Registration is now open for the Spring Member Dinner and Legislative Day!  Be sure to reserve your room now, as the room block is filling up fast! 

The Spring Member Dinner will be held the evening of Tuesday, April 25th and will be followed by Legislative Day on April 26th.  

The SCAPA Summer Conference will be held at the Omni Amelia Island Resort in Fernandina Beach, FL the weekend of June 23-25.  Click Learn More to access the room block information!  Deadline to reserve a room is May 29th!

Registration is opening soon!

The 2023 SCAPA Winter Conference & Trade Show had a record turnout with over 650 attendees at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center on February 27th and 28th. The conference kicked off in style on Monday the 27th with a Trade Show Reception, featuring large equipment displays and industry exhibitors. The 28th included a full day of agency updates and sessions from asphalt industry experts, as well as honoring the top projects in the state from this past year at the Quality Pavement Awards Luncheon. 

On behalf of the SCAPA Board of Directors and Staff, we want to extend a huge THANK YOU to our sponsors for the 2023 SCAPA Winter Conference & Trade Show! We are grateful for your generous support!

SCAPA honored six projects this year at the Quality Pavement Awards Luncheon, held in conjunction with the Winter Conference & Trade Show.

SCAPA Associate Member Dobbs Equipment held an informative training seminar at "The Gala" off Bush River Road in Columbia on March 2, 2023. There was a good turnout of asphalt industry personnel along with knowledgeable representatives from Hamm, Vogele, and Wirtgen Group, a SCAPA  Associate Member. Two main sessions were taught by Laikram "Nars" Narsingh and Tim Kowalski. Best practices with pavers and compaction were covered in great detail. 

SCAPA appreciates the opportunity to learn from these experts and continue to make our roadways even better.

SCAPA Technical Director Cliff Selkinghaus traveled to Auburn University this month to present at the Alabama Asphalt Pavement Association conference held on March 8th. One of the technical director's duties is to provide other states paving associations and DOTs with insight into what we are doing here in the Palmetto State. A topic that has been of growing interest across the industry over the past few years is paving thick lifts of asphalt.

There are many advantages to paving thicker lifts in a single paver pass such as speed of construction/repair, fewer chances for delamination between successive layers, and often improved compaction. While not all jobs will have a need for thick lift paving, special attention must be given to specific details like drop-offs and percent roll-down, the need for additional lane closures (dual preferred), and colder ambient temperatures to aid in cooling of the freshly compacted asphalt mixture.

During a recent meeting with the SCDOT, a topic of discussion was Full Depth Patches. We wanted to take this opportunity to remind our readers that full-depth patches need to be smooth and constructed with best practices in mind. As we all work through our day-to-day operations, and the current supply limitations on certain materials used in the rehabilitation of our roads, this is a great opportunity for the industry to step up and make these repairs even better. Often the FDP is milled prior to paving the final lift of the surface which often hides some of the imperfections. However, on contracts that are being switched from CMRB to asphalt, this is not likely the case, and milling is not performed. The patches need to be constructed correctly to ride as smoothly as possible to improve the final rideability test values. Click the 'Learn More' button below to read more about FDP best practices.

The 2023 SCAPA Membership Directory & Resource Guide is available! Copies were shipped out earlier this month. To access the digital version, please click the 'Learn More' button below.

Please let Jayson or Cliff know if you have not received a copy or would like a complimentary one mailed or delivered to you.

 

If you have not been in the SCAPA Member Portal lately, you may not have seen the new look! We would like for the Member Portal to be a resource for you and hope to add more members-only content to it. You can get to the Member Portal from the new website at www.scasphalt.org and click Member Login from the menu. Click to learn more about why you need to be on the Member Portal.

Sustainability

Get Involved

Data, Data, Data

Get the latest legislative update for March 2023, provided by Sunnie Harmon and John DeWorken of LobbySC.

An asphalt perpetual pavement, properly designed and constructed, lasts longer than 50 years without requiring major structural rehabilitation or reconstruction, and needs only periodic surface renewal in response to distress confined to the top of the pavement. This webinar, featuring Auburn University's Dr. Dave Timm, will discuss material and design selection, current perpetual pavement thickness practices, and present the latest award-winning perpetual pavements.  

 

These are real scenarios that have occured in the field:

Now let’s say a crewmember goes missing mid-shift; the sheriff pulls up and arrests the screed operator for a minor felony; your most experienced laborer falls over from heat exhaustion; the tack truck driver gets a call from the principal’s office saying his child is ill and must be collected from school ASAP; the paver operator gets frustrated by one too many haul trucks bumping into his machine or ignoring his hand signals and he walks off the job.

This article gives insight on how to deal with these days on the job.

Plastic waste is an ongoing concern for our environment. Agencies and industry are keenly interested in the use of recycled plastic waste in asphalt, which holds potential to both improve asphalt pavements’ performance and reduce the amount of plastic waste. TRB will host a webinar on Thursday, March 16, 2023 from 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM Eastern that will include up-to-date engineering information pertaining to recycled plastic waste in asphalt pavements. Presenters will highlight the current state-of-knowledge, summarize ongoing research on the topic, focus on the timeline of related research products, and provide overseas lab and field experience for an international perspective.

The 2023 SCDOT certification course schedule has been released. Online registration is available on TCTC's website at www.tctc.edu/scdot.

Note that the site will have only one of each course type available for registration at a time, so not all of the sections will show as available.