http://www.newsobserver.com/243/story/1610242.html

Quote :

"Botched paving to cost state $13 million It turns out that Wendi Johnson, a Wilson-based construction engineer for the state Department of Transportation, was right all along. And the central office experts were wrong. North Carolina will spend $13 million to correct their mistake, DOT officials said today, and to implement a recommendation Johnson made six years ago. In 2003 and 2004, Johnson urged DOT honchos in Raleigh not to scrimp on the thickness of pavement for the new 18-mile Interstate 795, a truck shortcut from Goldsboro to I-95 at Wilson. Citing her experience with other road projects in Eastern North Carolina, Johnson warned that DOT’s planned 5-inch pavement would be too thin and too weak to support the expected freeway traffic. Senior DOT planners rejected her plea to add 3 more inches of asphalt. They objected to the cost – an extra $2.8 million for a $196 million project. The pavement was supposed to be good for 15 years. But the first cracks and potholes appeared in 2007, 16 months after I-795 opened under light traffic. “It was premature aging, so to speak,” say Ray Carnecki of Cary, a retired paving executive who advised DOT on the I-795 problem. “The asphalt got brittle and started to crack after it had been down a year and a half. It acted like it had been down for 10 years.” After analyzing the pavement failure for two years, DOT administrators admitted their mistakes today. They announced plans to repair I-795 and to prevent similar blunders in the future. The state plans to spend $13 million to replace 1.5 inches of crumbling asphalt in the outer lanes of I-795, and to top both lanes with 3 more inches of new pavement. DOT has spent more than $600,000 to repair the worst damage on a stretch of the road near Pikeville in northern Wayne County. But now there are cracks visible on the entire length of I-795, from Goldsboro to Wilson. After consulting state, federal and private experts, DOT officials made these conclusions about I-795: * The pavement was not thick enough, and it did not contain enough liquid asphalt binder to hold the pavement together. As a result, there were too many gaps in the stone and aggregate that caused the pavement to crumble. * DOT planners followed the proper standards and guidelines in effect when they designed the road. “However, in this case, the current specifications, policies and procedures did not insure adequate performance,” according to a DOT summary released today. * Technical analysis methods not previously in use at DOT would have predicted the pavement failure. DOT will adopt new guidelines and begin using additional analytic tools for pavement design. * In the future, DOT road design plans will be subject to review by field engineers such as Johnson, who will be given “the ability to non-concur with recommendations that have a history of poor performance in their region.” Johnson said she always felt DOT officials in Raleigh gave her a fair hearing, and she understood why they disagreed with her original recommendation. “A lot of the reason it was rejected had to do with money, and that was a time we had very low funds,” Johnson said today. “I thought the folks made the best decision they could make. “We need to learn from our past mistakes. Everybody needs to do that.” The Federal Highway Administration recommended more extensive repairs in January, which included removing the top pavement in all four lanes of I-795. Johnson said she agreed with DOT’s conclusion that it will be necessary only to replace damaged pavement in the two outer lanes before adding a thicker layer to the entire road."

7/16/2009 9:33:39 PM

assfault

7/16/2009 9:36:58 PM

asphailt

7/16/2009 9:37:56 PM

i.e. it won't her asphault

7/16/2009 9:38:30 PM

How long did it take you to come up with that title?

7/16/2009 9:43:35 PM

She wanted them to use more asphalt because that would mean more money for her. You could have just as easily increased the amount of stone and kept the asphalt section the same and saved texa$.


My recommendations which are even cheaper than what she proposed:
1) Increase the stone subbase thickness and keep the asphalt thickness at 5".
2) Add a layer of geogrid (Tensar BX-120) between the subgrade and stone subbase and leave all the section thicknesses the same.
3) Increase the stone thickness, add a layer of geogrid, and keep the asphalt thickness at 5".

7/16/2009 10:33:36 PM

Remember in Schindler's List when they were building the camp and the one girl engineer said that they had to rip up the foundation and then Ralph Fienes shot her in the head and then told the builders to follow her advice?

I forget how I was going to tie that in here.

7/16/2009 10:37:52 PM

Quote :

"She wanted them to use more asphalt because that would mean more money for her."

How would she, as a DOT engineer, have gotten more money if they used more asphalt?

7/16/2009 10:43:00 PM

Oops I thought she worked for a contractor. My bad.


My recommendations still stand though. Geo grid + stone is a lot cheaper than asphalt.

[Edited on July 16, 2009 at 10:46 PM. Reason : -]

7/16/2009 10:45:47 PM

wow

what a shitty thread title

i know what you were trying to do, but still...

7/16/2009 10:48:10 PM

I loled.

7/16/2009 10:51:19 PM

Quote :

"i.e. it won't her asphault"

down-east talk there


won't =/= was not

7/17/2009 8:34:32 AM

this dumb Canadian bitch at work argued yesterday that "willn't" was a word.

7/17/2009 8:38:27 AM

Hey look, local woman wants 3 more inches and a lot more money. How typical.

7/17/2009 8:38:45 AM

[Edited on July 17, 2009 at 8:41 AM. Reason : nevermind, i thought you said she argued that it wasn't a word]

7/17/2009 8:39:59 AM

^^^^Hahah, seedless does that a lot. I actually learned it from him.


[Edited on July 17, 2009 at 8:42 AM. Reason : y'all'r'FAYST]

7/17/2009 8:41:28 AM

Quote :

"Johnson said she always felt DOT officials in Raleigh gave her a fair hearing, and she understood why they disagreed with her original recommendation. “A lot of the reason it was rejected had to do with money, and that was a time we had very low funds,” Johnson said today. “I thought the folks made the best decision they could make. I'm a woman"

7/17/2009 9:34:39 AM

A++++++++ Thread Title!

7/17/2009 9:38:29 AM