Current and future eras are seeing an operational environment where road occupancy for pavement maintenance or repairs will be severely restricted under conditions of maximising availability for service traffic and access to roadside properties. A key driving force for concrete pavement slab replacement, where required, is the need to use solutions that can be completed within one standard working shift and increasingly only at night.
Allowance also has to be made for the time to set up and removal of traffic control at work sites within the same shift period. One important operational criterion is not necessarily what may be considered ideal, but what can be achieved in the available time with reasonable performance expectations.
Based on 25 years experience in California and 5 years experience in roads in Australia since 2010, this paper describes the development of specific innovative concrete slab replacement solutions that are meeting the above demands. Concrete materials, equipment, work methods and performance outputs are presented. The same practices are also applicable to public utility trench restoration work.
