USDOT Releases FY’22-’26 Strategic Plan
Click to download PDF
In the week of April 18, the U.S. Department of Transportation released its strategic plan for fiscal years 2022-2026. The strategic plan outlines a future those in our industry are supporting, with an emphasis on aspects in which concrete is crucial:
• Safety—Make our transportation system safer for all people with the goal of a future without transportation-related serious injuries and fatalities.
• Economic Strength & Global Competitiveness—Grow an inclusive and sustainable economy. Invest in our transportation system to provide reliable and efficient access to resources, markets, and good-paying jobs.
• Equity—concrete pavements create certainty for underserved communities—Reduce inequities across our transportation systems and the communities they affect. Support and engage people and communities to promote access to opportunities and services, while reducing transportation-related disparities, adverse community impacts, and health effects.
• Climate & Sustainability—Tackle the climate crisis by ensuring that transportation plays a central role in the solution: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transportation-related pollution; & Build more resilient and sustainable transportation systems to benefit and protect communities.
• Transformation—Design for the future—Purpose-driven research and innovation; Modernize a transportation system of the future to serve everyone today and in the future.
• Organizational Excellence—Strengthen our world-class organization by establishing policies, processes, and an inclusive and innovative culture to effectively serve communities and responsibly steward the public’s resources.
This Bipartisan Infrastructure Law offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invest in infrastructure that will serve left-behind communities for decades to come. In an introduction letter from Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, he wrote: The Fiscal Year 2022-2026 U.S. Department of Transportation Strategic Plan is a roadmap for how we will implement this once-in-a-generation investment to create a transportation system that works for every American. This includes actions to:
- Invest in transportation safety to ensure that no matter how you are traveling—bus, truck, or car; plane, ferry, train, bike, wheelchair, or on foot—you can be confident that you will arrive at your destination safely.
- Repair, rebuild, and modernize our roads, bridges, and pipelines, with a particular focus on climate change mitigation, resilience, equity, and safety for all users.
- Improve healthy, sustainable transportation options for millions of Americans by modernizing and expanding public transit and rail networks across the country.
- Support the transition to net-zero emissions and create good-paying jobs by building a national network of electric vehicle (EV) chargers and electrifying thousands of school and transit buses.
- Support a more just and equitable transportation system by investing in historically underserved communities to connect them with jobs, resources, and opportunities, and empowering them to build generational wealth.
- Improve infrastructure at coastal ports, inland ports and waterways, and land ports of entry along the borders to strengthen our national supply chain.
- Create a world-class organization with the talent and capacity to guide and oversee the largest investment in the nation’s transportation infrastructure since the Eisenhower Administration.
For the entire 45-page report, please click on image above, or go to: https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2022-04/US_DOT_FY2022-26_Strategic_Plan.pdf
Q1 ACPA Government Affairs Report Now Available—ACPA
Click to read the full report
With a large and growing emphasis on sustainability, American Concrete Pavement Association (ACPA) is engaging in legislative and administrative efforts to tout the advantages concrete pavement has in addressing our transportation system’s current and future needs. The quarterly report provides a look at the activities ACPA Government Affairs staff engaged in in the first quarter of 2022. Highlights include a look at the BIL and the FY’22 Appropriations, as well as a rundown of engagement with FHWA, FAA, FEMA, and Tri-services. This report and our work serves as a platform from which ACPA will continue to advocate for concrete pavements and the companies who help make them. Please sign up for our Advocacy Interest Membership to stay up to date with the government affairs news and be eligible to participate in the Government Affairs Committee meeting.
To read the full report, please click on the image above, or go to: https://www.acpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ACPA-Q1-2022-GA-Update-Final.pdf
Group Supply-Chain Challenges Letter to DOT
In a letter sent to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg on April 26, 2022, 56 industry allies called on the Department of Transportation (DOT) to channel the historic funding provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law into discretionary grants that will help relieve supply chain challenges. The letter points out that while multi-modal traffic patterns are returning to a pre-pandemic level, supply-chain problems persist and will require targeted investments to abate in the long-term.
Our industry allies are asking DOT to focus the $18 billion in the INFRA, MEGA, and CRISI programs on building out infrastructure capacity to accommodate the new level of freight traffic. From addressing freight bottlenecks at major highway interchanges to expanded airfields dedicated to cargo traffic, adherence to the message of this letter could mean substantial gains for ACPA members. Concrete pavement’s durability and low-maintenance needs mean it is a perfect solution for crucial freight networks that can’t afford perpetual repairs.
Click to go to 2-page letter
ISCP Industry Allies and Partners in the industry:
- American Road & Transportation Builders Association
- Associated General Contractors of America
- American Council of Engineering Companies
- American Trucking Associations
- Regional Railroad Association
- Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA)
- American Association of Port Authorities
- American Highway Users Alliance
- Associated Builders and Contractors
- Airports Council International – North America
- National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association
- American Institute of Steel Construction
- American Subcontractors Association
- National Ready Mixed Concrete Association
- American Society of Concrete Contractors
- Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute
- National Concrete Masonry Association
- Design-Build Institute of America
- National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS)
- Subsurface Utility Engineering Association (SUEA)
- Portland Cement Association
- Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute
- Associated Equipment Distributors
- American Traffic Safety Services Association
- Intermodal Association of North America
- Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute
- American Iron and Steel Institute
- Construction & Demolition Recycling Association
- Women Construction Owners and Executives
- American Concrete Pavement Association
- American Coal Ash Association
- National Lime Association
- Association of American Railroads
To read the letter and see all affiliates who participated, please go to: http://acpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Supply-Chain-Group-Letter-0422.pdf
Click to download the 7-page Tech Brief
TECH BRIEF: “PEM for Contractors”
As the Performance Engineered Mixtures (PEM) program gains momentum, contractors are starting to ask about how to implement PEM in their daily work, and what impacts the program is going to have on them. This tech brief seeks to address those questions.
The program is based on the premise that if the right concrete is defined (or specified), developed, delivered, and placed for a pavement, the risk of rejection by the agency is reduced in the short term, and that maintenance is significantly reduced in the long term. This will lead to savings to contractors, agencies, and pavement users, as well as improvements in safety, because traffic cones need to be placed less often.
For the 7-page tech brief, please click on image above, or go to: cptechcenter.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4bf55bc365dca0e5c928442da&id=eb83b4d2e4&e=2945805a7f
For the CP Tech Lunch & Learn VIDEO “PEM and Reduced-Cement Paving Mixes in Iowa”, please click on image above, or go to: https://cptechcenter.org/webinars-and-videos/pem-and-reduced-cement-paving-mixes-in-iowa/
Click to download the Guide
GUIDE: “Quality Control for Concrete Paving” (12-2021)
A Tool for Agency and Industry
Quality control (QC) by contractors, concrete suppliers, and materials suppliers is an integral component of a transportation agency’s quality assurance (QA) program and supports the construction of quality concrete infrastructure.
This guide is intended to serve as a tool that both contractor and agency personnel can use at the batch plant, behind the paver, and at other locations on the job. Contractors can use this guide to improve or enhance their existing QC programs and plans by incorporating the appropriate provisions into their operations. This guide can also help agency personnel become familiar with the components of a comprehensive QC plan for concrete paving projects, the ways such a QC plan benefits agencies, and ways to appropriately incorporate QC requirements into specifications. In addition, this guide provides background knowledge to help agency and contractor personnel understand the elements of an agency’s QA program and why QC is an important part of that program. Topics discussed include:
• common agency QC requirements
• the appropriate tools, processes, and procedures to meet these requirements
• continuous improvement activities
• the benefits for contractors of good quality control, including higher efficiency and productivity, increased profit, and safer operations
The material in this guide is presented in a manner that gives contractors the flexibility to develop their QC plans in a way that accommodates their processes and procedures while providing a high likelihood of meeting agency requirements.
To read the 155-page Guide, please click on the image above, or go to: https://intrans.iastate.edu/app/uploads/2021/12/QC_for_concrete_paving_web.pdf
GUIDE to Concrete Overlays, 4th Edition (11-2021)
Click to download 140-page PDF
This guide presents the basic principles that a pavement engineer needs to design and construct concrete overlays on existing asphalt, composite, and concrete pavements.
The intent of this guide is to increase the technical proficiency of experienced engineers in the use of concrete overlays, provide less experienced users with the essential knowledge to address the needs of various types of concrete overlay projects, and help all users recognize the versatility of concrete overlays, whether on low-volume roads, city streets, primary roadways, or Interstate highways. Rather than as a step-by-step manual or series of prescriptive formulae, the material in this guide is presented in the form of expert guidance meant to supplement the professional experience of the reader.
This fourth edition of the guide has been updated with current information on continuously reinforced concrete pavement overlays, geotextile separation layers, fiber reinforcement, concrete overlay design procedures, and lessons learned from the experiences of numerous state highway agency engineers.
To download the 140-page PDF, click on image above, or go to: https://intrans.iastate.edu/app/uploads/2021/11/guide_to_concrete_overlays_4th_Ed_web.pdf?utm_source=CP+Tech+Center&utm_campaign=034cdb912d-RESOURCES+Newsletter+March–April+2021_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_07a32343e1-034cdb912d-169971045
GUIDE BOOK: Design and Control of Concrete Mixtures (1-2021)
Click to order book
Design and Control of Concrete Mixtures has been the cement and concrete industry’s primary reference on concrete knowledge for almost 100 years. Since the first edition was published in 1924, the U.S. version has been updated 16 times to reflect advances in cement and concrete technology and to meet the growing needs of architects, engineers, builders, concrete producers, concrete technologists, instructors, and students. This fully revised 17th edition was written to provide a concise, current reference on concrete, including the many developments that occurred since the last edition was published in 2016. The text is backed by over 100 years of research by the Portland Cement Association and other industry groups. It reflects the latest guidance on:
• standards
• specifications
• test methods of ASTM International (ASTM), the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), and the American Concrete Institute (ACI)
The 17th edition includes an in-depth restructuring of the existing content, presenting a 40% increase in new information over the prior edition within the previous chapters. This edition also has added two new chapters on imperfections in concrete, and innovations in concrete.
To order the book, please go to: cptechcenter.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4bf55bc365dca0e5c928442da&id=32c2a07a4c&e=2945805a7f