The EUPAVE workshop on “Best Practices in Concrete Paving” took place on May 26, 2015 in Brussels, Belgium. This successful workshop kicked off the series of “best practices” workshops, and gathered 40 experts active in the concrete paving sector such as contractors, designers, road construction engineers, and academics. The participants had the unique opportunity to exchange on best practices, as well as to discuss solutions to challenges and difficulties experienced in application. Mr. Stéphane Nicoud, EUPAVE President, opened the workshop by presenting EUPAVE and highlighted the new affiliation category “PARTNER”. EUPAVE has recently stepped up its efforts in its main activity areas in sharing of best practices and communicating the benefits of concrete pavements.
Mr. Rory Keogh, Best Practices Working Group (WG) Leader, presented the activities of the WG. A priority for the WG was to look at all aspects of surface texture and evenness—the subject for this workshop. He explained that the objectives of the Workshop were to involve EUPAVE’s new “partners” in giving answers to both design and construction issues in order to move in the same direction with regards to quality and sustainability—we cannot afford bad practices. The focus throughout was on the important aspects such as comfort, traffic noise, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, and durability. Smooth roads are safer; last longer and stay smooth longer; save money in maintenance; save money in fuel consumption; and save money in vehicle operating costs.
Mr. Margo Briessinck, World Road Association (PIARC), gave an introductory presentation and clarified that PIARC prefers the positive term “evenness” among the frequently used terms of “evenness” and “smoothness” … and the converse, “roughness”. In addition, he presented the indicators of evenness and different methods used to measure those indicators in different countries.
Mr. Luc Rens, Managing Director of EUPAVE, launched the discussion on achieving and maintaining the evenness of concrete pavements by presenting parameters affecting smoothness. The participants contributed to the debate by expressing their experience in application, and concerns and constraints during construction—showing that similar cases confronted during construction of concrete pavements were solved by different approaches. Discussions included:
• Control and maintenance of evenness during the construction
• Corrective treatments such as grinding and grooving and milling
• Different case specific constraints depending on the base type, design, and construction methods
(track paths; stringlines or stringless systems; speed of paver; single layer or double layer;
jointed or continuously reinforced concrete pavements (CRCP))
• Factors affecting evolution of evenness during service life
Additionally, EUPAVE has taken the commitment of creating a new brochure based on the editing of the existing 1991 PIARC Technical Report “Achieving and Maintaining the Evenness of Concrete Pavements”. Beneficial discussion served as input from the industry to the drafting of this new, updated document.
During the final session, Mr. Keogh brought up the discussion on construction skills, training, and licensing for machine operators.
Finally, the participants suggested near-future workshop topics to be:
“Tunnel pavements” | “Overlays” | “Industrial Flooring” | “Joint Layout for JPCP”
For the article on the EUPAVE website, please click here.
For the pre-workshop flyer, please click here.
For the pre-workshop ISCP April 2015 article on the ISCP website, please click here;
and for the article in the Newsletter Archives, please click here.