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Pavement Magazine to Present Industry Awards at NPE 2015

Pavement Maintenance & Reconstruction will for the first time present a number of industry awards to individuals and companies, according to Amy Schwandt, publisher. The awards, which will be announced in January at National Pavement Expo, will recognize individuals, contracting companies and manufacturers who have demonstrated exemplary support for the industry and will recognize some of the top-quality jobs completed in 2014.

“It’s no secret that this industry is full of people and companies that have dedicated themselves to the paving and pavement maintenance industry’s development, growth and professionalism,” Schwandt says. “We feel that it’s an honor for Pavement magazine to recognize and thank some of these people and companies publicly.”

Among the individual awards will be the Alan Curtis Industry Service Award, named in honor of engineer and consultant who passed away last year. In addition Pavement will establish a Pavement Hall of Fame to recognize a broad variety of individual and corporate contributions.

“Alan Curtis was an early supporter behind the scenes on Pavement and in front of the podium at National Pavement Expo and at our West Coast events,” says Allan Heydorn, editor of Pavement Maintenance & Reconstruction and conference manager of NPE. “He believed in this industry, he appreciated the magazine’s efforts and NPE’s efforts to help contractors improve their work, and he committed himself to making that happen. Naming this award after him is our way of thanking him and recognizing the value he had to the industry. Recipients of this award will be people with the same ideals Alan had.”

Schwandt says that in addition to recognition of individuals the Pavement awards will recognize contracting companies and the work they perform too.

“This is a big industry with an awful lot of businesses contributing at a very high level. We think these contractors and their crews should be recognized for the work they do,” Schwandt says. “Whether you’re a contractor involved in new construction paving, overlays or sealcoating and striping parking lots to improve the way they look and extend their life, you are providing an important service to properties and your local community and economy.

“We hope our recognition of these contractors benefits not only them but the paving and pavement maintenance industry as a whole as the public realizes the important work this industry provides.”

Nominations are open for all awards, and the deadline for submitting all nominations is November 1. In most cases contractors can nominate themselves and their own work; manufacturers, producers and suppliers can nominate contractors as well. Final award determinations will be made by the Pavement staff in consultation with the Pavement Advisory Board.

To participate in the awards visit www.ForConstructionPros.com/PavementAwards to complete an entry form by November 1, 2014. The awards that will be announced in January are:

The Alan Curtis Industry Service Award -- Presented annually to a veteran of the paving & pavement maintenance industry whose pursuit of excellence, dedication to professionalism, pursuit of quality and spirit of achievement have contributed significantly to the growth, development and professionalism of the industry.
Open to: Contractors, Manufacturers, Association Representatives, Consultants
Nominations Accepted from: Contractors, Advertisers, NPE Exhibitors

PAVEMENT Contractor of the Year Award -- Presented annually to a paving or pavement maintenance company that demonstrates consistently high job quality, represents the company and the industry professionally, and operates with the business acumen that results in a profitable, well-respected, successful contracting business.
Open to: All contracting companies EXCEPT sweeping contractors
Nominations Accepted from: Contractors (can be self-nominated), Pavement Advertisers, NPE Exhibitors, Suppliers, Consultants and Clients

PAVEMENT Sweeper of the Year Award -- Presented annually to a contract sweeping company that demonstrates consistently high job quality, represents the company and the industry professionally, and operates with the business acumen that results in a profitable, well-respected, successful contract sweeping business.
Open to: All contractors that generate more than 75% of gross revenue from providing sweeping services to private properties and public agencies
Nominations Accepted from: Contractors (can be self-nominated), Pavement Advertisers, NPE Exhibitors, Consultants

PAVEMENT Hall of Fame -- Presented annually to paving or pavement maintenance individuals or companies that have made a significant impact in the growth, improvement and/or professionalism on the paving and pavement maintenance industry.
Open to: All individuals, contracting companies, material producers, equipment manufacturers
Nominations Accepted from: Pavement Advertisers, NPE Exhibitors, Consultants, Contractors, Pavement Advisory Board

PAVEMENT Parking Lot Paving Award -- This award recognizes the best hot mix asphalt paving job, overlay or new construction, completed in 2014 on a parking lot.
Open to: All Contractors
Nominations Accepted from: Contractors, Suppliers

PAVEMENT Paving Award (non-parking lot) -- This award recognizes the best hot mix asphalt paving job, overlay or new construction, completed in 2014 on non-road pavement such as bike paths, hiking paths, or driveways.
Open to: All Contractors
Nominations Accepted from: Contractors, Suppliers

PAVEMENT Sealcoating & Striping Award (Large Job) -- This award recognizes the best sealcoating & striping job completed in 2014 on a parking lot larger than 500,000 square feet.
Open to: All Contractors
Nominations Accepted from: Contractors, Suppliers

PAVEMENT Sealcoating & Striping Award (Small Job) -- This award recognizes the best sealcoating & striping job completed in 2014 on a parking lot smaller than 500,000 square feet.
Open to: All Contractors
Nominations Accepted from: Contractors, Suppliers

PAVEMENT “Good Neighbor” Award -- Presented annually to a paving or pavement maintenance company that demonstrates significant participation in the local community by providing pavement-related services and/or financial support to charitable and nonprofit organizations that benefit the community or local charity.
Open to: All contracting companies
Nominations Accepted from: Contractors (can be self-nominated), Pavement Advertisers, NPE Exhibitors, Suppliers, Consultants and Clients

For more details, including specific evaluation criteria, and to enter visit www.ForConstructionPros.com/PavementAwards.

 

 

Registration Opens for NPE 2015

Registration for 53 conference sessions and five convention hotels is now open for National Pavement Expo, Jan. 28-31 at the new Music City Center in downtown Nashville, TN.

The 2015 conference program offers 11 three-hour workshops and more than 42 ninety-minute seminars over four days. Conference manager Allan Heydorn says 37 of the 53 sessions are new and there will be 25 new presenters.

Among the new presenters and topics are:

Gary Goldman, Curb Appeal Consulting, presenting 3-hour workshop “How to Run a High-profit Pavement Maintenance Company: Strategies, Practices & Systems” as well as 90-minute session “How to Deliver the ‘Intangibles’ of the Sales Process.”

Dave Crenshaw, Conquer Small Business Chaos, presenting 3-hour workshop “The Focused Business: How Entrepreneurs Can Triumph over Chaos!”

Mario Flores, Ethos Enterprises, presenting 90-minute session “How Decorative Sealcoating Adds Value to Your Sealcoating Business.”

Jim Bebo, Asphalt Contractors Inc., teaming with Jeff Stokes of Next Level Contractor System to present the 90-minute session “How to Build a Successful Referral System.”
Chad Jung and Scott Langton, Superior Striping Inc., present the90-minute session “How Lasers Improve Striping Productivity & Speed Growth.”

Jeff Korhan, Built-In Social, presents a 3-hour workshop, “Relationship Selling in the Trust Economy” and two 90-minute sessions, “How to Leverage the Power of Mobile Technologies and Cloud Computing” and “Google+ is ‘Content Marketing’ on Fire!”

In addition NPE will offer two panel presentations that will rely on contractor experience to relate problem-solving tips to attendees.

In “ How to Manage Your Company’s Growth: Cautionary Tales from the Front,” Vinny Engongoro, Roccie’s Asphalt Paving; Nick Howell, T & N Asphalt Services; and Michael Nawa, Custom Maintenance Services will share their growing pains, discussing the growth they pursued, the problems and potential damage they faced, and the solutions they eventually came up with.

A second panel, moderated by Ranger Kidwell-Ross, director of World Sweeping Association, will focus on the impact of third-party providers on the pavement maintenance and sweeping market, offering insights to help contractors be successful in markets where third-party providers are influential. Others participating in “How to Make Third-Party Providers Work for Your Business” are Kevin Kroeger, DSS Sweeping Service; Rich Arlington, Affiliated Grounds Maintenance Group; Michael Nawa; and Uri Ben-Yashar, East Coast Sweeping.

For details including complete descriptions or to register for the conference and hotels, visit www.nationalpavementexpo.com.

 

 

PCTC Files FOIA Complaint against USGS

The Pavement Coatings Technology Council (PCTC) filed a complaint July 16 in the U.S District Court for the District of Columbia for injunctive relief against the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) because the agency has failed to even acknowledge, much less respond to, four appeals of its response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The FOIA request, filed April 15, 2011, sought scientific data and calculations, model input parameters and related documents and correspondence concerning USGS activities related to pavement coatings products from 2003 to the date of the FOIA request. To cover costs of responding to the request, the USGS demanded and PCTC paid $28,193.

The USGS began slowly responding to the request in October 2011 and declared its response complete in August 2013. Between June and October 2013, the PCTC filed four appeals focused primarily on documents redacted or withheld based on Exemption 5, the deliberative process exemption. The USGS applied “deliberative process” to include selected data and calculations as well as to correspondence. Instances of the use of Exemption 6, the personal information exemption, to withhold sample location information were also appealed. The USGS response to the FOIA request includes few documents dated before 2007, hence the complaint also asks that the USGS respond with additional documents or account for the absence of those documents.

PCTC said the USGS has not responded to any of the four appeals – not even to acknowledge receipt. The USGS has also not responded to PCTC’s attempts to inquire about the status of the four appeals. The Pavement Council is very interested in all documents related to USGS pavement product activities, and particularly in documents that may pertain to underlying data that has been withheld from the public.

Included in the response to the April 15, 2011 FOIA request was information about input parameters for 4 of the 200 model runs used by the USGS to identify pavement sealants as a dominant source of PAHs in sediments nationwide. This information allowed recreation of the model, and provides clear evidence of the flaws in the USGS approach to PAH source identification. However, the USGS provided information about the identities of samples used to connect PAHs in sediments in Austin, TX to pavement sealers only after PCTC requested the assistance of the American Chemistry Society’s ethics committee.

During the more than three years since first filing the FOIA request, PCTC has repeatedly expressed concern that USGS has ignored President Obama’s directive and Attorney General Eric Holder’s Guidelines concerning the need for governmental agencies (like USGS) to be accountable and transparent. PCTC believes that the documents withheld by USGS will further demonstrate that the USGS violated its own guidelines in its sealant studies.

For example, the Pavement Council hopes that information resulting from the complaint filed today will help explain the USGS decision to use 20 samples that are not connected spatially or temporally to the locations of the USGS Austin parking lot studies – 8 from one creek located elsewhere in Austin and 12 from Fort Worth, some 200 miles away – as indicators of PAH provenance. Regardless of the reason for USGS decisions, data from subsequent studies by PCTC and by the City of Austin show that pavement sealants were not an identifiable source of PAHs in Austin sediment either before or after Austin banned the product in 2006.

 

 

Python Mfg. Changes Name to SuperiorRoads Solutions

Python Manufacturing, producer of Python street maintenance equipment, has changed its name to SuperiorRoads Solutions, according to Heather Forbes, president and CEO of SuperiorRoads Solutions.

“Our new name better reflects our passion for keeping streets and roads safe, clean and pothole free,” Forbes said

Headquartered in Regina, Saskatchewan, SuperiorRoads Solutions products include the Python 5000 pothole patcher, and the S2 and S3 street sweepers (formerly known as the Python S2000 and Python S3000).

 

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