As we enter the second half of our season, we must take pause and reflect on what we have accomplished so far.  The first half was in one word – wet!  It seems it would just dry up in time to rain again.  We would push hard when we could and then watch the rain cause us to stop and restart all too many times.           

    As far as safety goes, we have more incidents this year so far, but less cost in claims.  That is until last week when we had a 2001 oil tanker wrecked.  At the sight of the truck and tanker, we realized we were very lucky that the driver was okay and thankful that was the case.

    This brings us to the second half of the season.  I hope the rains ease up and we have a very productive end to this year.  But as we push hard to complete our work, let’s think safety; hold our toolbox safety meetings; discuss our past mistakes; develop ways to be safer.  Hot weather should be around the corner; let’s be careful with the heat.  Drink plenty of liquids!  Also, school will be starting so please be watchful of our children.  The hours will be long, but we must be vigilant to keep safety on the top of our list.

    Our crews have been sloshing through the weather.  Paunch and team have been working between Eddyville and the Tama/Marshall jobs.  They are on Hwy 30 right now and will need to return to Eddyville to finish the last phase there.  Our Tama/Marshall job has a new twist, zero blanking band for smoothness.  This is our second experience with zero band as last year our Wichita job required it.  The specs are tighter to achieve smoothness incentive.  Paunch and crew are doing a great job getting a smooth ride.  With the old.2 band spec, we would have about 100% smoothness incentive, but with the zero band, we will be lucky to get a quarter to half incentive.  Steve and crew have done a great job producing a consistent and quality mix.

We also have a research project with Dr. Jim Cable from ISU on this particular project.  Dr. Cable and Gomaco have teamed up to research smoothness on the go.  Gomaco has a machine, “GSI”, that measures smoothness in real time.  With the use of sonic sensors, we can measure the smoothness behind the paver, the V-screed and texture cure machine.  It will be interesting to get the results from their report.  I believe the reason the IDOT wants to go zero band is to stop what we call “chatter”, that bumpy and choppy feeling some roads have.  If we can figure out what causes chatter the PCC industry will be better off.

How Does It Work?? The GSI Gomaco Smoothness Indicator takes smoothness readings simultaneously from three different sensors on each trace and uses the data taken at that instant in time to establish a measurement of the slab.     See "How Smooth is Smooth-GSI Facts" for more information!

Mike V and crew are finishing Clark County today and heading back to Ames for the second phase of Mortenson Road and Ontario.  They will then go on to Boone and Boone County, and after that to Mahaska County.  These guys are really our traveling crew this year.  They have bounced all over the state.  Gary and the Hetzel portable crew have been following Mike and doing a fine job.

    Monte and crews are in the Huxley and Ames area.  Larry and crew have been in Huxley for about a month.  They are building our largest sewer job yet, over $2 million.  The deepest cut is over 30’ deep.  We rented a JD600 hoe to help us out on this project.  Monte is back with the second crew and, hopefully if the rain stops, we will go to town on this job.

    Kenny and crew have been in Ames and now are backfilling our Clarke County job.  Then back to Ames to finish behind the pavers.

    Jeremy and crew are finishing our New Sharon job, then to the Brooklyn bank for some dirt work.  They will then probably follow the Paradigm crew.

    Brian and crew have finished crushing for Curt in Johnston.  They are putting the tracks on the crushers and will be paradigming the next two (2) months in Wapello, Mahaska and Benton Counties.

    As you can see our crews have been busy and have much left to do.  This year we have been blessed with a lot of paving.  It’s really been keeping our trucking department very busy.  The workload is stretching us to mainline pave with both crews.  We have purchased two more pigs to try to help the powder situation. 

    To perform this amount of work it takes a tremendous team effort.  I want to thank the project managers, supervisors, foremen, operators, drivers, and laborers for getting the jobs done.  Remember Safety – Quality – Production.  Have a great second half of the season.