July 5, 2013
Innovation Implementation: Programmatic Agreements
Every Day Counts is currently focusing on 13 specific innovations for highway planning, design, construction and maintenance. To make sure each innovation gets its due, EDC News will provide information on a different innovation each month.
This month, the spotlight turns to a process: Programmatic Agreements. The concept is basically to take routine environmental requirements that are commonly encountered and look at them programmatically, rather than individually by project. By getting all the various entities involved to sign off on such repetitive actions beforehand, more time can be taken in other areas, and the entire environmental process can be streamlined. This video provides more details:
Arkansas Initiates ABC Efforts
The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department (AHTD) bridge division chief and FHWA's division bridge engineer have assembled a committee from academia, consulting, construction, county, city, pre-cast industry, FHWA and AHTD to focus on the use of Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) innovations in the state. The ABC Outreach effort will work with the University of Arkansas' Center for Training Transportation Professionals Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) effort to provide ABC training to local bridge owners. Arkansas' previous experience with ABC has been limited to MSE walls, a few precast culverts and some prefabricated truss structures on localized projects.
Florida Cuts 10 Years off Project
Florida's $1.8 billion I-595 project in Fort Lauderdale was procured as a Public- Private Partnership through a 35-year design, build, finance, operations and maintenance contract with a concessionaire. Florida DOT says that using the Public-Private Partnership approach and Design-Build approach shaved ten years off the project. The concessionaire will maintain and operate the facility, but the state will own it and collect the tolls.
Intelligent Compaction in Ohio
On June 24-27 the Ohio Division Office hosted an EDC demonstration for intelligent Compaction on an asphalt project in central Ohio. The project is located on I-71, 40 miles north of Columbus. Attendees included individuals from Germany, Japan and China. The demonstration included extensive testing (60 cores) to assimilate the correlation between the roller information gathered and our more traditional nuclear density testing. In addition to the cores taken, extensive falling weight deflectometer (FWD) and lightweight falling weight deflectometer (FWD-a) tests were conducted.
Texas Using EDC Innovations on $701 million Bridge Replacement
TxDOT will be renovating the 53-year-old Harbor Bridge in Corpus Christi. The 2.25 mile-long structure on US181 links the Nueces Bay Causeway and State Highway 286. The Texas FHWA Division is utilizing EDC Enhanced Technical Assistance and Legal Sufficiency Enhancements Initiatives to streamline the EIS process and deliver this major project ahead of schedule. The project is expected to be delivered through a design/build procurement process which could start in early 2015.
