Asked about the challenge of the project, Steinkamp assures, “It’s all challenging.” One minor issue arose with the absorptive aggregates for the asphalt mix. If the mix sat in a truck too long, the aggregates would soak up liquid asphalt and drive up the voids content in the mix.

“On the two days when we did not achieve full incentive, we were doing some piecework where there was a side road tying in and we had trucks sitting,” Steinkamp says. “So the longer those trucks sat, the more time the rock had to really cure and soak up more asphalt. So our air voids in turn went up.

“We had to manage trucks carefully,” Steinkamp says. “When we had piecework to do, we would eliminate some trucks – just run four trucks until noon, say, and let the other trucks haul rock.”

Another factor that helped with smoothness was the roadway profile left by WK Construction crews when they did the cold recycling. “They gave us a good base to work on,” Steinkamp says. “There were not a lot of deviations in the mat when they finished. They left an accurate profile for us to pave on.”