Jonathan Kuell, executive director with the Northern New England Concrete Promotion Association recently teamed with NRMCA Senior Director, National Resources, Doug O’Neill to present to officials at the New Hampshire DOT. Historically, New Hampshire has looked at asphalt as its only alternative for paving. The group attending Kuell and O’Neill’s seminar included representatives from the Materials and Research Division, Highway Design and Highway Maintenance, among others. The scope of the talk revolved around the notion that other states in cold weather climates are using concrete successfully in any number of applications, including intersections, round-abouts and parking lots.

"We aren’t trying to replace asphalt in mainline paving," O’Neill said. "We simply wanted them to recognize that concrete was a viable solution to some of their paving problems." The attendees were interested to learn that states like Michigan and New York are making use of Alternate Bid/Alternate Design concepts to help lower their costs for paving along with the realization that concrete CAN work in cold weather climates despite their unwarranted perceptions.

"The idea that concrete is too expensive and won’t last is a hard concept for many engineers to break free of and we feel we took them another step closer to realizing that concrete offers some tremendous benefits to the taxpayers of the state of New Hampshire," Kuell added.

For more information, contact Doug O'Neill at doneill@nrmca.org.