May 1, 2010

Lanham, MD - The National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) announced today that Lindy Paving Co. of New Castle, Pa., has won the 2009 Sheldon G. Hayes Award for excellence in construction of an asphalt pavement. The company received the award on January 20, 2010, at the Association’s 55th Annual Meeting in Maui, Hawaii.

Lindy Paving Inc. won the award for the reconstruction of 6.6 miles of the northbound and southbound lanes of I-79 north of Pittsburgh. This is the second year in a row and third time that Lindy Paving Inc. has received NAPA’s highest honor for a quality pavement. 

Lindy Paving transformed the roughest section of interstate remaining in Pennsylvania into a road that won praise from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) as the smoothest stretch of highway in the state.

During the two-year project, Lindy Paving broke up the existing concrete traffic lanes in place, then paved layers of hot-mix asphalt over that base.  The company also rehabilitated two overhead bridges and five mainline bridges and installed safety enhancements including new standard lighting and guiderails. 

Partnering and careful attention to the asphalt production and paving techniques helped the company produce the award-winning pavement.  “At the start of the job we sat down with PennDOT and went though with them what we thought would be the best way to pave the job, and we discussed all the needs and requirement that they had.  From that we came up with a plan that we were both comfortable with. That provided us with the greatest opportunity to achieve the best ride we could,” says Dan Ganoe, Lindy Paving’s operations manager. 

“The reason that this job turned out so well was the commitment made by Lindy and the Trumbull Corporation, our joint venture partner, and PennDOT,” Ganoe adds.  “Along with that dedication, it comes down to our guys on the crew, striving day in and day out to do a good job.”

Lindy Paving did much of the work at night to minimize inconvenience to motorists.  It also kept backup equipment on the site during paving to ensure continuity and timely completion of the project. 

Project innovations included the use of an express lane/local lane configuration during the peak hours of traffic flow from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.  One lane was designated for traffic traveling through the area without exiting, while the other was left for drivers who were exiting and entering the road. A temporary ITS Traffic Management system, which included fourteen temporary traffic cameras, queue detectors and message boards, kept motorists informed about traffic patterns through the area.  A public Web site displayed live feeds from these cameras so that drivers could determine whether or not they should seek an alternate route.

For Lindy Paving, one of the most demanding aspects of the job was living up to its own high standards.  “We got great results the first season, so the challenge was to try and maintain that for second season.  We set a pretty high bar the first year, so expectations were high for the second year,” says Ganoe.

The Sheldon G. Hayes Award winner is determined through a two-year process. Highway pavement projects using more than 50,000 tons of asphalt are eligible for consideration. Initially, they must win a Quality in Construction (QIC) Award, which is determined by numerical scores given by pavement engineers at the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) on the basis of how well the contractor met the specifications and achieved density on the finished pavement.  All the pavements that meet a benchmark figure are given the QIC award.

The year after a project wins a QIC Award, it may be considered for the Sheldon G. Hayes Award. The top-ranked projects from each year are tested for smoothness, then visually inspected by an independent pavement consultant with many years of experience in the industry. This year, the evaluators praised the contestants for high-quality construction practices resulting in smooth, safe, and durable pavements.