Better Roads Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/85927
HighwayContractor by Dan Brown, Contributing Editor HOT these days in hot mix asphalt paving on Interstate highways. Consider, for example, an 18-mile-long project on Interstate 10 in Cochise County. Not only did FNF achieve high rates of production on the $10.3 million project, but the company also won bonuses for both smoothness and mix quality. And, the proj- ect won a Quality in Construction Award from the National Asphalt Pavement Association and a Build Arizona Award from the Associated General Contractors. "We moved down F FNF Construction earned mix quality bonuses averaging $2.30 per ton. the road pretty good," says Clint Amator, FNF project manager. "On some days we laid around 3,000 tons, and we had a few days where we actually placed more than 5,000 tons. Over the course of the project, we averaged right at 3,500 tons of asphalt per day." FNF ran a 24-hour traffi c control opera- tion for the project. "We were working about an 18-hour milling shift to keep up with our paving operations, so we re- ally had to resource the project 24 hours a day to keep the traffi c control running," NF Construction and the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) set the bar very high Achieving the high production/quality double on Interstate 10 Amator says. The contractor kept traffi c running in one lane at all times. ADOT limited the length of the one-lane closure to 4 miles. Using one Roadtec RX 900 milling ma- chine, subcontractor Valentine Surfacing of Vancouver, Wash., milled the pavement at 12.5 feet wide. Depths of milling ranged up to 5 inches. "When we did the 5-inch milling we were getting roughly 2 miles per day," Amator says. "But when we were actually milling 3.5 inches, then putting back 3 inches of dense-graded mix, we achieved close to 3.5 to 4 miles per day on that." Amator says the major challenge of the project was the differential milling required to correct the cross-fall on super- elevations where the pavement curved. As designed, ADOT called for the cross-fall to be corrected in the paving phase. But because ADOT and FNF practiced partner- ing on the project, ADOT accepted FNF's proposal to correct the cross-fall in the milling phase. "If we saw a problem, we brought it up right away before it manifested itself into a real issue," says Amator. "ADOT worked very well with us to listen to our concerns. For any potential problem, we put it out in the open and proposed a solution for them prior to having delays. Our handling of the super-elevations is an example of that." The original plans called for increases in Better Roads August 2012 9