Pavia Systems: The Gravel Pit Blog

In our quest to better understand the federal highway funding picture for 2010 we’ve come across some excellent resources online. Be sure to let us know if we’ve missed anything!

• A FY 2010 Appropriations Summary from the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA)
• NAPA’s Federal Funding 2010 Market Outlook .
• “Jobs” Bill Information summarized by the Association of General Contracctors
• A fantastic Federal Funding Blog created and maintained by the Federal Relations Manager at WSDOT.
• SAFETEA-LU Extension Summary describing the legislative landscape and various extension related bills

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

When evaluating pavement surfaces to determine whether or not they’re appropriate for thin asphalt overlays, it’s important to determine what distresses are currently in the pavement. Potential distresses include:

• Raveling – a loss of fine aggregate in the pavement surface resulting in a coarse and weathered appearance.
• Longitudinal cracking
  • Not in the wheelpath: Cracking resulting from the deterioration of a longitudinal joint or as a result of a crack reflecting through the surface from a lower layer.
  • In the wheelpath: Cracking resulting from the application of traffic loads causing excess tensile strains.
• Transverse cracking – Cracking occurring at a 90 degree angle to the direction of traffic, due to either the expansion and contraction of the pavement surface or as a result from cracks in lower layers reflecting through the surface.
• Alligator or Fatigue Cracking - Interconnected cracks occurring in the wheelpath resulting from the application of excessive traffic loads.
• Rutting or Shoving – A distortion of the pavement surface in the wheelpaths resulting from a lack of shear strength in one or more pavement layer

Once the types of pavement distress have been evaluated, the following table can be used to determine the approach that is necessary in order to prepare the pavement for thin overlay:

(Source: NAPA publication, Thin Overlays for Pavement Preservation)

Other resources:

• The National Asphalt Paving Association offers a very comprehensive downloadable document about Thin Overlays that can be found at their page on Thin Overlays.
• Additionally, their webinar on Thin Overlays comes highly recommended.
• Pavement Interactive’s resources for specific pavement distress types have been linked to above and in addition, the page on Non-Structural Overlays is helpful. 

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.

Here at Pavia, we’re always working on how to best train paving professionals. Over the years, this has led to the development of a course catalog that is really comprehensive in order to meet the diverse set of needs of our customers and partners. With that large and growing catalog, however, it can be a bit overwhelming to determine what to purchase “off the shelf” for your organization. Which is why we’ve been working for a while with our partner, NAPA on a really tough question:

How do we train our paving professionals most efficiently, effectively and simply?

Today, we’re pleased to announce our RoadReady product line, which we hope will help you ALL answer that question with us, at a fraction of the cost of alternatives:

More information about RoadReady is available here

Working with NAPA, various state agencies and many of the industry’s brightest minds, we’ve created a set of training materials that is ALWAYS up-to-date and that covers ALL basic requirements. Most importantly, our RoadReady products are designed to ensure that your PEOPLE are given the knowledge to do the highest quality job possible.

Our first product, RoadReady Operator, is available now. Released in time for the paving season, this product has 8 courses of interactive material for your new hires, re-hires and existing operators. Covering topics like the Components of Compaction and Paver Operations, we’re confident that your people will be ready to work once they’ve been through RoadReady Operator.

You and your people can be set up in just a few hours, so find out more information now and tell us how many people you need to train.