roof coding’s and whatnot so that's cool 

Erick Sharp: Yeah, yak is similar concepts as a coding on an on a membrane roof is the homodont on a paving road same type of thought process Works across the board 

Megan Ellsworth: For sure so how what would you say es most important to this Collaboration between CRC and labs like ace that are diverse and have a range of testing capabilities what do you think is so important about that Collaboration 

Erick Sharp: Yeah, I think there's a couple areas on the collaborative side of the you know obviously you have your day-to-day aspects of having core accredited labs that has been audited and verified to the standard of CRC. La consistencies is key we are expanding our capacity and our technician and stuff like well aware that we can’t do a hundred percent of everything in CRC so its key that there are other labs are able to for that capacity and for that redundancy of it CRC continues key of having lab access that's there so having the program and the Collaboration with labs to ensure that everybody no matter if it's us here in verbena Ohio o potentially a new labs and in India that we're doing it the same way and that's the same as how our accreditation Works five accreditation Works where they come and they want to make sure anybody testing is doing it the same way for that consistency of that so CRC has good program in place for doing that accreditation working with labs to make sure everybody is aware of any updates or changes and things and keeping that consistency across the board of all of their labs I think that's always key and that's on the day to day test side no’s mentioned earlier comes to method development Collaboration with some key labs is always important too and that's where we're able to support on the paving program and our capacity’s us to support even on any potential method evaluations that need to be done by the technical committee and having that Collaboration with labs when they're looking at any technical changes or new areas to get into is key for getting all the variables evaluated to make sure that we're making a wise decision and that collaboration's been great it's always been fantastic working with the group there we have in addition to Rodney on the paving committee we have Andy chamber on the technical committee and Ashley times on the. 

Erick Sharp: Uh wall rating committee so we try to keep our team involved in all the committees so we can know how to best support 

Megan Ellsworth: Cool that you are involved on an organizational level too in the committees and vice versa it seems CRC is very involved with a Laboratories and its A's a working Friendship I love it. Okay, so as CRC continues to grow and evolve what are some exciting developments you're seeing on the horizon for added material testing that you and CRC want to want to work on 

Erick Sharp: Yeah so on the CRC side obviously their big advancements on paving right now but I like the fact that you know they started with roof they did wall now they're done paving that there's this continuous what's next where else could we use this type of technology to help with I think that's going to continue to advance no there's a lot of initiatives on their end too for the broadening Beyond the us and to other markets and global using this globally I there is an opportunity for that for sure a we deal a lot of different testing within roofing sector even outside of CRC just like the Miami day type testing certification stuff like that and we do a lot of polymer work and through those endeavors we do a lot of international business with companies so last year we worked did business within Twenty one different countries of support and so I think we can also help crocs they look to advance into some of these other markets and geographical locations if we have connections or contacts there to be able to support those for that broadening I think que these industry programs like this they do seem eventually go more international and have a broader approach think this be one of those for sure 

Megan Ellsworth: I do too cut it's a global I don't want to say issue but a global issue you know all the urban the urban heat Island effect affects cities globally and you know everyone wants to have a more efficient building and or home not only for you know their own you know wallet but for the you know the health of the planet so like you said that's really cool to look at this globally 

Erick Sharp: Yeah, I mean from a macro level outside of the consumer advantage from energy cost its it is global warming it's not us warming it's the global issue for sure 

Megan Ellsworth: Absolutely well Eric this has been very informative, and I've had a blast I love talking about this stuff and I just love the work that CR RRC and ace Laboratories are doing to bring this green this green mission into roofing and building Materials and the trades I think it's so important so thank you for chatting with me today 

Erick Sharp: Thank you for the opportunity to talk 

Megan Ellsworth: Absolutely. Okay, so everyone can go to the cool roofs rating council CRC Directory on roofer coffee shop dot com to learn more find information on how to get in touch with ace Laboratories and just see all their initiatives they have a lot of stuff going on right now they came out with Elementary school course I believe or middle school yeah and they they're based in Portland Oregon and they're just the best so definitely go check out CRC and everything that they're working on through their Directory on roofers coffee shop dot com and please make sure you are subscribed and ring the bell so every time we upload a new episode you get notified this has been an amazing roofing road trip and we'll see you on the next one thanks Eric if you've enjoyed the ride don't forget subscribe us every roofing adventure com to more thanks for tuning in catch you on the next roofing tree.