THE SECRET
TO PAVEMENT LONGEVITY IN THE PURSUIT FOR DURABLE PAVEMENTS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO BROADER SUSTAINABILITY, COFFEY TESTING SPECIALISTS CAMERON BIK AND RUSSELL BOOTH BELIEVE MATERIAL TESTING IS AN IMPORTANT, BUT UNDERESTIMATED, PIECE OF THE PUZZLE.
T
he adage ‘proper preparation prevents poor performance’ is certainly relevant to pavement construction, where future savings and, more importantly, safety of commuters, rely on satisfactory performance of pavements. As an experienced pavement specialist, Cameron Bik, Coffey Testing’s General Manager for New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, has seen his share of pavements failing prematurely, where adequate investigation and testing could be a game-changer. “Once a section of pavement is laid, it’s a very costly exercise to make any variations or improvements if design factors were assumed incorrectly in the first place. It’s also highly inconvenient to divert the traffic
for a do-over if the original pavement fails prematurely. For these reasons, the best way to ensure durable pavements is to test the parameters correctly from the get-go,” he says. As one of Australia’s industry leaders for material testing, Coffey Testing’s expert teams are often involved in pavement investigation, stabilisation trial mix design and conformance testing, deflection monitoring, material quality and conformance testing and compaction testing across all scales of pavement projects, from remote rural backroads to major distributors. Coffey Testing’s network of NATA accredited base laboratories and associated annex laboratories assist clients to gain an in-depth understanding of ground conditions
and soil composition for their projects, which enables them with better planning and construction, as well as mitigating potential risks. “Soil investigations are very much reliant on skills and experience. There are, of course, guidelines as to how many samples are required to be taken. But, if you don’t send experienced people to the site, you might miss a defect or get samples that are not homogeneous or cannot be interpreted correctly, so it does not yield the desired results,” says Bik. Bik says through his years of experience, he has come to ascertain that the secret to pavement longevity is thorough testing. “The more we know about a pavement prior to construction, the better the risks
Coffey Testing’s Senior Technician Jordan Buttini conducting Benkelman Beam Deflection Monitoring on a remote road in New South Wales. 80
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