58th annual Bituminous Conference highlighted by awards

More than 300 technical individuals from all over the country attended the 58th Annual Illinois Bituminous Paving Conference on December 11th and 12th, 2017, at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign, Illinois. Every year the event brings together highway engineers, government officials, contractors, consultants, university researchers, and representatives from various agencies, academia, and consulting firms to discuss asphalt concrete improvement and share technical research, but this year there was something different.   

For the first time ever four monetary Bituminous Achievement Awards were presented to student, government, and industry leaders thanks to the generous support of several sponsors.

• UIUC Ph.D. student Punit Singhvi was awarded the Marshall Thompson Student Research Award for his research on asphalt and pavement preservation techniques as well as his contributions to the development of I-FIT protocol.
• Retired Materials Engineer Robert Bailey received the Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association (IAPA) Research Award for his decades of service to the transportation industry and his creation of “The Bailey Method,” a systematic approach to establish aggregate blends for hot-mix asphalt.
• IDOT Hot-Mix Asphalt Supervisor Allen Fox won the Barry Dempsey Bituminous Technical Contribution of the Year Award for the Quality Control/Quality Assurance training classes he was the first to teach and the wealth of knowledge and experience he developed in HMA during his 50-plus years with the transportation industry.
• National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) Chairman and Gallagher Asphalt Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Dan Gallagher was the recipient of the Imad L. Al-Qadi Leadership in Bituminous Engineering Award. Gallagher was recognized for his leadership efforts that have continually benefited and supported the Illinois flexible pavement industry over the past three decades.

Conference organizers say the awards segment will continue for years to come because of the sponsor commitment.

This year’s conference featured presentations and discussions on various topics, including a national perspective on asphalt pavement performance, pavement preservation, hot-mix asphalt (HMA) design for airport pavements, longitudinal joint sealing, and the best practices of milling and profiling smooth pavements.

Several leaders from government, industry, and academia took the podium to speak including Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) Director Paul Loete, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Division Administrator Catherine Batey, NAPA Chairman Dan Gallagher, Oldcastle Materials Asphalt Performance Manager Shane Buchanan, National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) Assistant Director Buzz Powell, Astec, Inc. Technical Services and Applications Director Richard Shreck, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Program Manager Navneet Garg, Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT) Sustainability Implementation Engineer David Lippert, Cargill Global Technology Manager Hassan Tabatabaee, S.T.A.T.E. Testing, LLC Founder and President Jay Behnke, Wirtgen America Product Specialist Tom Chastain, and Murphy Pavement Technology President Tim Murphy.

The full conference, including most presentations, are available on the conference’s history page.

Congratulations to all who received an award and a special thank you to all of the attendees, organizers, presenters, and sponsors who made this conference a great success!

The 59th Annual Illinois Bituminous Paving Conference is tentatively scheduled for December 11th and 12th, 2018 at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign, Illinois. Please save the date and sign up to receive email notifications about the next conference.