Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/846046
within paving, but interest is grow- ing. The Life Cycle Analysis 2017 Symposium in April at the Univer- sity of Illinois at Urbana-Cham- paign focused on LCA for pave- ments, with the primary objective of reviewing industry use of the plans, pulling together a consensus of use and determining ways to implement LCAs. "This was a great opportunity to see how pavement LCA is gaining wider acceptance," says American Concrete Pavement Association (ACPA) Technical Services Engineer Eric Ferrebee, who participated in the event. "The symposium also provided a view of the practical, meaningful ways industry, the pub- lic sector and academia are working together to show the importance and value of LCA in highway, air- port and roadway construction." ACPA Executive Vice President Leif Wathne also participated in a panel discussion, stressing that "meaningful advancement in sus- tainable practices and LCA will only be realized by fully marshaling and leveraging the expertise, know- how and innovative spirit of both paving industries, primarily through competition." According to the Federal High- way Administration's Pavement Life Cycle Assessment Framework, released last July, the most com- mon uses of LCAs for pavements in North America include: • Selecting a material or pavement structural design. • Evaluating the impacts of poten- tial changes in a policy or specifi- cation. • Developing LCA tools for screen- ing or detailed LCA for the scop- ing or design of a project. • Evaluating scenarios for network- level decisions and strategies for preservation, maintenance and rehabilitation. • Developing material environment product declarations for pavement applications. Quantifying sustainability FHWA says an LCA is one of four primary methods of measuring as- pects of sustainability in order to set guidelines or benchmarks by which progress can be determined. The other three are performance assessment, life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) and sustainability rating systems. Performance assessment covers how a pavement performs com- pared to its "intended" purpose in relation to current standard prac- tices. This would look at materials used or method of construction and how they compare to other methods considered standard with respect to longevity of a pavement's service life. A life-cycle cost analysis looks at the costs of a project to determine the economic impact of sustainable EquipmentWorld.com | July 2017 49 2016 ACPA Excellence in Concrete Pavement Awards Silver Award winner in the County Roads division – 7th Road (Veterans Parkway)/U.S. 31 Interchange in Indiana. Contractor: Primco, Ft. Wayne, Indiana (source: ACPA) Concrete pavements around the town square in Bellefontaine, Ohio, date back to 1891, with the oldest still in use in the United States placed in 1893.