The Shelly Co. in Thornville, Ohio, was named the 2012 Sheldon G. Hayes Award recipient by the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) on Wednesday. The annual award recognizes the highest-quality asphalt pavement project in the United States.
The Shelly Co.’s award-winning project was the milling and overlay of 11.18 miles of I-70 from Licking County near the SR 158 exit past the SR 256 exit in Franklin County. An average of 62,000 vehicles — 26 percent of which are trucks — travel on the four-lane interstate daily.
“We are honored to receive this prestigious award to acknowledge the great work being done by our crews every day,” said Ty Nofziger, president of The Shelly Co. “We are proud of our team and the quality of our projects, and we are grateful to NAPA for recognizing us with the Sheldon G. Hayes Award.”
The Shelly Co. milled 3.25 inches from the roadway before laying a 19mm asphalt base course topped by 12.5mm Superpave asphalt surface course. The millings were taken to the plant, where they were incorporated into the asphalt mixes used on the project, reducing the need for virgin aggregate and asphalt binder.
The crews worked at night to minimize traffic disruptions and used warm-mix asphalt, an environmentally friendly technology, to overcome the challenge of paving in cooler temperatures.
The Shelly Co. worked 12-hour days and six- or seven-day workweeks in order to complete the project on time. The company even met incentive clauses for the road’s smoothness and density.
“Before this job even started, I had a conversation with Tim Anderson, our operations manager,” said Larry Shively, vice president for quality control at The Shelly Co. “He was very dedicated to quality, and we wanted to make sure that this would be an award-winning job.
“Mr. Anderson passed away before the job was completed, so the project became very special to us. We went into it with the mind-set that it was going to be a good job, and everyone involved made it happen — the crews, the people at the plants and the technicians.”
The Sheldon G. Hayes Award finalists are determined through a two-year process. Any highway pavement project using more than 50,000 tons of asphalt is eligible for consideration. Initially, the project must win a Quality in Construction (QIC) Award, which is determined by numerical scores calculated by pavement engineers at the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) in Auburn, Ala., based on how well the contractor met specifications and achieved density on the finished pavement. Each pavement that meets a benchmark figure receives a QIC Award. The year after a project wins a QIC Award, it may be considered for the Sheldon G. Hayes Award.
