Georgia Highway Team Wins National Quality Award

I-285 Resurfacing Kept Customers in Spotlight

Austin,TX/September 4, 2003 – The National Partnership for Highway Quality (NPHQ) today presented its 2003 State Award to the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT), its Maintenance Office, construction manager Mickey McGee, Shepherd Construction Co., Inc. and E.R. Snell Contractor, Inc. for the I-285 Resurfacing Project outside Atlanta. NPHQ is a partnership of federal and state highway officials and leaders in the roadway industry who advocate customer-centered practices for roads that are completed quicker, ride better, last longer, reduce congestion and improve safety.

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The ambitious project required resurfacing a 7.9 mile portion of I-285 from I-20 to I-675. This perimeter around Atlanta is one of the most traveled in the nation. The portion in the project area carries over 125,000 vehicles per day, with 20% of that traffic in commercial trucks. Due to high volumes and the fact that the pavement had been placed almost 20 years ago, stripping had undermined the strength of the asphalt. A dedicated team of contractors, Georgia DOT employees, suppliers, and partners from the Federal Highway Administration came together for the milling, inlay, resurfacing, and reconstruction of all four lanes in each direction. About 250,000 tons of material was milled, and over 255,000 tons of tons of asphalt were placed over 63 lane-miles. It took 10 asphalt plants to produce this amount.

The job should have taken two years, but was finished under budget in just 12 weekends.

How? The team did something that had never been done in Georgia. They shut down all lanes of the interstate in one direction for 12 weekends and detoured traffic to alternate interstates. Drivers were kept up to date with a massive public information campaign. Since a single contractor couldn't handle so much material in such a limited time, two contractors who normally bid against each other--E.R. Snell and Shepherd Construction, agreed to place a single bid together on the project. At any given time, as many as 300 trucks were at work on the project: 130 to haul away milled material, 130 for paving, and 40 for a trenching operation for fiber optic conduit installation. They gave themselves until 5:00 AM on Monday morning to clear out so traffic could get back up and running.

Why? For the customer. This plan was the quickest way to do the work, assure quality, and offer the least interference to the traveling public. The choice was to delay 125,000 vehicles per day on weekdays for two years or to close sections under construction on weekends with no disruption to weekday peak travel times. Local residents and commuters would not have to deal with construction when they were trying to get to work or handle tight deadlines during the week. Closing the interstate in one direction for a whole weekend would cut the overall time of the project. And, given the enormous amounts of equipment and manpower involved, closing the lanes would produce the safest environment for workers and motorists.

The Executive Director of the National Partnership for Highway Quality, Bob Templeton, said, "The interstate reopened in record time because the Georgia team kept the customers' needs front and center. It speaks volumes that although the team had until 5:00 AM on Monday morning each week to open the road, it was actually opened every weekend by 9:00 PM on Sunday with the exception of one. That weekend it opened at midnight.

"Significantly, quality was not sacrificed to get the job done quickly, and the state of Georgia has some of the most stringent pavement quality control and quality assurance requirements in the nation. The I-285 Resurfacing Project was a textbook case of quality management from start to finish."

The National Partnership for Highway Quality bestowed the award using judgement criteria such as the overall quality of the finished project; the partnership between the public and private sector; technical and materials innovations; public involvement; whether and how projects met or exceeded expected deadlines, costs, and deliverables; responsiveness to environmental needs, and other quality management factors.

NPHQ is composed of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), American Highway Users Alliance (AHUA), The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC), Foundation for Pavement Preservation (FP2), Granite Construction Company, the National Institute for Certification in Engineering Technologies (NICET), National Ready Mixed Concrete Association (NRMCA), Kiewit Corporation, RedVector.com, Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), URS Corporation, and Williams Brothers Construction Company.

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