Maintenance Preserves Pavement

Preserving pavement is something we’ve been writing about since 1985 -- long before “pavement preservation” was in vogue -- because we’ve always covered pavement maintenance. After all, isn’t everything done to maintain pavement also an effort to preserve it? And when contractors encourage customers to establish long-term pavement management plans isn’t that an effort to preserve pavement?

So for years we’ve encouraged contractors to try to help their customers preserve their pavement because maintenance is an investment that can help a pavement last longer.  We’ve focused on cracksealing, sealcoating, remove-and-replace patching and overlays -- all along emphasizing that maintenance and repairs must be both timely and appropriate to the pavement defect to be cost-effective ways to extend pavement life. We’ve encouraged infrared from its introduction to the industry, and tackled other maintenance approaches – slurry seal, micro surfacing, chip seal – as important options that can be used to preserve pavement.

So in this annual Pavement Preservation issue you’ll find articles on increasingly utilized pavement preservation options (page 16), a job story (page 20) where Slurry Pavers in Virginia turned to full-depth reclamation combined with RAP and micro surfacing to construct their own parking lot, and a Special Report (page 24) looking at how contractors have come to rely on their infrared equipment.

It’s great that cities, states, the federal government and property owners and managers have accepted that the better they maintain their pavement in a timely and appropriate manner the longer that pavement will last – and the more they will get out of their pavement investment over the long haul.

That your customers understand and accept that, and that they rely on contractors as experts to help them extend pavement life, is a credit to your efforts to teach them and bodes well for the future of the pavement maintenance industry.

 

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