e Inductees JIM SCHEROCMAN, Consulting Engineer Spend just a few minutes talking with Jim Scherocman about paving practices and it won’t be long before he says, “It costs nothing to do it correctly the first time and people don’t do it incorrectly on purpose. People do it wrong because they don’t know any better.” Jim Scherocman has made a career out of helping people pave better. An independent consulting engineer since 1986, Scherocman has been a fixture at National Pavement Expo (NPE) every year since 2000 and for the entire 11-year run of NPE’s sister shows in Las Vegas and Phoenix. He has written numerous papers and articles, authored the Hot Mix Asphalt Paving Handbook, presented sessions on dozens of topics, and through NPE alone has guided thousands of contractors on paving-related “best practices.” He could not have found a better way to put to work his two civil engineering and one MBA degree (all from the Ohio State University), and he wouldn’t have wanted to. Scherocman worked for the Ohio DOT from 1966 to 1968 and began teaching in 1968 when working as a field engineer for the Asphalt Institute until 1974. Since then he has guided public agencies, contractors and engineers on what they can do to construct a quality, long-lasting paving job that is costeffective for the customer. “At the Asphalt Institute, one of our goals was to work with people to help them build better roads, so I pretty much started teaching right off the bat,” he says. “I enjoy it and it’s an opportunity to give back to the industry that’s been very good to me.” Scherocman’s path through the paving industry was broad and varied, which gave him insights into paving work from just about every standpoint. Following the stint at the Asphalt Institute, he was chief engineer for asphalt paving contractor Shumaker Bros., Indianapolis, IN, and was chief
paving engineer from 1979 to 1983 for the Barber-Greene Company, manufacturer of asphalt paving equipment. That was followed by threeyears as director of marketing/asphalt additives for the Carstab Division of Morton Thiokol. Since 1986 he has been a selfemployed consulting engineer, working with contractors individually, serving as an expert witness in paving-related litigation and presenting training sessions at national and international conferences. His accumulation of on-thejob knowledge, combined with his equipment and materials background and his engineering training, enable him to connect with and convey paving and paving-related practices to nonengineers in a language everyone can understand.
be surprised how many people will stay with your company because they know what they’re doing,” he says. “When they do it the way they’re supposed to and someone tells them ‘good job’ they’ll stick around. We just don’t reward our people properly.” Scherocman says another part of the training problem in the paving field is the increased emphasis on “tonnage” as opposed to “job quality.” “The attitude is ‘how many tons?’ not ‘where is the quality?’” he says. “The need for tons really overshadows most everything else. The sad part is you can get production and quality at the same time if you train your people to do it right.” So he teaches people to do it right, and it’s why Scherocman maintains his year-round consulting and speaking schedule. “I enjoy speaking to contrac-
“It costs nothing to do it correctly the first time and people don’t do it incorrectly on purpose. People do it wrong because they don’t know any better.”
And he says the need to teach paving “best practices” is more important now than ever. “As a rule, contractors don’t train their people and it’s getting worse,” he says. “People used to be hired as a laborer and they would work their way up until they were a paver operator or a foreman. But today, we’re so phenomenally short of people and phenomenally short of people who know what they’re doing, that we are putting people in jobs they just aren’t prepared to handle. That results in poor-quality work. “Turnover among workers is so frequent that contractors don’t like to spend the money to train them and then lose them. I can’t tell you how many people say they don’t want to spend money training people only to see them leave to a competitor or out of the industry.” Scherocman’s answer: “Train them anyhow,” and that’s what he does. “People hang around longer and you get better work done and greater production when you train them. You’d
tors at events like NPE because I can make a bigger impact than I can on an individual contractor basis,” he says. “It’s important to realize that people don’t do things the wrong way on purpose. They just don’t know a better way to do it, which goes back to the training, which goes back to what NPE is,” he says. “When I work with contractors, either individuals or in groups, I have an opportunity to learn what their problems are and once I know that, I can offer solutions to those problems. “There’s not just one way to do something but you can do it more efficiently, more effectively and more economically,” he says. “When I’m out on a jobsite I’ll often ask people, ‘Why do you do that?’ and the answer is generally, ‘No one told me to do it differently’.” Jim Scherocman has made a career out of teaching people how to do it differently.
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