May 2024 Updates

Cold Recycling (CR) Committee 

The CR committee is engaging its membership for various task forces and volunteer opportunities and working to keep our committee friends plugged in with industry activities. We have established a meeting frequency that allows for more progress to be made on committee activities between the Pavement Recycling Summit, and the PPRA Annual Meeting.

Most recently, the committee has begun auditing our respective CIR and CCPR content on the RoadResource.org website for updates and revisions. This process will collect input across the committee and provide valuable updates to continue the website’s standing as a leading resource for the industry. Committee support for the ARRA awards continues with better and early awareness for our members.

FDR/Soil Stabilization Committee

FDR Committee held a meeting on February 21, 2024 at the PPRA annual meeting in Tampa Florida.  The following items were discussed and continue to be worked on:

• FRD section of RoadResource.orgSeveral items were presented for update.This continues to be reviewed for both accurate content and updates.About 50% of the section has been reviewed and presented to membership.
• The Base Stabilization section of RoadResource.org is next up for content review. And then Soil Stabilization and Soil Modification.
• Dr Cross gave a brief update on the EPD/LCA process and encouraged participation.
• Reminded everyone to get started on the 2025 FDR awards.
• FAA P-207 is being reviewed and comments collected for presentation to the FAA.
• FDR Brochure is being completed.
• A request was made for more current FDR/Soil Stabilization pictures, new success stories and example projects for potential inclusion on either the ARRA website or the RoadResource website.
• There was a discussion on:
  • FHWA Sponsored Webinar topics – several ideas were discussed.
  • Future Speakers and topics for ARRA – several ideas were discussed.

Hot In-Place Recycling Committee

The Committee had a virtual meeting on Monday April 8^th. The main topic of discussion was the pavement calculator and how to accurately reflect the benefits of Hot in Place Recycling. All in attendance agreed to form an accurate list of concerns so that we may bring it forward to the Board in June.

The Committee is staying focused and committed to the sustainability narrative. As a team we are all trying to report the required information in the same format and in with a more aggressive time frame.

The effort to have more engineering firm involvement is ongoing and a priority to our committee. Additionally, we all have approached County and State officials to join ARRA for all disciplines of HIR. We all continue to promote ARRA at all shows we attend.

We are still searching for speakers at our internal meeting next fall.

Cold Planing Committee

The committee met in April and has begun work on three separate projects.

1. State Milling Specifications – we are aggregating basic milling specifications for each state (and potentially Canadian provinces) to construct a database of milling specifications for members. The database should be substantially complete by the this Fall.
2. Update of RR.org technical section. The committee is reviewing the Cold Planing Technical Section on roadresource.org. We plan on having these updates by our next meeting in June.
3. 3D Milling one-pager. We are preparing a document to outline when / when not to use 3D milling technologies. This project will be completed by this Fall.

The committee is also still awaiting final results of the milling project conducted by NRRA and MNRoads.  This project was carried out to determine the effect milling operations have on underlying pavement layers.  We expect to see these results in the coming weeks / months.

At the previous annual meeting, the committee added two new members – Raleigh Harelson (Astec) and Mark Eiden (CAT)

Also at the annual meeting, The committee added two committee co-chairs – Rick Andreatos (PRS) and Jay Cumberlander (Zigong). 

We’re excited to have these new members and look forward to their contributions!

Marketing Committee

The Marketing Committee continues to work on the development and implementation of strategies to grow the use of ARRA solutions.  This effort is largely being focused in the following areas:

1. “Why ARRA”
2. Market Outreach
3. Website review
4. Training Seminars

Summary –

Why ARRA

The presentation highlights the efficiency and sustainability of the ARRA solutions. The presentation has been shared with CM Services and Ergon in-house marketing members for feedback.  It is the committees’ desire to make the PPT accessible to members on ARRA.org once it’s complete to quickly promote the benefits of ARRA solutions.

Market Outreach

The Marketing and Membership Committees identified NACE (National Association of County Engineers) and PWX (American Public Works Association) as two national organizations that ARRA should be actively engaging to grow our business opportunities.  ARRA will financially support the endeavor when the timing is right. 

ARRA joined NACE as a “Diamond Corporate Member.”  With support from CM Services, ARRA gathered some basic exhibitor necessities which included the following:  3 pullup banners, a green ARRA branded table cloth, CIR and Cold Planing brochures, BARMs, ARRA branded koozies and field pocket notebooks, and Save the Date Summit postcards. Bruce Wehr and John Morgan attended and exhibited at NACE on ARRA’s behalf.  The conference was held April 15-18.  Attendance was robust and the ARRA booth received a lot of interest during the first full day of the exhibit hall opening.   The next steps will be to determine a strategy to have ARRA become more active in the association by providing needed information such as training and education.  Bruce Wehr and Joe Dillon have offered to spearhead this initiative by utilizing existing relationships.  The marketing committee also needs to ensure ARRA has all necessary literature to represent all of ARRA’s solutions when exhibiting.  ARRA also needs to take advantage of the digital marketing through NACE.  CM Services is heading this up and would love to have promotional ideas.

The PWX initiative has been temporarily put on hold.  This was done because of our limited ability to gain access to quality exhibit locations on the floor in Atlanta.  Nearly all the exhibit locations had been filled so we’ll mark the calendar and register much earlier for 2025.

Website Review

The core discipline committees are actively review content on RoadResource.org.  Opportunities for improvement will be conveyed to CM Services to be changed or discussed as appropriate.  Sometimes, Vario must make the change.  After these reviews are complete, the marketing committee will look at this site holistically to identify opportunity for improvement (i.e., more marketing than technical).

Training Seminars

ARRA would like to begin offering and promoting seminars. Many discussions have been held about the how, when, and where.  This is important but we haven’t had any free time to devote to the initiative.