Pavia Systems: The Gravel Pit Blog

Longitudinal joint construction is highly important to successful paving projects. Too often, simple steps that can ensure that your joints are properly constructed are ignored or forgotten. In order to remedy this, we suggest that you and your crews spend time with some or all of the following materials:

• Pavement Interactive has an excellent article on the topic of Longitudinal Joint Construction
• The specific problem of raveling is an important one for all paving professionals to understand
• The specific problem of cracking, which can also come about during joint construction, is imperative for paving professionals to understand
• HMA’s Compaction Toolkit provides a library of publications and videos about the compaction of Hot-Mix Asphalt pavement. This comprehensive collection was designed to assist the paving supervisor, crew, and especially the roller operator with access to the information needed to produce a quality HMA pavement. It’s a great addition to your training materials collection.
• For those who attended the World of Asphalt, the course “HMA Compaction: the key to Performance and Profits” is available for free
• “Components of Compaction“, one of our courses, is an excellent overview on Compaction and includes a specific lesson on Joint Construction

For those of you working towards minimizing Aggregate Segregation, we’ve put together a list of useful resources that will assist you in your quest. The following materials represent resources from Pavement Interactive and Pavia Systems.

Relevant courses from Pavia Systems:

End Dump Truck Exchange & Transport

This course provides an overview of best practices and safety procedures associated with the loading, transport and dumping of hot mix asphalt using an end dump truck. An example lesson, on the proper loading techniques for Multiple Drop Loading is embedded below.

Aggregate Testing Bundle

Designed to familiarize technicians and engineers with the origins, procedures, calculations, and results associated with common aggregate tests, this bundle is comprehensive in its coverage in all things related to determining aggregate quality.

Exceptional articles from Pavement Interactive:

Aggregate Segregation

Truck Loading & Unloading information

The Job Mix Formula (JMF)

We’ve heard a lot of questions from people about stimulus funding and what it means for the transportation industry. In our quest to better understand the opportunities available to the transportation industry, we’ve come across some excellent resources online. Be sure to let us know if we’ve missed anything!

• An interactive map of DOT spending, enabling investigation of obligations at a Federal, State, County and Congressional level can be found here
• A directory of State Transportation websites is found here
• An interactive map for all State Recovery websites is located here
• Many states do a good job of listing out advertised and awarded projects. Washington State’s list is located here
• The TIGER discretionary grant program recently published a revised notice of funding availability, which is located here
• The DOT is maintaining a site with information regarding the TIGER program and that is located here
• The latest Federal Financial & Activity Reports, can be found in Excel format here
• California’s Recovery Page is very helpful and located here
• Some states have gone so far as to make all jobs related to the Stimulus Package available via a central resource. Here is Washington State’s

We hope this helps you find out more about the opportunities available to you and your organizations. Feel free to pass this along to colleagues, we’re always to happy to help educate our friends in the paving industry and help them be more successful.