2011 recipient of Spokane Clean Air Award on the right track

CXT, Inc. has had a rewarding year. The L.B. Foster Company subsidiary and leading supplier of precast concrete buildings and railroad ties in the U.S. has been recognized by two organizations this year for its exceptional efforts in 2010 to “green up” and streamline its processes and operations, while conducting its busiest year to date. The Spokane company’s concrete building facility, which manufactures restroom, shower and concession facilities and park products, in the Spokane Valley saw production rates in 2010 increase by 20 percent, as a result of 2010 government stimulus money awarded towards the improvement of national parks. However, the most impressive accomplishment during 2010 for CXT, was its commitment to become environmentally friendly on multiple levels from changing out all light bulbs to establishing a Commute Trip Reduction program. In addition to being one of three Spokane companies to receive one of the 10 awards presented to Washington State businesses for workplace excellence by the Association of Washington Businesses, CXT also received the 2011 Clean Air Award from Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency earlier this year. The award recognizes companies for their consistent commitment to allocating significant resources to reduce overall air emissions. “Spokane Clean Air is proud to publicly recognize CXT as the 2011 Clean Air Award recipient and to express our appreciation for all of the changes they have made to reduce impacts on our environment,” said Bill Dameworth, Spokane Clean Air Director, upon presentation of the award to CXT Safety and Training Manager, Aaron Rogers and David Steiger, vice president of CXT Precast Buildings division. “Driven down from the corporate level,” L.B. Foster has been creating more environmentally friendly processes for roughly five years now, said Aaron Rogers, safety and training manager for the past 16 years. However, CXT implemented its changes locally just a little over 1 ½ years ago, greatly reducing the company’s emissions and impacts on the environment. “An environmental engineer liason between corporate and our offices, helped us to identify—through monthly audits, score cards, tracking systems—where we could make our processes more environmentally friendly and become a lean company, using the Kaizen approach” said Rogers. Kaizen, Japanese for “change for the better,” refers to philosophy or practices that aim to eliminate waste by focusing upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, and business management. When used in the business sense and applied to the workplace, Kaizen refers to activities that continually improve all functions, and involves all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. The largest changes occurred in the painting department at their concrete outdoor building facility, where they replaced most of their solvent-based paints with water-based paints that contain very little Volatile Organic Compounds. They also started switched to a parts washer that uses environmentally friendly washing fluid instead of solvents, to clean their paint guns and tips. These changes reduced the VOC emissions by almost 50 percent, which is significant for Spokane, as VOC emissions contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone. The changes also resulted in a reduction of hazardous waste generated. In addition to the changes in the painting department, CXT also modified their concrete mix at both of facilities, reducing the use of heaters for curing the concrete; by using less natural gas, the combustion emissions generated by the heaters have been reduced by 20 percent. CXT also became a voluntary Commute Trip Reduction work-site in early 2009. “The CTR program helps us promote the benefits of commute alternatives to our employees, reducing vehicle emissions, traffic congestion and conserving gasoline,” stated David Steiger, Vice President CXT Precast Buildings, in a previous interview. “It allows our company to be holistic in its approach to going green,” added Steiger. Currently the company is working on a sustainability project with students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on creating a complete sustainability business model to be applied to their contract with Canadian National Railway. “It’s looking at our ability to go even further green,” said Rogers. “The project is a win-win situation…they’re specialized in their area so we’re learning from them as well as they’re learning from the project.” Anticipated results from the collaboration are expected to be seen in February, 2012, says Rogers. In addition to manufacturing high-performance industrial and mainline concrete railroad ties, CXT is well known throughout the U.S. as the leader in pre-fabricated custom-made concrete buildings including restrooms, shower and concession buildings, and park products (picnic tables, garbage cans, and snuffers), available in multiple designs, textures and colors. Fabricated with high strength precast concrete to meet all local building codes and textured to match local architectural details, all CXT products meet the Americans with Disabilities Act standards and are built to withstand vandalism, snow, wind and Group One Seismic Design Category E Earthquakes.