NPHQ Awards Honor Highway Best Practices
At its annual conference in Salt Lake City in November, the National
Partnership for Highway Quality (NPHQ) presented its "Making a
Difference" awards to organizations that excelled in highway design,
construction, or management over the past year. The 10 honorees were
recognized for their accomplishments in the areas of State Quality Initiatives,
Risk Taking, Breaking the Mold, and Partnering.
"It's great to bring people together and showcase their good work
to their peers," says NPHQ Administrator Bob Templeton. "We
see the awards as a form of technology transfer, where one State can
see the success that another has had, and can turn around and use those
ideas themselves."
The State Quality Initiatives award recognizes collaboration among
State highway agencies, local industries, and FHWA Division Offices.
This year the gold award went to the Oregon Department of Transportation's
(DOT) Constructibility Review Team for its process for bringing contractor
input into the project design stage. NPHQ specifically lauded the State's
approach to constructing the flyover and pedestrian structures on the
Interstate 5/Highway 217 project, in which facilitators worked with
stakeholders to eliminate risks, prevent millions of dollars in added
costs from accruing, and shave years of construction delays off the
project. The silver award went to the Utah Pavement Council, an assembly
of Federal, State, and local industry heads formed to assess pavement
issues and make recommendations that will improve road quality while
lowering costs.
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| The Kentucky team, above, won the gold award in
risk taking for its rehabilitation of I-64. |
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| The Forest Height Bridge Team, above, won top honors
in Partnering for its reconstruction of a Knoxville, TN, bridge. |
The Risk Taking awards are given to groups that take an unconventional
approach to a project. The gold award this year was presented to the
team that rehabilitated a 5.6-km (3.5-mi) section of Interstate 64 near
Louisville, Kentucky. Instead of closing a few lanes and making the
improvements in a piecemeal fashion as is often the norm, the Kentucky
Transportation Cabinet and its contractors opted to close the segment
entirely. This created a safer environment for workers and allowed them
to complete the work 7 weeks ahead of schedule. The silver award went
to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and its Queen Isabella
Causeway Reconstruction Team, which rebuilt a collapsed bridge near
Brownsville a month ahead of schedule through the use of incentives
and disincentives and an aggressive schedule. To accomplish the work,
TxDOT convinced its partners to accept the challenge of accelerating
construction in the face of peak hurricane season.
Utah DOT's Interstate 15 Team received the gold award in the Breaking
the Mold category for its use of the design/build technique in the reconstruction
of Salt Lake City's main north/south highway corridor. The move saved
Utah $32 million and shortened the delivery time on the project from
at least 7 years to 4 1/2, ensuring completion before the city hosted
the Winter Olympics in February 2002. The silver award was given to
the Maryland State Highway Administration and its Neighborhood Conservation
Program, whose "When Main Street is a State Highway" planning
and design approach matched transportation improvements to each small
community's individual character. And a bronze award was given in this
category to TxDOT's Plans Online System, an electronic document management
system that saves the State $2.5 million per year in paper, printing,
and postage.
Finally, Tennessee's Forest Heights Bridge Team won top honors in Partnering
for its 7-hour demolition and reconstruction of a dual-span section
of Interstate 40/75 in Knoxville. The group's massive coordination of
contractors, the trucking industry, law enforcement, firefighters, and
the media ensured the success of the project. Maryland won the silver
award for its Maryland Quality Initiative Partnering Subcommittee, which
is concentrating on communication and cooperation among stakeholders
in bringing a greater degree of quality to the State's highways. Taking
the bronze in Partnering was Oregon for the redesign of the congested
interchange at Interstate 5 and Oregon 217; the $41 million project
used steep incentives and disincentives along with A+B contracting to
complete the work 56 days ahead of schedule.
NPHQ was founded in 1992 and known until 2000 as the National Quality
Initiative. The consortium is comprised of members from the American
Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, FHWA, and
10 industry associations. To be considered for an award, States must
nominate their projects for honors in one of the four categories. The
nominations are reviewed by NPHQ's awards subcommittee, which makes
its award recommendations to NPHQ's Steering Committee.
For more information on NPHQ or the Making a Difference awards, contact
Bob Templeton at NPHQ, 512-301-9899 (email: btemplenphq@aol.com),
or visit the NPHQ Web site at www.nphq.org.
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Articles in this issue:
Internet Bidding: Get the Facts
Infrastructure for the 21st Century
NPHQ Awards Honor Highway Best Practices
Infrastructure Technologies Featured at TRB Annual
Meeting
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