QUALITY ASSURANCE IN ROADWAY PAVEMENT CONSTRUCTION

In the current pavement construction practice, the state agencies traditionally determine the quality of the as-constructed pavement mix based on individual mixture material parameters (e.g., air voids, cement or asphalt content, aggregate gradation, etc.) and consider these parameters as key variables to influence payment schedule to the contractors and the present and future quality of the as-constructed mixture. A set of empirically pre-determined pay adjustment schedule for each parameter that was differently developed and being used by the individual agencies is then applied to a given project, in order to judge whether each parameter conforms to the designated specifications and consequently the contractor may either be rewarded or penalized in accordance with the payment schedule. With an improved quality assurance system, the Performance Related Specification, the individual parameters are not utilized as a direct judgment factor; rather, they become independent variables within a performance prediction function which is directly used to predict the performance. The quantified performance based on the prediction model is then applied to evaluate the pavement quality. This paper presents the brief history of the quality assurance in asphalt pavement construction including the Performance Related Specifications, statistical performance models in terms of fatigue and rutting distresses, as an example of the performance prediction models, and envisions the possibilities as to how this Performance Related Specification could be utilized in other infrastructures construction quality assurance.