You need the right stuff to win a paving award.

Super Smooooth Delivery

Placement of a 1/2-inch asphalt leveling course and careful screed control helped the contractor win a Quality in Construction Award from the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA). Scotty’s Contracting & Stone, LLC, won the award for 6.2 miles of Interstate 65 in Barren and Hart Counties, Ky.

The use of a mobile mat referene on the Blaw-Knox paver helped to produce a smooth pavement on this section of Interstate 65 in Kentucky.

Scotty’s bid included money to pave the full 10-foot outside shoulder on the Interstate, but the state decided not to pave the entire area. By only paving 4 feet of the outside shoulder, Scotty’s realized some savings that were applied to paving the 1/2-inch leveling course. “We took that savings and put it toward the leveling course over the full 32-foot width of pavement, which is really what helped us obtain the ride we did,” says Jared Nix, quality control manager for Scotty’s Contracting.

The contractor paved the full 32 feet wide in two 16-foot pulls. Each of those pulls covered a 12-foot driving lane and 4 feet of shoulder. Scotty’s had used a Roadtec milling machine to remove 1.5 inches of asphalt, so after the leveling course, the Blaw-Knox paver put back 1.5 inches of hot-mix asphalt (HMA).

All the paving was done at night. The contractor could only close down to one lane between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. “We paved during the day on the ramps,” said Nix.

Thanks to the use of a Roadtec Shuttle Buggy and a mobile mat reference on the paver, Scotty’s achieved exceptional rideability and earned an incentive for it. The mobile mat reference has a bridge that goes over the screed and runs a reference on the uncompacted mat just placed.

Quality from a high production operation

The use of a Roadtec Shuttle Buggy and a Topcon non-contact ski to control the paver helped Orlando Paving Co., Orlando, Fla., achieve award-winning smoothness on an asphalt mill-and-fill project in Florida. The project, on SR 528, won a 2009 Quality in Construction Award from the National Asphalt Pavement Association.

The project covered 66 lane miles and entailed milling up 3.5 inches of asphalt, then placing two structural lifts back – first a 2-inch lift, then a 1.5-inch lift. The contractor did not use the Shuttle Buggy for the two structural lifts, but did so for the 3/4-inch (0.75-inch) open-graded friction course on the surface.

“With the Shuttle Buggy you keep a constant movement, a steady pace and you virtually eliminate segregation,” says Paul Miller, construction manager for Orlando Paving. The results on the surface course were superb: a 4.17 ride number on a laser profiler, with 5.0 being the best possible score. “The paver moved along at about 30 to 35 feet per minute,” says Miller. “Anything faster would be moving too fast.

“We didn’t use the Shuttle Buggy for the structural courses due to availability of the machine,” Miller says.

The contractor produced and laid 160,000 tons of hot-mix asphalt in just 310 days. All paving was done at night on the heavily traveled roadway, which carried between 45,000 and 90,000 vehicles per day. The contractor worked the project between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. on the mainline and 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. for the ramps.