TOPICS
Winter
Maintenance
Good News
Motto
of the Month
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Introduction
I am afraid I am a little
late in producing the newsletter for November, but it is here now so I
hope you find it interesting and helpful.
 Winter
Maintenance
We are now in to the start of the Winter Maintenance period and it is
interesting to note how popular the page on this website that relates to salting/gritting has become.
But I must point out that any information on this website is offered
purely as a guide and as a means for YOU to build up YOUR knowledge so
that YOU may make the appropriate decisions related to road surface,
weather and traffic conditions.
I particularly mention road surface because it is my belief that there
is not enough understanding regarding the difference road surface type
will make to the timing of application, frequency of salting, and the
required rate of spread to ensure that some road surface types are
maintained ice free.
It appears MP's on a select committee are also of the opinion that
people must make appropriate decisions in order to keep roads open and
accident free during the winter period,
and to ensure that there will be no repeat of the chaos experienced on the M11
last winter. (See "New Civil Engineer" 30 October 2003.)
I made reference to M11 situation in the February
2003 Newsletter, you may wish to re-visit that edition.
New, as yet untested legislation is likely to have come in to being since
last winter relating to the duty of an authority to salt/grit roads.
It was widely expected that the statutory instrument would have been
completed prior to November 2004, and I believe this completion has
now happened.
This is an amendment to section 41 of the 1980 Highways Act, adding
(1a) to section 41,
which says, "In particular, a highway authority is under a duty
to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the safe passage along
a highway, is not endangered by snow or ice".
It is
likely that some authority, somewhere, will be the one to be subject
of a test case. This case will be on the grounds that the driver of a vehicle, or even a pedestrian feels
that their accident was the result of inadequate salting/gritting of the road
network by the maintaining organisation, that they (or whoever
represents them) believe was "reasonably
practicable".
Being responsible for the maintenance of a road network during the
winter period seems to me to be a definitely unenviable position. If
you are over cautious and salt regularly and copiously you will be
accused of wasting money and polluting the environment with salt
run-off when salting/gritting is unnecessary.
But on the other hand, if, on the information that is available, you
make a judgment that it is unnecessary to salt and then it does freeze
resulting in accidents and congestion, you will be accused of
incompetence, penny pinching, trying to increase profits for
shareholders and will be subject to claims for compensation from the
road using community.
It should be an interesting winter, as always.
Good
News
But first the bad
news, I thought I would get this over at the beginning rather than
putting it at the end and spoiling the story.
At the start of this job the original paver did have a fault and this
resulted in some poor ride quality and a short length may have to be
replaced, but this was nothing to do with it being hot rolled asphalt
and chips. In my opinion there would have been the same variation in
the evenness of the surface course layer had it even been stone mastic
asphalt.
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I recently had an involvement with a surfacing scheme which was a
delight to visit. It happened to be a hot rolled asphalt and precoated
chippings job, my favourite surface course material where traffic management considerations
allow you to lay it. You will also note we are out in the country and
noise was not a factor even if the bad press HRA gets regarding noise were totally
true.
The traffic management was totally controlled by a separate
sub-contactor who providing men, signing and traffic lights,
leaving the laying contractor to concentrate on the job of
laying asphalt. |
I will not name the company involved I do not want to embarrass them
but I do hope the men involved in the work at all levels recognise
themselves because I would like them to know I appreciate the quality
of the work they produced.
The
company involved has to be commended for providing a suitable number
of men for the work to take place satisfactorily, which does not
always happen these days. |
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They
main contractor also provided a good quality chipping spreader
and three rollers, two of them being three point dead weight
configuration, and a good paver after the initial hiccup.
The HRA was in fact a 35%/14mm. design mix with the addition of
4% natural rubber (dry weight) added as latex at the time of
mixing. This was laid 50mm. thick.
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The
thicker layer of rubberised material
was decided upon to provide
strength over an existing road that was showing regular cracking
in the existing bituminous material surface. However the road
was "strong", the cracking emanating from an
underlying original road construction of "concrete
bays" that was likely to have been constructed during the
second world war.
Areas that showed weakness as well as cracking had a 60mm. plane-out
and the removed material was replaced with a HRA 50%/ 20mm. rubberised binder course.
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Samples were taken to monitor the quality of the supplied
asphalt, a policy still followed by the organisation for whom I
work.
The result is a very rewarding piece of work for all concerned. In fact I am not being morbid but it is likely I will
be in the "great materials laboratory in the sky"
before further work will be needed on this stretch of road, and
I do intend to follow the example of the male line in my family
and live a good while yet.
It is occasions like this that keep my faith in the industry to
provide good quality work, after engineers and engineering
technicians have played their part in determining the amount and
nature of the work that is required to maintain the road in a
safe and durable condition for many years to come within the
parameters of a keen budget. |
This narrative
describes the "sharp-end" of highways maintenance, the place were the work actually
gets done, and if what happens on site is not done correctly
everything that has gone before counts for nothing, or very
little.
The contractor can provide all the backup, the supplier can
provide good quality material and the engineer will provide the
design, specification and overall supervision. But you need good
reliable, experienced men
to lay it and their worth should be recognised, and it seldom
is.
This was a nice, pleasant autumn day, but they will still be on
site somewhere in the middle of winter, and in the pouring rain
if the material is already on site and it has to be laid.
So, I take particular exception to articles and papers I have
read lately that the failure of some of the recent
"new" additions to
the existing range of bituminous mixtures is because of poor workmanship.
Now I would be the last to say some of these guys are
"angels" but the vast majority know what they are
doing and do it well. Some of these "new" materials
are "fair weather" materials only capable of being
laid successfully on a warm day in the summer, which is fine if
the industry only wants to work two thirds of the year.
In my opinion the only work that truly counts is the work at the
"sharp-end", which ever sharp end it may be, and there
are many, the rest is mostly "talk", and
unfortunately the proportion of "talk" (some would
call it "spin") to work has
risen at a phenomenal rate over the last few years, and the industry as a whole is not benefiting from
it, and neither is the UK road network, or the people who use
it, and that is practically all of us.
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Motto of the Month
"Though a
fool spend his whole life with wise men, he will know the truth no more
than a spoon knows the taste of soup."
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