NAPA News Release
March 31, 2005

FNF CONSTRUCTION INC. WINS TOP NATIONAL AWARD FOR QUALITY IN ASPHALT PAVING

Lanham, MD - The National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) announced today that FNF Construction Inc. of Tempe, Ariz., has won the 2004 Sheldon G. Hayes Award for excellence in construction of an asphalt pavement. The company received the award on February 15 at a special ceremony at the Association's 50th Annual Convention "Pavement Paradise" on the Big Island of Hawaii.

The company won the competition for the milling and overlay of approximately 10 miles of Interstate 40 in Coconino County. FNF Construction partnered with the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) on the project, which was known as the I-40 Two Guns project.

I-40 is one of Arizona's major thoroughfares, with an average daily traffic count of 21,000 vehicles, many of them trucks. ADOT therefore required the contractor to keep one lane open in each direction at all times. Paving crews frequently worked with heavy traffic passing by the construction lanes.

FNF Construction used special paving techniques and equipment, including skis on the paver and the milling machine, and a material transfer vehicle, to keep pavement at a consistent high quality. Because of the site's remote location, FNF Construction set up a mobile HMA plant at the job. The plant produced 350–400 tons of HMA per hour. The company completed the job in just a few months, beginning at the end of May 2003 and finishing that August.

The project included milling the existing pavement and placing 2½ inch thick 19m Superpave base course in the passing lanes and a 4-inch course of the same mix in the travel lanes. This was followed by a 2-inch thick rubberized asphalt concrete and a ⅝ inch rubberized open graded asphalt friction course.

FNF Construction produced a pavement with a ride that was rated "excellent" by the award judges, because of its uniform surface texture. The company won a rideability bonus from ADOT as well as over 90 percent of the maximum bonus for the quality of its mixes.

"As with all of FNF's paving projects, extra measures were taken to achieve very high quality," says FNF President Jed Billings. "The combination of great teamwork with our partners, the Arizona Department of Transportation and our dedicated work force enabled the I-40 Two Guns project to achieve mix qualities and smoothness results that were truly remarkable."

The Sheldon G. Hayes Award winner is determined through a two-year process. Highway pavement projects using more than 50,000 tons of HMA are eligible for consideration. Initially, they must win a Quality in Construction (QIC) Award, which is determined by numerical scores given by pavement engineers at the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) on the basis of how well the contractor met the specifications and achieved density on the finished pavement. All the pavements that meet a benchmark figure are given the QIC award.

The year after a project wins a QIC Award, it may be considered for the Sheldon G. Hayes Award. The top-ranked projects from each year are tested for smoothness, then visually inspected by an independent pavement consultant with many years of experience in the industry. This year, the evaluators praised the contestants for high-quality construction practices resulting in smooth, safe, and durable pavements.

The National Asphalt Pavement Association is the only association that exclusively represents the interests of the Hot Mix Asphalt producer/contractor on the national level with Congress, government agencies, and other national trade and business organizations. NAPA supports an active research program designed to improve the quality of HMA pavements and paving techniques used in the construction of roads, streets, highways, parking lots, airports, and environmental and recreational facilities. The Association provides technical, educational, and marketing materials and information to its Members, and supplies technical information to users and specifiers of paving materials. The association, which counts more than 1,100 companies as its Members, was founded in 1955.

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