Paver of the Year awarded to Lavis

Highway 21 Project Earns Lavis Third Paver of the Year Award

by Steve Pecar

For the third time in nine years, Lavis has been chosen as Paver of the Year by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO). The award was presented during the Ontario Road Builders’ Association (ORBA) 2022 summit held virtually over four days in late January and early February. “It’s always a great pleasure to recognize the best our industry has to offer,” says Bryan Hocking, Chief Executive Officer of ORBA, at the closing of the summit. “The road building industry takes great pride in health and safety, infrastructure innovation, governance, academic achievement in engineering, and excellence in construction.”

The Paver of the Year award is presented annually by MTO to recognize contractors who have completed high-quality asphalt projects. This is the 30th year MTO has presented the award. Contractors are judged on a number of conditions including road smoothness, night paving, completion, workmanship, mix quality, visual appearance of the finished work, and methods of innovation. Lavis won for its work on Highway 21 near Forest (contact 2020-3042). Other finalists for the award were: • Dufferin Construction Company for work on Highway 402 near Strathroy (contract 2020-3022); • Pioneer Construction Inc. for work on Highway 17 near Bruce Mines (contract 2020-5163).

“This is pretty exciting news for us, something the company and all of the workers can say they have contributed to,” says Bentley Ehgoetz, Divisional Manager for the Huron County-based Lavis. Having also been named Paver of the Year in 2012 and 2015, Ehgoetz says he is proud the company has been able to show consistently that it is doing good work and is pleased with the acknowledgement from MTO. As the project was progressing, Ehgoetz says his team knew something special was happening and hoped the end result would lead to the award. “We could see what was happening and I remember telling some of the crew, ‘I think we have a chance for a Paver of the Year award,’” he says, adding that many of the team members involved in the project also worked on the two previous award-winning jobs.

The work done on Highway 21 was roughly between Forest, Ontario to Highway 402. The project involved 78,170 square metres of cold-in-place recycling (CIR emulsion) with a hot mix overlay of 12,000 tonnes of SP 19 binder course and 14,000 tonnes of FP 12.5 FC1 wearing course. The use of CIR stabilizes the existing roadway and helps resist reflection cracking in addition to having the environmental benefit of reducing the use of new aggregate and asphalt cement.

The work also included some curb and gutter drainage repairs and structural concrete repairs. As well, there were repairs made to the Highway 402 underpass as well as replacing guiderails, signs, electrical loops and lighting. Most of the work was done in-house. Operating since 1938, Lavis has gone through several changes over the years, but Ehgoetz says dedication to hard work and thoroughness have been the thread that has run through the company and keeps it on course to achieving good things. And now, after three top honours as Paver of the Year, where does Lavis go from here? “I guess we will try to make it number four,” Ehgoetz says. “That’s the best we can aim for.”

Steve Pecar is a Mississauga-based writer, editor and designer.