US 69S in Bryan County, OK

Project Focus
The project required construction of a 5” fiber-reinforced concrete overlay of both lanes of southbound US 69. US 69 is a heavily travelled highway connecting Dallas, TX to Interstate 40 in central Oklahoma. This highway has an estimated ADT of greater than 10,000 vehicles per day. A significant portion of the ADT is heavy truck traffic.

Project Details
Schedule & Complexity
To minimize disruption to traffic and avoid the high costs of moving all of the southbound traffic off of the existing southbound lanes, the project was completed in 2 phases without the use of temporary median crossovers and temporary concrete barrier walls.

First traffic was reduced to a single lane in the outside southbound lane, permitting work to begin on the inside 12-foot lane and inside 4-foot shoulder. After completion of the inside lane and shoulder, the traffic was switched to the newly constructed inside lane so the outside 14-foot lane could be completed.

Construction & Innovation
Both phases were constructed in a similar manner. First, the asphalt was removed on the existing PCC pavement where it was previously overlaid with asphalt. Then the existing 8” thick PCC pavement was inspected and patched with 8” high early strength concrete where necessary in accordance with ODOT standard PCC patching procedures and details. Next a 1” asphalt bond breaker was placed in those areas of the unbonded overlay. In the bonded overlay areas, the existing PCC pavement was milled to a depth of 3” and the surfaced cleaned with high-pressure water just before placement of the concrete overlay.

Before commencement of the concrete paving operations, IHC mobilized a REX portable 12-CY central mix concrete plant to the project to assure a reliable and steady supply of high quality concrete to the project. Project requirements included a 28-day compressive strength requirement of 5000 psi and 3 pounds per CY of polypropylene fibrillated fibers.

IHC placed the concrete pavement using a Gomaco 6300 slipform paver. IHC’s experienced crew achieved smoothness and rideablility significantly greater than the specification requirements of 1/8” in 10-foot straightedge and no bumps greater than 0.4”.

Quality
In fact, IHC’s average smoothness was 1.8 inches per mile using a 0.2” blanking band. The newly constructed pavement required no corrective work to achieve these results. If this project was constructed with ODOT’s standard smoothness specification, IHC would have achieved the maximum payment incentive allowed for construction of smooth pavements.

The project was completed with zero lost time accidents and was completed more than 27 days earlier than the permitted contract time.