ACPA Concrete Pavement Progress - Winter 2022-23

WWW.ACPA.ORG 21 Winter // 2022–23 STATE ROADS US Highway 50 Reconstruction Emporia, KS CONTRACTOR: Koss Construction Company* OWNER: Kansas Department of Transportation ENGINEER: Kansas Department of Transportation SILVER US 287 & SH 40 Passing Lanes CM/GC Cheyenne and Lincoln County, Colorado CONTRACTOR: Castle Rock Construction Company* OWNER: Colorado Department of Transportation ENGINEER: Atkins Koss Construction Company began the US Highway 50 reconstruction project on the west side of Emporia, Kansas, on July 20, 2020. The project consisted of over 57,000 square yards of full-depth concrete pavement reconstruction, including grading drainage and a bridge widening. Crews operated with limited workspace alongside a temporary barrier wall set between the work zone and live traffic lanes. Koss used stringless technology for initial trimming, mixing, final trimming, laying base, and paving mainline concrete. The cement-treated base was batched using a stationary Pugmill Systems plant. The contractor and concrete supplier worked together to schedule enough ready-mix trucks to deliver the concrete to the project, where it was placed in front of Koss’s G&Z 600 Paver. Traditional hand-finishing techniques were used behind the paver to ensure that every square yard of pavement was free of small surface defects or bumps. The pavement was textured with a burlap drag, tined, and then sealed off with a white wax-based curing compound. The pavement was then watched until it hardened enough to support walk behind saws which would then relieve the concrete. Koss, their subcontractors, and KDOT partnered on this project to combine the first and second phases of the project so that bridge reconstruction work could be completed concurrently with the removal and reconstruction of the eastbound lanes. This change allowed progress to continue on the project, including the removal of the existing eastbound lanes, separate from the bridge surfacing work, which was not finished until early 2021. In 2020, the eastbound lanes were removed, regraded, lime stabilized, then paved with 4-inch cement-treated base and a 10-inch concrete section in the fall of 2020. Phases three and four were completed in 2021 when the westbound lanes and the center median was removed and reconstructed. Traffic was normalized on December 17, 2021. This Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) project is located 25 miles southeast of Limon, Colorado, on US 287/SH 40, the ‘ports to the plains highway’—a major thoroughfare from Mexico to Canada. The scope of the project was to complete six passing lanes between Hugo, Colorado, and Eads, Colorado. Two of the sites were extensions of existing passing lanes, and four of the sites were new passing lanes. This was a CMGC alternate delivery method, so Castle Rock Construction Company (CRCC) spent months reviewing the design and working alongside CDOT to determine the most efficient and quality approach to building this project. There were numerous examples of partnering to solve problems in a manner that best served the project goals, including inadequate subgrade material that required the use of geotextile fabric to decrease the likelihood of material settling or shifting under loads. Other issues included schedule delays due to the use of geotextile and the need for additional unclassified excavation. CRCC managed to work on multiple sites simultaneously, expediting the remainder of the schedule and successfully achieving completion before Thanksgiving. Knowing that lane closures would not be safe along this corridor once it started snowing, this deadline was critical. The 11-mile project was built at a total project cost of $8.58 million, with concrete costs representing $3.77 million of the total. A total of 49,222 square yards of concrete was used. GOLD

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