Allen Heintz

I’ve heard a lot of people ask this of others and myself. And I’ve also heard how Q.C. technicians never do anything.

Let’s start back several years ago. Paving was done with recipe mixes. In other words, the
D.O.T. told the contractor what they were to use for batch weights, and ready mix plants used bag mixes.

All mixes were similar in that they contained cement, water, sand and gravel.

Asphalt contained bituminous oil, sand and rock. Things were pretty basic when it came to putting a mix together.

In present days, we have chemicals in the mixes, which are being used in the winter months that affect the product.

We have mix designs done by technicians. These have specifications with parameters to follow. We also have to keep testing the material and mix while the job is being done.

What constitutes a concrete mix? Cement, fly ash, slag, silica sand, sand, course aggregates, intermediate aggregates, air, water reducers, retarders and plasticizers, just to name a few ingredients. All of the chemicals in these components can have adverse reactions, along with heat, cold and wind.

We run specific gravities, moistures, gradations, maturities for strengths, cylinder histories, water/cement ratios, cement yields, plant scale sensitivity checks, segregation monitoring, air percents both before and after the paver, unit weights, paver vibration frequency checks, profilograph for smoothness and bumps, and of course, the tons of paperwork documenting everything. If a problem arises with the mix during production, additional tests are immediately started to help resolve or start ruling out different possibilities. All tests are run on a daily basis.

On the Asphalt side, we have several of the above tests along with Gyratory compaction for lab densities, void checks, thickness, film thickness, rice tests, and splitting materials with
D.O.T. to check that all correlates with their standards.

The future of testing has contractor technicians doing all testing, including the grade tests that the D.O.T. now does.

There will be new mix designs in order to save on materials and have longer lasting pavements.

Every year these technicians continue their schooling to learn about all the changes that are constantly happening.

So, if you feel Q.C. is not needed on our projects, consider this: Would you invest thousands of dollars on a new home, and not carry any kind of insurance on it? Realistically, no you wouldn’t, and that is a form of what the Q.C. department does.

To all of the testers, I tip my hat and give a big pat on the back for their jobs well done.

The Q.C. technicians are: Larry Wishon, Cindy Dela Rosa, Jeff Thompson, Sally Slaven, Jeff Jenkins, Larry Clark, Dave Distler, Kevin Sorenson, Joni Linder and our 2 new testers this year are Renee Sieren and Kellie Ray.

I hope everyone out there has a very safe year, and keep up the excellence of quality that you have achieved.