Asphalt Contractor - Contractors Partner Up for Success -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 10/24/2001
Last Visited: 10/24/2001
Says Michael Donnino , Texas regional manager for Granite Construction , This was one of the most complex jobs in Dallas due to us having to maintain traffic on the busiest road in the city.It involved changing a four-lane road , which meandered up and down and over and under bridges , to an eight- to 10-lane freeway with full shoulders , full three-lane frontage roads , all new bridges and retaining walls.We did 1 million yards ( 914 , 400 m ) of excavation and 250 , 000 tons ( 226 , 750 Mg ) of hot mix..Most of the asphalt used in the project was for asphalt stabilized base or detour paving.Donnino says that the temporary detour roads were built while another section of the road was being worked on.We would constantly move two lanes over , build a piece , then move them again , then build some more pieces through the intersection and bridges , explains Donnino.First we milled up existing asphalt and made RAP out of it.Then we milled up our detour asphalt and made permanent asphalt stabilized base out of that..Between existing pavement and their detour pavements , Granite used about 110 , 000 tons ( 99 , 770 Mg ) of mix that was put down , torn back up and reused.Donnino mentions that after lime treating the subgrade with nearly 1 , 400 tons ( 1 , 270 Mg ) of lime , 4 to 8 inches ( 100 to 200 mm ) of asphalt were added to permanently stabilize the base.We recycled about 300 , 000 square yards ( 250 , 838 sq m ) of asphalt , which was reused in other mixes for this same project , like the permanent asphalt stabilized base , says Donnino.The project not only finished ahead of schedule , but was also completed with no assessed claims or penalties.One of the benefits of partnering was that we finished a very complicated job nine months early , says Donnino.In addition , the job did not initially have a spec for the use of RAP.We were using so much RAP that there was no sense in throwing it away , says Donnino.So , a RAP spec was incorporated into the project , which contributed to a 1.5 percent savings on the $105-million contract.Another outcome of this partnering effort had to do with the helpful , collective input from both sides of the partnering team.Donnino explains that Granite and TexDOT established an opportunity for improvement system on the job whereby representatives from each entity met monthly to discuss ideas on how to improve the project.OFI cards were handed out at the meetings , giving team members the opportunity to suggest ideas on how to improve partnering , safety , quality and productivity.Any one of the 200 crew or 150 subcontractor crew members could turn in their OFI cards at the monthly meetings.We looked at all the ideas and if there were good ones , we'd implement them , says Donnino.We had more than 800 cards turned in on the job and we implemented about 500 of those ideas.We gave away t-shirts or hats for good ideas.Sometimes whole crews would turn in an OFI on how to do their piece of work better..It worked out that the state and Granite were able to work side by side to come up with better ways to do things.One of the aspects they were able to jointly improve was the traffic sequencing.With a daily traffic flow of about 200 , 000 vehicles and an extremely confined work space , the partners had to come up with different ways to move traffic around the construction area.
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There were more than 400 sheets of traffic control drawings , says Donnino , which we scrapped and started over.We came up with a lot of different ways to change the phasing with different types of traffic control - and that was all part of the partnering effort..
Joint venture team tackles massive Orange County project.