Innovations That Will Transform Road Construction

Saumya Verma

8 min read

March 27, 2023

Table of Contents

Critical Issues faced by the Road Construction Industry

A road construction site

Before diving into innovations that have the potential to transform the road construction industry, let's look at some of the challenges that the industry faces. These include:

Design-related problems: These include a lack of detailed specifications by the architects, poor design reflection and continuous changes in the design by the client.
Cost overruns: Too many undocumented design changes can incur a cost overrun beyond the allocated budget. It also makes the process tedious to trace back and locate the exact points that triggered these additional costs.
Environmental impacts: Some negative environmental impacts of road construction include waste disposal dumping, nuisance noise, dust pollution, soil erosion, natural vegetation removal, disturbance to wildlife, and population displacement.
Project delays: Construction delay is considered to be one of the most recurring problems in the road construction industry and it damages project success in terms of time, cost, quality, and safety.
Maintenance and repairs: Road repair is a costly job. For example, in fiscal 2020, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, India, allocated Rs 3,150 crore for the maintenance of roads and highways, which is 17% higher than the revised estimates for fiscal 2019.

The innovations in the sector can be divided into three phases of the project lifecycle, namely, road construction materials and machines, design and implementation, and highway operations and management. In the road construction materials and machines sector, the use of innovative materials, automation, and machine control technologies has been encouraged to improve efficiency and lower the environmental impact. In the design and implementation phases, the technological advancements have increased the construction speed and lowered the project lifecycle cost. Furthermore, technology-based initiatives are increasingly being adopted in the highway operations and management phase to improve the operation and management of highways.

Promising Innovations in Road Construction Industry

1. Self-healing concrete

self-healing concrete

As discussed previously, one of the primary challenges of the transportation industry is road repair and maintenance. To tackle this, researchers are now devising unconventional construction materials to reduce potholes and cracking in roads. This has led to the development of self-healing asphalt with the ability to heal itself when damaged. Some of the ingredients used by researchers to develop the material include steel fibers, iron oxide nanoparticles, and capheal. In 2016, Nemkumar Banthia, professor of civil engineering at the University of British Columbia, constructed a road using self-healing concrete in the small town of Thondebavi, outside Bangalore, Karnataka. He used a technology that resists heavy rains, intense heat, and poor drainage. The resultant road turned out to be more resistant to cracking. Some advantages of using self-healing concrete:

Minimal repair costs: This is because the self-healing asphalt only requires minimal repairs and replacement.
Fewer cracks: The asphalt reinforces the road surfaces causing fewer cracks to appear.
Faster repairs: This speeds up the operation and maintenance phase.

2. Recycled Plastic Roads

recycled plastic roads

Recycled plastic roads were developed by Rajagopalan Vasudevan, a professor of chemistry at the Thiagarajar College of Engineering in India. The material replaces 10% of a road's bitumen with repurposed plastic waste. Many different types of plastics can be added to the mix, including carrier bags, disposable cups, hard-to-recycle multi-layer films, and polyethylene and polypropylene foams. So far, 2,500 km (1,560 miles) of plastic-tar roads have been laid in India. Chennai was among the first cities globally to adopt this technology when the municipality commissioned 1000 km of plastic roads in 2004. The advantages of using recycled plastic roads include:

Lower carbon emissions: By 2040, there are set to be 1.3 billion tonnes of plastic in the environment globally. Recycling this plastic can help lower carbon emissions.
Enhanced Maintenance: Adding plastic to roads appears to slow their deterioration and minimise potholes.
Economic benefits: The incorporation of plastic results in savings of roughly $670 (£480) per kilometre of road.
Durability: Plastic roads can withstand both heavy loads and traffic.

3. Prefabricated Plastic Roads

PlasticRoad1_800x

This innovation addresses the problem of environmental impacts caused by road construction. With a rapidly growing supply of plastic waste, reuse options that turn waste into resources are the need of the hour. These are prefabricated, modular, and hollow road structures built from recycled plastics. In Zwolle and Giethoorn, Netherlands, there are two bicycle paths made purely from waste plastics. This is the result of an invention by Simon Jorritsma and Anne Koudstaal, who launched their first product in 2018. The advantages of using Prefabricated Plastic Roads include:

Faster project completion: PlasticRoads lead to the reduction of the project completion time from months to a few days. This is due to the lightweight and modular design of the roads.
Water Storage: The hollow space in PlasticRoads can be used to temporarily store water. This helps prevent flooding during extreme precipitation.
Storage: The hollow space can also be used for the transit of cables, pipes, sensors, or the electric charging of vehicles.
Smaller carbon footprint: The PlasticRoad is a completely circular product and, thus, has a significantly smaller carbon footprint than traditional road designs.

4. Solar Roads

Solar Roads

A solar roadway is a road surface that produces electricity. The layers of a solar road include a glass layer, an electronic layer and a base plate layer. The system is employed to generate electricity by using photovoltaic cells. This type of roadway was first built in 2016 in France. The only real-world application of a solar roadway was done by Peachtree Corners Smart City and The Ray. The roadway is estimated to produce more than 1,300 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. Let us look at the advantages of using solar roads:

Production of renewable energy: Solar roadways are employed to generate electricity, thus contributing to sustainable development.
Greater life span: The lifespan of solar roads is around 20 years which is much greater than that of Asphalt roads which is 7-12 years.
Enhanced safety: Solar roads come with the possibility to affix solar lamps, charged by these solar panels.

5. Building Information Modelling

Building Information Modelling

The construction and maintenance of road infrastructure are one of the most important sectors for a company's national economy and also one of the least digitized ones. This leads to an insufficient level of cooperation and inadequate information management. BIM technology helps aid the digitalization of the construction process. It allows all stakeholders involved in a project to collaborate on a single 3D model. Norconsult, Norway's leading multidisciplinary consulting firm, completed the construction on a 15-mile stretch of the 680-mile Coastal Highway project using BIM technology. The result included reduced environmental impact. The advantages of using the BIM design process include:

Enhanced Collaboration: BIM helps teams collaborate on a single 3D model. This helps with design-related problems such as poor design reflection in the project.
Reduced Errors: BIM allows construction teams to resolve constructability issues early in the design process to prevent conflicts on-site. Navisworks is a powerful software that can help teams achieve this.
Time and cost benefits: 4D and 5D BIM services help with proper time and cost management.
Renovation: New design processes like “Scan to BIM” are advantageous when it comes to renovating or reconstructing existing infrastructure.

A recent report from Dodge Data & Analytics found that BIM is rapidly becoming a standard practice throughout the industry. While architecture firms are the fastest to adopt BIM practices, civil engineering and road construction firms are also embracing BIM at record levels.

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So that’s it! I hope this blog gave you the insight you needed to accelerate your career in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry.

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