"Is it me ?" - With thanks to Terry Wogan and Pauli Walters, (and by the way Dan Gleibitz has not been seen in the highways maintenance industry since the hot summer of 1995)
I have been around in this business for a long while, and my experience gives me a degree of confidence in the decisions I have to make in my "day job", but even so I like to have standards and specifications around me, that, if followed, should ensure quality of product and finished work.
These standards and specifications even allow me to help less experienced staff in a positive way, i.e. " here is the spec', make sure the supplier / contractor complies and you should not go far wrong, and I am around if you need backup, but read the spec' before you ring me."
The two best examples I can give of this are BS 4987 and BS 594. 
And hopefully in the course of time young engineers and technicians will come to understand why you want a complete tack coat of .35litres to .55litres per square metre, why bituminous mixtures have maximum temperatures, and why minimum bitumen contents are required to ensure that you have durable road pavements.
It is interesting to add that I find a number of the contractors, especially the "hands on" surfacing contractors that I know also appreciate this approach, this being, "we", the engineers and technicians tell them what to do, we put an engineer / technician / clerk of works on site to observe that all is performed as it should be, the contractor complies with the spec', and  we pay them.
But even with this simple approach problems have been known to arise, but they are usually able to be resolved without too much difficulty, and quickly. It also assumes that your organisation has engineers and technicians with the correct knowledge and experience, not always the case these days.
So you can understand my concern when I read in New Civil Engineer, 25th. March 2004, that,
"The (Highway) Agency's bible, the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges, will be withdrawn to reflect the new approach." 
The "new approach" being new highway performance specifications, "despite concerns voiced by contractors and consultants".
May I suggest that you download as much of Volume 7 of the  Design Manual as you are able, because there is an enormous amount of excellent information there that relates to highways maintenance that is not "specifications", and this information is relevant whatever procedures we adopt in the future. 
Now this information may be retained in the new documents, but it may not.
I suppose I ought to wait to see what the "new performance specifications" contain before I continue this discussion. . However recent revisions of Highways Agency specifications have not filled me with joy, so I wait eagerly for the new documents to appear.
If you wish to find out more about what the replacement to the current documents may contain you ought to look at this particular section of the Highways Agency website.
Personally I would not want to be the consultant who was responsible for the "flair and innovation" introduced by suppliers and contractors in relation to road pavement construction and maintenance. This is assuming there will still be an "engineering" presence of some type overseeing future projects and contracts.
Some of us "old-timers" could tell you stories about contractor "flair and innovation", some quite funny, some quite serious.
But let us just remember a bit of history, "standards" of various types were introduced to improve quality and consistency in road building and maintenance, which had been lacking before they were introduced.
It is pleasing to me that my work involves maintaining local roads for local people, where Highways Agency guidelines, or lack of them, do not necessarily have to be followed, unless some central "body" forces us to go down that route.
I finish this tale by passing on some advice given to me many, many years, ago, by a big, very big, Irish general foreman. It was he who told me of the KISS principle of working, "Keep It Simple Stupid", now it may not work in nuclear physics but I find it works in highways maintenance.

 Surface dressing
Those of you who read this newsletter regularly know I have been urging caution with regard to purchasing surface dressing chippings to the new specification and associated guidance specification. 
This is because of the possible "extra" oversize that is allowed compared to BS 63.
So, it is pleasing to report that the Road Surface Dressing Association (RSDA) have published a "Guidance Note on Ordering Chippings to Avoid Oversize", on their website, it is to be found lurking at the bottom of the "Code of Practice" page.
(There is also guidance on the subject of double dressing.)
This move is very welcome but I find it puzzling that the guidance specification, PD 6682-2 : 2003 : Aggregates - Part 2 : Aggregates for bituminous mixtures and surface treatments for roads, airfields and other trafficked areas - Guidance on the use of BS EN 13043
(which is a British Standard not a European Standard) could not be amended to remove the "oversize" fraction from the specification, when the industry are adamant there will not be any "oversize" anyway.
I suggest that you still follow the guidance given on the RSDA website.
While on the subject of surface dressing, may I suggest that you do not expect to have the exceptionally good weather of last year, again this year. I observed a lot of practices last year that were a little "border line", that in a normal summer with cool, rainy interludes would not have survived without some damage, in my opinion. 

Lime Stabilised Capping
I will be brief with this item and just urge you to read the articles on the sulphate attack on the lime-stabilised capping layer below the 7.5Km Wadesmill Bypass, reported in New Civil Engineer in the issues of the 11th. and 25th. of March.
There has been a serious failure of the lime stabilised material on this contract and extensive investigation is being carried out on the nature of the failure, and why it has occurred, in view of the current Highways Agency specifications and guidance notes on the testing for sulphate and suphide content of insitu material proposed for stabilisation.
I have only had a brief encounter with proposals for the use of lime stabilisation on a major construction, but suffice to say that the levels of sulphate found after the testing of the insitu glacial clay were sufficient to persuade those around the table that the possible savings were not worth the risk, and a more conventional road pavement design was selected.
This decision was largely based on the excellent work undertaken by the consultant soils and materials laboratory.
Having the backup of qualified and experienced Soils and Materials Engineers, and a suitably equipped laboratories really does make sense in all sectors of highways construction and maintenance, but I would say that would I not.

Motto of the Month
"When we lose a friend we die a little."
I chose this particular quotation from my little book, not because I am feeling morbid, and not because the departed gentleman was a friend in the conventional sense, but because I learned only today (Sunday 4/4/04) of the death of Alistair Cooke, whose "Letter from America" has been a regular part of my Sunday mornings for the last twenty years or more, he used to and still does ( his recorded talks are being rebroadcast) talk a whole lot of sense on a whole lot of subjects.