I-35 Garvin County

This project is a 3.1-mile reconstruction of I-35 between Oklahoma City and Dallas. While the project included many different scopes of work, we want to take the time to spotlight the project’s team’s success story in the improvement of pavement smoothness. As most are aware, all operations on heavy civil paving projects have some level of contribution to pavement smoothness. This includes grade of the subbase, paver setup, concrete batch plant operations, concrete consistency, concrete finishing, trucking, etc. Pavement smoothness has direct cost impacts to the bottom line via incentive/disincentive payments and cost of corrective work.

On Phase 1 of the I-35 project in Garvin County, the project team struggled to obtain the desirable pavement smoothness. In fact, the average profile index (PI) in phase 1 was 52.3 in/mi. which exceeded the specification limit for “must grind” segments. The best segment placed during phase 1, had a smoothness of 29.1 in/mi.

In preparation for Phase 2, the team put a plan in place to improve the pavement’s smoothness. The plan included a de- tailed survey and repair list for the paver, adjustments to the paving model, daily meetings to analyze profile graph results, and daily ride records. The entire team committed to the process and executed the plan and the results showed.

The first half of Phase 2 pavement had an average PI of 31.05 in/mi. The team continued improvements and finished the second half of Phase 2 with an average PI of 26.5 in/mi, with the best segment coming in at 17.3 in/mi. This segment is particularly impressive because the paving model only had a profile index of 14 in/mi. These results helped the project schedule finish strong and left a high-quality pavement in place for the owner and traveling public.