EDC Update

For MaineDOT and ACEC Meeting

July 13, 2015

  1. Initiative Highlights

E-Construction- On May 28th, 2015, representatives from Utah, Michigan and Iowa shared their e-Construction experiences at a workshop in Portland hosted by FHWA and MaineDOT. Bryan Cawley, Construction Management Team Leader, FHWA’s Office of Infrastructure, delivered the national perspective on e-Construction, and summarized e-Construction lessons and experiences from Texas and Florida. Josh Van Jura (Utah DOT), Glenn Bukoski (Michigan Infrastructure & Transportation Association (MITA)), and Greg Mulder (Iowa DOT) then discussed the history, successes and challenges of adopting e-Construction in their state. The final session of the day was dedicated to developing the next steps for e-Construction in Maine through a panel discussion with the audience. Approximately 40 attended from MaineDOT, FHWA, consultants, contractors and vendors.

Road Diets- MaineDOT has developed a draft document entitled “MaineDOT Road Diet Guidelines” which was reviewed by the FHWA Maine Division Office. This document will be finalized once it has been reviewed by MaineDOT’s Engineering Council.

MaineDOT has identified a re-striping project to temporarily reconfigure a one-mile section of Route 202 in Manchester using Road Diet concepts. The roadway will be reconfigured from two eastbound lanes and one westbound lane to one eastbound lane, one westbound lane and a center left-turn lane. MaineDOT plans to test the effectiveness of this configuration during the summer.

Ultra-High Performance Concrete Connections for Prefabricated Bridge Elements –

MaineDOT was awarded $49,680 in STIC Incentive Funds (total cost of $62,100) to accelerate the adoption of prefabricated full-depth precast concrete deck panels with UHPC connections by developing design guidance, standard details and specifications.

MaineDOT is planning on using prefabricated panels on the Western Avenue Bridge in Fairfield (staged bridge deck replacement over I-95). The project is scheduled to be advertised in July 2015 with construction to begin in 2016. MaineDOT’s preliminary schedules indicate that the impact to traffic during construction will be reduced from approximately 166 days for a conventional cast in place deck to 89 days. MaineDOT’s design team spent considerable time researching and developing project specific details and specifications for the prefabricated panels and UHPC. The MaineDOT Bridge Program is proposing to use the lessons learned from the Fairfield project to develop draft standard details, specifications and design guidance that will facilitate the use of this ABC technique on future projects.

Data-Driven Safety Analysis- On June 11, 2015, MaineDOT hosted FHWA’s 4-hour Systemic Safety training course for MaineDOT Design, Safety, Traffic, Planning and Region staff. One MPO was also represented. The course discussed the benefits of systemic safety planning and provided real-life examples of implementation in other States. The FHWA Resource Center then gave a 1-hour executive overview for MaineDOT leadership emphasizing a balanced funding approach to address both historic high accident locations (reactive improvements) as well as roadways that exhibit high-risk features (systemic improvements).

MaineDOT formed a Safety Committee to develop recommendations for the division of funding between systemic and reactive safety projects, and to develop procedures for data-driven systemic safety project selection. Representatives on this committee are from Safety, Traffic, Planning, Project Development, Maintenance, and FHWA. The Committee is currently analyzing head-on and went-off road crashes, which are over represented compared with road mileage, for Priority 1 and 2 roadways.

  1. STIC Incentive Funding

2014 funding - Traffic Incident Information Exchange, E911 Location Verification and Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) Integration (PIN 18585.00)

2014 funding - 3D Modeling (PIN 18584.00)

2015 funding - Prefabricated full-depth precast concrete deck panels with ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) connections.

Proposal Submitted - MaineDOT Environmental Compliance/Commitment Tracking

Proposal Submitted - Nondestructive Verification of Concrete Reinforcement in Precast Items

Proposal Submitted - MEGIS Bat Layer Creation

  1. FHWA Technology Transfer Funds

These funds were used to fund the following two peer exchanges:

  • E-construction Peer Exchange – please see above
  • Diverging Diamond Interchange Peer Exchange – June 1-4 in Kansas City, MO; MaineDOT and City of Bangor staff participated