Flooring: The Next Generation - Ultracompact Surfacing
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Large format floor tiles are elegant and timeless and create spacious and stylish environments with high-end appeal. This course introduces a unique, cutting-edge surfacing material known as ultracompact surfacing (UCS) and explores how it is manufactured, installation considerations, superior performance attributes, design potential, and its environmental impact.
Upon completion of this course, the Learner should be able to:
- Define ultracompact surfacing (UCS) and discuss the innovative production process that creates superior tile properties and reduced environmental impact.
- Recall large format tile installation considerations related to the substrate, materials, and methods that ensure project longevity.
- Discuss selecting UCS in terms of life cycle environmental impact, color, texture, format, and general design flexibility, as well as the various possible interior and exterior applications.
- Identify twelve key attributes of UCS, explaining how they influence material performance, safety, durability, and sustainability.
Approximately 1 hour. Delivered online, at your own pace.
Presented by Steve DeBerardino on behalf of Cosentino North America. View the Privacy Policy .
Presenter Information
Name: Steve DeBerardino
Title: Commercial Business Director, Cosentino North America
Background: Steve DeBerardino is a 1987 graduate of the United States Military Academy and has an MBA from Charleston Southern University. After serving as a Corps of Engineers officer where he ran large construction projects in Central America, Steve has had a long career in the private sector, primarily in relation to construction products. In various roles at Exxon in the 1990s, he was instrumental in growing the use of geosynthetics. Steve pushed product and material use in stabilization, drainage, and reinforcement applications on a number of fronts: throughout North America as a member of the AASHTO M288 committee, or when presenting cutting edge research at the Transportation Research Board, to state departments of transportation, or at the Geosynthetic Research Institute. In the next decade and a half, Steve ran various business units for Oldcastle of increasing size and responsibility, primarily in the concrete products arena. His last role at Oldcastle started in 2009 when he was President of a multi-site fabrication business in the Southeast, Oldcastle Surfaces. Here, he started a relationship with Cosentino, and joined Cosentino in 2015. He is now the Commercial Business Director, responsible for all commercial business for Cosentino in North America.
