All aboard . . . ASCE T&DI Conference takes flight

Summer always ends with good memories, and this year’s American Society of Civil Engineers Transportation & Development International Conference was chalked full of them.

The ASCE T&DI conference gathered approximately 400 attendees from 47 states in U.S. and 35 countries including researchers in transportation and airport safety technologies, designers, construction managers, academics and contractors. The three-day conference held in Chicago sparked discussions on construction, design, implementation and current research.

The conference featured two technical tours, for O’Hare International Airport Modernization and Illinois Department of Transportation’s Jane Byrne Interchange Reconstruction Project at I-294.

Some of the heavy hitters in Illinois transportation kicked off the conference as the keynote speakers, including IDOT Acting Secretary Omer Osman and Chicago Midway International Airport Commissioner Jamie L. Rhee.

Technical sessions highlighted expected challenges from advancing technologies in both highway and airfield pavements such as autonomous and connected vehicles effect on pavement performance. Possible solutions presented included: innovative materials, energy harvesting, and benefits of truck platooning.

Workshops targeted performance engineered mixtures in pavement construction and airport pavement evaluation. The vision of the PEM program is for highway agencies to have faster and better quality assurance tests, optimizing mixtures that lead to cost savings, and longer-lasting pavements. While the airport pavement evaluation program was designed to assist organizations in the assessment, management, and maintenance of their airfield pavement networks.

One of the many conference highlights include Gary Hicks being presented with the 2018 Carl L. Monismith Award and Lecture on Pavement Engineering — an annual awarding for outstanding research contributions in pavement engineering. Hicks has devoted 50 years to pavement materials, design, and evaluation; construction; and maintenance of transportation facilities.

Illinois Center for Transportation and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering attendees didn’t miss a beat of the action. Several students presented their research, including doctoral candidates Angeli Gamez and Seunggu Kang with their poster “Rehabilitation Strategy Guide,” and doctoral student Egemen Okte with his “Combined Tool Development for LCA and LCCA” poster.

Doctoral candidate Punit Singhvi also spoke with his presentation on the “Impact of Asphalt Modifier Dosage on Modified Binder Rheology and Chemistry with Long Term Aging,” which received the conference’s Best Paper Award.

Several UIUC researchers’ projects were highlighted, including doctoral students Haohang Huang and Erman Gungor, post-doctoral researcher Issam Qamhia and Professor Erol Tutumluer.

Perhaps this year’s biggest takeaway was ASCE’s Grand Challenge: think outside the box and bring new innovative ideas to the table so that we can meet the challenges of tomorrow.

Challenge panelists included: ASCE President K. N. Gunalan, Federal Aviation Administration Airport Pavement Section Manager Jeffrey Gagnon, Federal Highway Administration Center for Accelerating Innovation Director Thomas Harman and IDOT Highways Project Implementation Director Paul Loete.

The panelists left their audience with an important question: will you be the next agent of change?

The conference concluded with more than 150 technical presentations leading to critical discussions and solution to incorporate the challenges ahead in the pavement industry.

In closing, we would like to give a special thank-you to the conference co-chairs ICT Imad Al-Qadi, Applied Research Associate, Inc’s Scott Murrell, National Technical University of Athens’ Andreas Loizos, and UIUC’s Hasan Ozer for helping put together such an exciting rigorous conference