SIMON WINS FOR SMOOTHNESS ON STATE HIGHWAY 14
BY SARAH REDOHL
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Pictured, left to right: James Lindgren, Javier Rodriguez, Manuel Sandoval, Marcario Sandoval, Colton Burgesser, Ethan Watne, Lonnie Niesent, Manuel Sandoval, Roger Tanner, Ebaristo Rodriguez, Albert Sisneros To win one of Colorado Asphalt Pavement Association’s “Best in Colorado” Asphalt Pavement Awards is already quite an honor, but imagine winning three awards for a single paving season. That’s exactly what happened when Simon, a Colas company, Cheyenne, Wyoming, won awards in CAPA’s project innovation, smoothness (category II) and rural highway resurfacing categories. Furthermore, two of those awards were received for Simon’s performance on a single job on State Highway (SH) 14/New Raymer West in northeast Colorado. “It’s pretty rare for a project to get two awards, so we were extremely pleased,” said Simon Project Manager Kyle Rademacher. Simon performs work in Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska and northeastern Colorado. Roughly 50 percent of its work is in Wyoming, and nearly 20 percent is in northeastern Colorado. The $5.5 million project on SH 14 consisted of full width milling to mitigate
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cracks, placement of 1-inch reflective crack interlayer (RCI) and 2.5-inch overlay. The project was located along 9.1 miles of SH 14, a two-lane state highway with an average annual daily traffic count of 2,100, nearly 40 percent of which is truck traffic as a result of nearby agriculture and oil production. According to Rademacher, the existing roadway had large transverse cracks across the entire roadway and “entire sections of the roadway were deteriorating.” The agency, Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) Region 4, planned to use a high-AC RCI to combat the cracks. “CDOT had done full-depth reclamation on an adjacent portion of SH 14, so this was a good opportunity to compare the two,” Rademacher said. CDOT Resident Engineer Jeff Dollerschell agreed with Rademacher’s assessment, adding “the existing pavement thickness was around 12 inches, and CDOT Region 4 was reluctant to grind it up.” Al-
though CDOT Region 4 has used RCI on a few past projects, this was the first RCI project for CDOT Region 4’s Sterling Residency (one of six residencies in the region). Simon was awarded the job on SH 14 in February 2020, began work in May and finished in July, for a total of 51 working days. Simon first milled the worst sections of the roadway, accounting for roughly 5 percent of the total project, to a depth between 4 and 5 inches and patched those areas. Then, Simon’s subcontractor, Hudson Incorporated, Edmond, Oklahoma, milled off 1 inch of the existing roadway with its 12-foot Roadtec RX 60 C milling machine. In total Hudson milled up 177,200 square yards of material, not including the patching sections. Simon relies on Hudson to perform milling on many of the company’s jobs, both in Colorado and in Wyoming. “CDOT said this was one of the smoothest milling jobs they’ve seen in a while,” Rademacher said.
