PGC Spring Meeting Underway Today

CHICAGO - The Protective Glazing Council (PGC) has gathered at the Chicago City Center Hotel in Chicago this week for its annual spring meeting. The event began last night with a general membership meeting and reception, where it was announced that the group now has a total of 61 members, 58 of them full members.

Also announced at the general membership meeting was that the PGC website, www.protectiveglazing.org, has seen a recent increase in unique visitors, mostly from the United States, with Canadian and Chinese visitors also representing a significant number of the hits on the website. PGC marketing director Brian Pitman told the assembled members that the website will receive an updated look before the Fall Symposium, which is scheduled to take place October 17 and 18, 2006, at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C.

The Fall Symposium is expected to be the largest event to date for the PGC. The group has reserved room for 17 exhibit booths (10 foot by 10 foot) and more than half of those have already been taken by companies who intend to exhibit. There is a discount for booth reservation and attendee registration until April 30, and any company that registers for the show will receive 25 free attendee tickets; government employees get in free. Attendee registration includes a free lunch.

"We'd like everyone who is interested to attend," said Kim Mann, general council for the PGC.

"Register early and stay late, that's what I'm recommending," chimed in Stan Smith, PGC executive director.

Seminars began this morning with opening remarks by PGC president, Scott Haddock, who welcomed the more than 25 attendees gathered in the Lasalle I Room.

"Welcome to Chicago for those of you who have traveled out to visit us and for those of you from Chicago, thank you for having us," Haddock said. "I think we've got a really good agenda here, some very interesting talks. We have some speakers who typically work with us and always give really great talks."

The first speaker was Joseph Smith with Applied Research Associates. A popular and returning speaker, Smith's presentation Blast Hazard Mitigation 101 provided AIA credit and focused on blast related threat.

"When you're bidding a job, it's important to remember that you need to have both pressure and impulse specified. If they don't give you the impulse they're not giving you all the tools you need to do your job. Whenever you see just the pressure, you know you don't have everything you need to respond to that project. It happens a lot more than you realize. They hear the pressure and stop there and then don't take it a step further," he said.

Bob Ford, commercial market manager with Solutia, followed Smith with a look at windstorms and hurricanes.

"Hurricane season is about two months away," Ford said as he opened his presentation with a slide showing the "cone of death" that the Weather Channel uses to track projected hurricane paths.

Explaining how hurricanes form and how they are categorized, Ford explained why a level 3 hurricane is more likely to cause the damage that the industry is often called upon to mitigate.

"If you have anything coming in as a Category 1, the chance of something being blown off the ground is pretty limited," he said.

Wrapping up the morning seminars, Ron Waranowski with ASTIC Signals Defenses, took to the podium to deliver and elaborate on the subject of an electromagnetic interference, electromagnetic pulse and the vulnerability of the American public.

"If the LAN budget is upped so that people on cell phones inside can get five bars of service, that's five bars of signal also being emitted outside, up to 1,500 feet. Anything can ride those signals right out of the structure. What's the answer? If I were in real estate, I'd say buy as much real estate as possible and keep the bad guys away," said Waranowski.

"I can't stress how vulnerable we are in this electromagnetic world. I feel like I'm planting the apple seed anywhere I can to let people know."

Stay tuned to USGNN for updates about the rest of the PGC Spring Meeting and look for additional coverage in the next issue of USGlass.