North Dakota Road Builder Places 75,000 Cubic Feet of Concrete In A Day

North Dakota Road Builder Places 75,000 Cubic Feet of Concrete A Day

Northern Improvement | RDO Equipment Co.

A stretch of highway needed repaving, widening, and lifting. The contractor needed a machine to handle all three quickly.

Interstate 29 runs from Missouri north and transitions into Highway 75 as it crosses the border on its way to Winnipeg, Canada—about 217 miles of it passes through North Dakota. There, winter runs long and the climate forces a short construction season.

WIRTGEN Group Product Manager Erik Sahr at RDO Equipment Co. explains that when Northern Improvement came to the RDO team, they were specific in their requests to find a dependable concrete placer/spreader.

In fact, Greg McCormick, Northern Improvement’s President, and Executive Vice President Molly Barnes emphasizes that they looked at every placer on the market, its price, availability, and capabilities. “The WIRTGEN GROUP’s equipment would allow us to pave stringless, place faster, and achieve a smoother ride,” says McCormick.

This road construction project was created by a larger flood protection plan, so this road needed to be reconstructed to raise the road out of the flood plain within two construction seasons.

While the RDO team members ensured the necessary placer/spreader and its parts would be on hand, the Northern Improvement team worked on securing their materials while dealing with supply chain shortages. Northern Improvement’s Vice President, Concrete Paving Division Manager Steve Schmidt explains that the team purchased steel products in 2021 to ensure they would be available but cement was in short supply. Paving days were scheduled carefully with constant communication with cement suppliers and aggregates delivery.

After both teams secured materials and equipment, Sahr explains that they focused on training and had three WIRTGEN GROUP technicians supporting the WPS102i placer and spreader from when they started in early July.

With time of the essence, any machine that Northern Improvement used needed to be consistent, fast, and create a smooth pave. The 4 miles (approximately 21,000 ft.) of I-29 needed to be reconstructed. The WIRTGEN WPS 102i Placer/Spreader was able to travel over pre-placed dowel baskets and tie bar baskets but was also able to be programmed to place and spread a 12-40 ft. wide concrete road, up to 20-in. thick. According to Sahr, the project marks the first running use of the machine of its size in the world; the equipment's serial number: 01.

Jill Berger, a foreman for Northern Improvement was amazed by the power and speed, saying that they were able to dump six trucks in 6.5 minutes.

The crew benefited from safety and technology features like an automatic safety shut-down system, machine monitoring, and GPS allowed increased productivity and efficiency for the project. “Safety is especially important for both Northern Improvement and RDO Equipment Co. The WIRTGERN Group ensured the concrete placer and spreader would have an open platform system so alarm codes and auto shutdowns could be programmed,” Sahr says.

The Northern Improvement team uses Holcim Type 1L cement (reducing carbon emissions) along with locally produced natural gravel as their aggregate and an ND DOT AE Well Graded mix is specified for paving all the states roads. Schmidt highlights that this mix is both low slump formed and hand-place into forms and underlines that their reconstructed roads for this project had full strength in under three days. The Northern Improvement team uses AMS curing compound as protective coating while following the DOT’s specifications for air-entrained concrete, fly ash, and well-graded aggregates.

All this work created a very smooth roadway according to the International Roughness Index, Schmidt explains.

Because of Northern Improvement’s work with their WPS102i Series 1 machine, they plan to complete the project in the Fall of 2023.

Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Northern Improvement and the RDO Team for their contributions to this article.

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