One indicator of the interest level in a technical topic is the number of people who want to hear about it, and the fact that they are willing to stay past an announced meeting time to hear more.

Both factors were evident last week when the CalAPA joint Los

Dr. Peter Sebaaly of UNR speaks at CalAPA tech meeting.

Angeles-San Diego Technical Committees hosted a talk by Peter Sebaaly, Ph.D., P.E., director of teh Western Regional Superpave Center at the University of Nevada, Reno.

His talk titled "The Impact of WMA Additives on Various Asphalt Admixtures" was attended by about 30 people, including 13 representatives from eight public agencies. Two representatives from Santa Rosa traveled hundreds of miles to hear the talk.

The meeting was hosted by the City of Carlsbad at its Safety Training Center. CalAPA regional Technical Committee meetings are free and open to all CalAPA members and public agency representatives. Contact CalAPA at (916) 791-5044 to be added to the meeting notification list.

 

With apologies to Yankee great Yogi Berra, who passed away last month, a presentation by FHWA Pavement & Materials Engineer Dennis Dvorak must have seemed like "deja vu all over again."

Devorak, who served on a peer review team in 2007 that made a

Dennis Dvorak of the FHWA last week in Sacramento.

number of recommendations to Caltrans on materials testing issues, was back at the the Caltrans TransLab facility last week to revisit the panel's original recommendations and provide a few new ones.

The occasion was a joint meeting of a special test turnaround task group that is examining ways to speed up the delivery of construction material test results, and an HMA QC/QA task group.

Since many of the issues referenced in Devorak's talk have been reported by Asphalt Insider previously, we thought we would instead provide a link to his presentation and let the recommendations speak for themselves. It is HERE.

 

CalAPA is pleased to welcome its newest associate member, Leighton Consulting.

Leighton Consulting has been a leader in construction materials engineering solutions and materials testing and inspection for more than five decades.

Leighton leverages our strong bench of materials engineers and experience throughout Southern California to ensure the performance and quality of pavement mix designs and paving materials. Having in place regional Caltrans- and AASHTO- approved laboratories, Leighton has been relied upon for an exceptional level of aptitude, accuracy of test results, and timely reporting of test data. The company has eight offices in Southern California.

For more information, contact Leighton's Service Leader, Sean Colorado, P.E., at 866-LEIGHTON (866-534-4486), ext. 8490, or visit the company's website HERE.

INTERNATIONAL ROUGHNESS INDEX (IRI): A measure of a pavement's longitudinal surface profile as measured in the wheel path by a vehicle traveling at typical operating speeds. It is calculated as the ratio of the accumulated suspension motion to the distance traveled obtained from a mathematical model of a standard quarter car traversing a measured profile at a speed of 80 km/h (50 mph). The IRI is expressed in units of meters per kilometer or inches per mile and is an indication of pavement roughness.