Barriere paves memories on Hwy. 23

Award-winning, full-depth, hot-mix asphalt project stands test of time

By Angelle Bergeron

Barriere Construction Co. of New Orleans has completed a $3.4 million contract for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development to overlay a new 1.5-in.-thick asphalt wearing course on a 4.77-mi stretch of Louisiana Highway 23 in Plaquemines Parish.

The overlay is the first maintenance performed on the same project area that Barriere originally constructed in 1981, a testimonial to the durability of full-depth, hot-mix asphalt and the Louisiana contractor.

“With more than 26 years of weather, subsidence, heavy traffic and thousands and thousands of user miles, we believe Highway 23 speaks loudly about the tremendous life-cycle values of full-depth asphalt,” says David Mayer, Barriere’s manager of business development. “Hot-mix asphalt brings safety, stability, reliability, predictability and savings to our users.”

That same stretch of Hwy. 23 was the 1982 recipient of the Sheldon G. Hayes Award.

“To do a project and have it last so right for 26 years is just unbelievable,” says Chuck MacDonald, director of communications for the National Asphalt Pavement Association, who visited the project site in May. “Qualifying for the Sheldon Hayes Award is like being part of the Final Four.

When you’re talking about the Sheldon Hayes, you’re talking about the best road in the country for smoothness, safety and durability.”

Qualifying projects must use more than 50,000 tons of hot-mix asphalt, or HMA, MacDonald adds. Before being considered, the contractor must also win a Quality in Construction award, which is determined by numerical scores given by pavement engineers at the National Center for Asphalt Technology at Auburn University for meeting specifications and density.

The original construction on Hwy. 23 is 14 in. of HMA over a sand bed.

“Full depth means all asphalt over sand with no limestone base,” Mayer says. “In those days, there was no limestone in Louisiana. If people used anything, it was clam shells dredged out of Lake Pontchartrain.”

MacDonald adds, “They just don’t build like that anymore.”

A lot of things are different than they were when Barriere built the road, says James Fulton, project superintendent and screed operator at the site.

“Back then, everything was done by hand,” Fulton says. “We had to mix it by hand and lay it by hand.”

Additional industry changes through the years include materials, the way they are mixed and applied, additives, specifications, incentives and disincentives, Fulton says.

“Now, there are computers on everything and we use lasers to make it smooth,” he adds.

Machinery manufacturers like Roadtech and Caterpillar now make highly sophisticated equipment that paves much faster and with increased precision, adjusting to the plane and slope of a road, Mayers says.

“We are using an MTV (mobile transfer vehicle) on this project, to avoid segregation of materials in transporting,” he adds. “This way, the dump trucks can dump a load into the MTV, which re-mixes the asphalt before it flows through the paver. It’s a sophisticated piece of machinery.”

Fulton says he’s proud the project lasted so long.

“We built other jobs, and I’ve had to go back and overlay them three times,” he adds. Fulton says the longevity is undoubtedly due to the thickness.

DOTD design, quality control and inspection played a part in the project’s success as well. The project is also a source of pride for Bruce Perdue, the department’s assistant district administrator of engineering.

“It was exciting that it was my first real big job,” says Perdue, who was field engineer on the original project. “I was fresh out of college and making roads, doing what I wanted to do.”

After 26 years, the road had wearing and settlement, but the extended flooding due to Hurricane Katrina precipitated its being scheduled for the milling and overlay, Perdue says.

The average daily traffic of 9,400 is projected to increase to 11,200 by 2018, with 13% of that truck traffic, says Nelson Capote, DOTD’s project engineer.

The overlay project included cold planing and overlaying the travel lanes, some slope correction and overlaying the travel lanes and shoulders, Capote says.

“We’re using current specs for state routes, which call for a Superpave mix,” he adds. “It’s part of our current recipe.”

The project required 39,000 tons of HMA, transported by 48 to 50 trucks per day from Barriere’s asphalt plant in Boutte, about 60 mi away. One of the newest and largest

HMA facilities in the state, the plant has a capacity of 300-400 tons per hour, Mayer says.

Although the work order on the 85-day contract was issued March 1, work was delayed when the Mississippi River high-water levels stalled delivery of the aggregate coming in from Arkansas, says Jim Breland, project manager and a second-generation Barriere employee.

In a sense, the project represents Barriere’s long-term employees such as Fulton and Breland, who have stood the test of time and have the accompanying expertise, Mayer says.

“Like the highway, Barriere represents steadfast reliability, and we’re proud of that,” he adds.