Congratulations to the NovusCrete Consortium, led by the Oil Sustainability Program (OSP), on winning first place in the Flatwork category at the 2026 American Concrete Institute (ACI) Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards in the USA.

NovusCrete brings together industry, government, and academia to advance seawater concrete construction across Saudi Arabia, a locally developed innovation with strong sustainability potential for a region where freshwater is scarce.

KFUPM’s IRC for Construction & Building Materials is a leading contributor to this initiative. Its NovusCrete research program is developing structural-grade concrete from local resources:

🌊 Red Sea and Arabian Gulf seawater for mixing and curing
♻️ Recycled aggregate from construction waste
🛢️ Petcoke aggregate from refinery by-products
🏜️ Re-engineered desert dune sand
🧵 Corrosion-free GFRP reinforcement and PP microfibers

Dr. Muhammad Kalimur Rahman, Principal Investigator of the program, represented KFUPM at the ACI Fall Convention 2026 in Atlanta this month, presenting the team’s work on next-generation seawater concrete.