Skip to main content

Innovation is behind all business partnerships

While reclaimed asphalt pavement is not a new idea, there are new and innovative technologies coming all the time to improve its application and durability. This RAP is “black gold”, as Thierry De Sars, technical director at Groupe Fayat, told delegates at the Pavement Preservation and Recycling Summit conference in Paris this week. But it all comes down to cost savings and efficiencies that importantly include increasingly precise dozing to get the exact amount of bitumen laid down on a pass. De Sars cauti
February 24, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
RSSWhile reclaimed asphalt pavement is not a new idea, there are new and innovative technologies coming all the time to improve its application and durability.

This RAP is “black gold”, as Thierry De Sars, technical director at Groupe 217 Fayat, told delegates at the Pavement Preservation and Recycling Summit conference in Paris this week.

But it all comes down to cost savings and efficiencies that importantly include increasingly precise dozing to get the exact amount of bitumen laid down on a pass.

De Sars cautioned delegates that imported bitumen from RAP may have deteriorated to a sufficient degree that the road project is compromised. For one thing, the imported bitumen may have reduced mixability at the plant.

The Retroflux technology from Fayat, the French civil engineering, general and steel construction and energy services provider, has along thermal heating exchanger to protect the bitumen from overheating. Also, from a health and safety standpoint, the Bitumen vapours are consumed in flames.

Yet innovation is not just about technology, said Andreas Marquardt, head of exports at 2395 Wirtgen. It can also develop through, and be imbedded by, the way companies behave in a true partnership, he told PPRS delegates during his presentation.

Never underestimate the need to sell your technology and projects to potential customers. However, as a machine supplier, you must always listen to the client about how the machinery is operating. No matter how tried and tested the equipment, there is always something learn about its performance. Building this data bank from global projects is essential for knowing where to start improving equipment.

But for innovation to come about, all partners need to listen and learn, he explained. Importantly, never forget that brand reputation almost always comes from not from the machinery being used on a project but how the companies work together to make progress and solve problems.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • New functionality for infrasfructure design software
    March 20, 2012
    Chris Bradshaw, Autodesk's vice-president for the Infrastructure Solutions division spoke to World Highways. The launch of the fourth version of its Civil 3D design software early this year will see software maker Autodesk getting serious about its road and general civil engineering package. Bigger projects can be handled in the 2008 version, and a range of new functionality is being added. "Though not everything we would like yet," said Chris Bradshaw, Autodesk's vicepresident for the Infrastructure S
  • Closer ties with Highways England Collaborative Delivery Framework
    April 13, 2017
    Highways England is reconsidering its procurement to encourage innovation and ultimately deliver more for less. Kristina Smith spoke to client, contractors and material suppliers to find out more. A group of senior managers is being addressed by a local resident who lives close to some proposed road works. The resident is angry, persistent and quite rude. The question is: how will these managers respond?
  • PPRS 2018: a Nice place to be
    August 4, 2017
    Maintenance, Modernisation, Adaptation of Roads and Streets for Tomorrow’s Mobility – these are the key themes for the upcoming Pavement Preservation and Recycling Summit (PPRS) in Nice, France, March 26-28 next year. Meeting the mobility challenges is more essential than ever in a rapidly changing global context. Speakers at the event, to take place at the Nice Acropolis, will include Peter Schmitz (Germany), Shigeru Kikukawa (Japan) and David Winter (US).
  • Self-healing roads, slippery roads and slimmer roads
    November 24, 2017
    This month’s bitumen technology pages bring you self-healing roads, slippery roads and slimmer roads and explains why one UK contractor has started manufacturing its own polymer modified bitumen - Kristina Smith reports. Professor Erik Schlangen, who heads up experimental micromechanics at the Delft University of Technology is receiving calls from all round the world these days. And it is hardly surprising because he and his team have invented a great new technology: asphalt that heals itself.