On December 7, 2023 Executive Director Jayson Jordan presented two Perpetual Pavement Awards (PPA) at the SCDOT Commission Meeting. SCDOT was presented a 2021 PPA award by Performance for I-95 MM 0 to MM 4 that was constructed in 1976. A 2022 PPA by Design was also given to SCDOT for the Volvo Interchange in Berkeley County constructed in 2019. This was SCDOT's first PPA by Design and the tenth PPA award by Performance. Congratulations is in order from the SCAPA staff and special thanks to SCDOT OMR staff for their assistance in gathering specific project information.

On December 5th, SCAPA's Technical Director Cliff Selkinghouse spoke at the Annual SC Aggregate Association Conference on South Carolina's recent use of SMA on the Interstate. Cliff spoke on the past and current use of the SMA mixtures and the work that needs to be done with cooperation with SCDOT, the local Aggregate Industry and our local Asphalt Producers to make this mix successful here in SC. 

On December 6th, Cliff spoke at an APWA/ASCE Upstate meeting held in Greenville along with King Asphalt's Loyd Amos. They both had an opportunity to speak on SC's need to use sustainable practices in road construction including the uses of Cold In Place Recycling, FDR, and asphalt paving with recycled materials.

Congratulations to the newly appointed Women of Asphalt SC Branch 2024 Steering Committee leaders:

Noelle Arena, Chair
Kimmie Lyons, Vice Chair
Susan Dukes Snyder, Secretary
Emily Lawton, Member at Large and Marketing Chair

These WofA leaders will serve a one year term through September, 2024, following which a call for 2024-2025 officers nominations will be announced. 

Women of Asphalt invites all SCAPA members and industry partners to join them for a 2024 Strategic Planning Day, Wednesday, January 17, 2024 from 10 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. in Columbia. All WofA and SCAPA members, as well as industry partners, are welcome. RSVP with Katherine Hilton.

SCAPA and SCDOT will once again hold the Partners In Quality (PIQ) meetings this winter. The first meeting is scheduled for Jan. 25th and will run through March 5th. Click the button below to see the full schedule.

This month, members of SCAPA's Young Professionals Committee (PAVE) participated in the Anderson County. The two-day event was held at the Anderson Civic Center. More than 8,000 area middle schoolers learned about the road construction industry and the various career possibilities. In addition, various SCAPA members exhibited at the showcase and brought unique equipment and #asphalt marketing swag for students. 

Deadlines for the 2024 SCAPA Membership Directory are quickly approaching. Please reach out to Katherine Hilton to update your company's listing if you have not done so.

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

On Nov. 7, NAPA submitted detailed comments for the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on Roadway Safety Challenges. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) articulated the concern industry workers face and advocated for the protection of road construction crews inside the work zone. NAPA reached out to Sen. Cardin’s office for further dialogue and continues to partner with other stakeholders to make meaningful progress to protect road construction crews. See the link below for NAPA’s letter to Chairman Tom Carper.

T&K Asphalt Services Inc. is headquartered in Whitman, Massachusetts. They have one grading crew, one milling crew and two paving crews. These teams all work together to accomplish jobs like a well-oiled machine. This company is strong not only because they have an excellent overall team of employees working in harmony with best practices and good training, but also because they use a complete and well-thought-out work order to keep those best practices on track. See the link below for the complete article and picture, courtesy of Asphalt Pro Magazine.

Congress extended funding for transportation programs through Jan. 19, avoiding a government shutdown and providing more time for agreement on spending levels through Fiscal Year (FY) 2024. The action was part of a two-tiered plan: extend some government spending programs through Jan. 19 and others through Feb. 2. The Senate passed its FY 2024 transportation spending bill Nov. 1, but the House bill, which cuts rail and public transportation programs, lacks the votes to pass.

Why it matters: The continuing resolution maintains current FY 2023 spending levels – but doesn’t incorporate the FY 2024 authorized funding increases included in the infrastructure law.

What’s next: Congress returns after Thanksgiving to resume work on FY 2024 spending bills. It’s unclear yet what will break the House’s logjam so that it can pass transportation spending legislation. See the link below for more information.

Nearly 100 attendees gathered in St. Augustine, Florida, September 18-20 for NAPA’s annual professional development event: the IMPACT Leadership Group Conference. A significant undertaking for the group was affirming its goals for the year ahead, creating a thematic goal. With small and large group input during a facilitated session, attendees were laser-focused on building the IMPACT Leadership Group itself, charting a path to refine its organizational structure. They also answered ‘why do we exist?’ with four defining objectives:
1. To share new ideas with NAPA leadership,
2. To increase member engagement,
3. To develop the next generation of leaders, and
4. To encourage committee volunteerism. 

A highlight of the event was an all-access tour of Duval Asphalt’s plant and lab, with a behind-the-scenes look at Duval’s sustainable asphalt efforts and how others can incorporate similar initiatives. Other sessions offered guidance on rethinking sustainability, uncovering plant efficiencies (aligned with NAPA’s new publication, QIP-132: Production Strategies for Saving Money and Reducing Emissions), getting the most out of Hey NAPA, and engaging in legislative advocacy.

Article Courtesy of Asphalt Magazine

NAPA is reopening the data collection for its EPD benchmarking initiative on Nov. 6, 2023 through Jan. 8, 2024. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, government agencies including the FHWA and others are starting to ramp up their low embodied carbon purchasing programs for asphalt mixtures. If you were unable to submit benchmarking data earlier this year, we strongly encourage you to do so now. If you previously submitted data, this is an opportunity to add data for additional plants. There is no cost to participate in this initiative. Mix producers can prepare for the benchmarking initiative by watching this webinar. Start compiling your benchmark data by using the Data Gathering Spreadsheet.

Cliff Avenue is a minor arterial street in the city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, that sees between 16,000 and 18,000 vehicles per day. “It’s a pretty busy thoroughfare,” said Mike Schmidt, street engineer for the city of Sioux Falls. “It also borders our downtown area, so it’s a good daily commuter route for people going to and from work downtown.” Originally paved with concrete in 1992, the existing pavement on Cliff Avenue had reached the end of its service life. Historically, Sioux Falls’ arterial streets have been paved with concrete, along with its major intersections. “Pretty much every other road in the city is asphalt,” Schmidt said. However, when the city decided in the summer of 2022 that it was time for 15 blocks of the avenue (from 11th Street to 26th Street) to receive an upgrade, it opted for asphalt. “Cliff Avenue had already been through quite a few joint repairs, but the road was still in rough shape,” Schmidt said. The city decided to overlay the concrete with asphalt. “That’s not something we’ve done a lot of here, but it’s emerging as a new repair strategy for us.” According to Schmidt, the city’s approach to its concrete arterials has long been to perform joint repairs 10 and 20 years into the life of the street, followed by a full reconstruction and replacement with new concrete. “That’s getting unbelievably expensive—up to $1 million per block including utilities,” he said. However, the utilities on Cliff Avenue were in good condition. “It was only the concrete that was getting old and becoming too rough a ride.”The asphalt overlay approach on Cliff Avenue would cost $2.2 million, while Schmidt estimates a full concrete reconstruction would likely cost around $15 million with new utilities. “For one eighth the cost, we can get another 8 to 10 years out of this with an overlay versus 30 years out of a full reconstruction,” he said. “We could do four overlays and it’s still nearly half the price of the reconstruction. The asphalt overlay is a much more affordable route, as long as the utilities are still good.”
See the full article from Asphalt Pro Magazine with the link below. 

A recent study was done at NCAT involving SCDOT's use of SMA in SC and how different gradations can have an affect of pavement friction. The article below takes a deep dive into the dynamics of macro texture. Pavement surface texture plays a significant role in maintaining safe roadways. Increased texture typically yields safer pavements by providing larger channels, or “valleys,” for water to be displaced between the exposed surface aggregates as vehicles pass over. This reduces the overall film thickness of the sheet of water running off the pavement during rain events and exposes more aggregates to improve friction between the tires and pavement, especially at high speeds. Gradation and type of asphalt mix directly affect the surface texture of the pavement. Gradation and mixture type are the two most effective options for targeting certain levels of texture. For example, coarser mixes will have taller “peaks” and deeper “valleys” due to the increased amount of coarse aggregate particles. Gradation and mixture type selection are the two most effective options for targeting certain levels of texture. See the article below from NCAT Asphalt Technology News.

The 2024 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. 

Planning is imperative for any type of successful asphalt paving project. When it comes to defining a successful asphalt project, success can be measured not only by the feasibility and execution of the project but also by the long-term performance of the pavement constructed. Pavement performance often is measured based on smoothness and overall condition. We offer these five rules of thumb in the planning and construction of an asphalt paving project to help maximize pavement smoothness and life. Select the link below for the full article provided by our friends at Asphalt Institute.

Pavement roughness is generally defined as an expression of irregularities in the pavement surface that adversely affect the ride quality of a vehicle (and thus the user). Roughness is an important pavement characteristic because it affects not only ride quality but also vehicle delay costs, fuel consumption and maintenance costs. The commonly recommended units are inches per mile in the U.S. The IRI is based on the average rectified slope (ARS), which is a filtered ratio of a standard vehicle’s accumulated suspension motion (inches) divided by the distance traveled by the vehicle during the measurement (mile). The national standard in the United States for IRI thresholds for all road classifications range from 96 in/mi to 170 in/mi indicating “acceptable” road segments, and IRI less than 95 in/mi are considered to be “good” road segments.