ACPA Annual Awards for Excellence in Concrete Pavement Online Paving Awards Login Username: Password: Register a New User E-mail Username & Password About the Paving Awards Program The ACPA Annual Awards for Excellence in Concrete Pavement are designed to honor quality concrete pavements constructed in the United States and Canada each year. The awards program encourages high-quality workmanship in every concrete pavement project and serves as a forum for sharing information about highly successful projects. The awards program recognizes contractors, engineers, and project owners who completed outstanding projects. Winning an Award for Excellence in Concrete Pavement provides the contractors, engineers, and owners with a level of prestige that can assist them in the development of future projects. This online awards submission system may be used to submit your project for consideration in participating local ACPA Chapters paving awards programs and in the ACPA National awards program.  If you use this system to submit a project to a local paving awards program and the project is a winner, you will be notified by your local ACPA Chapter.  Upon winning a local paving award, your winning project(s) automatically will be considered in the ACPA National awards program and you will be able to use this online awards submission system to edit and/or update the content of your winning submission up until the National awards deadline.   ACPA National awards submittals are due by July 17, 2009, (for projects completed in 2008). Judging of the National awards will occur in August 2009 and winners will be formally recognized at the ACPA Annual Convention in Florida. This year’s awards presentation is scheduled for Friday, December 4, 2009. Project Submittals Submittal forms must be fully completed online for consideration in the ACPA National awards program. If requested information does not apply to your specific project, please indicate so in the submittal. Please click on the links below for detailed information on that topic:   Eligibility   Projects are only eligible1 for the National awards if They are submitted to ACPA on or prior to the submission deadline: July 17, 2009 (no exceptions). All sections of the submittal form are completed. (Note: submitters may elect to denote any sections as “not applicable”). They were completed in calendar year 2008. They won a local award2 in the same category in which they are being submitted in the National award program, unless they are from a territory that does not have a local awards program, or they are nominated for a National awards program category that does not match a local awards program category.   1 Only one project per state will be judged in each category for the National awards. If more than one project is submitted from a state in any National awards category, the judging panel will determine which project is advanced for final consideration against nominations from other states. 2 Many ACPA Chapters/affiliated Paving Associations conduct local pavement awards programs. It is required that you submit your project to a local program, where available, prior to submitting to the National awards program. The review panel considers only winners of local programs when judging the National awards. Before submitting to the National awards program, please check your local ACPA Chapter award program information for rules of eligibility. To obtain contact information for your local ACPA Chapter, choose "Find local Chapter/State Paving Assn." and your state in the "My Locator" tool in the right column of this page. Project Categories   Please click on a category for a detailed description of it: Divided Highways (Urban)   Interstate, tollway, and divided trunk highway projects of considerable size. This category includes mainline paving on divided highways, interstates and tollways constructed in urban areas with the majority of the project located within Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) boundaries. Divided Highways (Rural)   Interstate, tollway, and divided trunk highway projects of considerable size. This category includes mainline paving on divided highways, interstates and tollways constructed in rural areas with the majority of the projects located outside the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) boundaries. State Roads   Undivided two-lane and multi-lane rural highways. This category includes projects on state and U.S. routes that use strategies similar to the Divided Highways category. County Roads   Rural low-volume roads, usually two-lane that do not have curb and gutter. Municipal Streets & Intersections (<30,000 SY)   Projects that have curb & gutter, are within city or village limits, and are less than 30,000 square yards in size. Municipal Streets & Intersections (>30,000 SY)   Projects that have curb & gutter, are within city or village limits, and are greater than 30,000 square yards in size. Urban Arterials & Collectors   Major projects that are part of a metropolitan highway system and provide links between highways, interstates, or tollways. Commercial Service & Military Airports   A commercial service airport is a public airport that enplanes 2,500 or more passengers annually and receives scheduled passenger service. Military airports are any active military facility used to operate aircraft. Reliever & General Aviation Airports   An airport that has been designated to relieve congestion at large commercial service airports and provide alternative general aviation access to the overall community. A general aviation airport is an airport that remains after exclusion of the commercial service and reliever airport categories. If a project at a commercial service airport is for general aviation use only, the project is eligible for consideration in this category. Concrete Pavement Restoration (CPR)   Includes all concrete pavement repair, preservation, and restoration projects utilizing any combination of full- and partial-depth repairs, joint and crack resealing, dowel bar retrofit, slab stabilization, cross stitching, retrofit PCC shoulders, retrofit edge drains, diamond grinding, and grooving. Projects can be on any type of facility from the other categories. Concrete Overlays   This award recognizes a project based on its innovative use of concrete overlays and includes any type of concrete overlay (i.e., bonded/unbonded concrete overlays of concrete pavements, bonded/unbonded concrete overlays of asphalt pavements, and bonded/unbonded concrete overlays of composite pavements). Industrial Paving   This pavement award recognizes a project(s) for design and construction of concrete pavement for trucking facilities, distribution centers, warehouse truck parking facilities, truck stops, rest areas and other areas where trucks are the primary vehicles. Also, projects constructed for specialized cargo handling equipment such as; ports, rail yards, and other facilities functioning as a point of distribution of goods. Traffic Management (All projects are automatically considered for this category.)   This award recognizes the use of innovative traffic management techniques in all categories, and is not mutually exclusive of the other 11 categories. There is no need to submit an extra nomination package for this category. All projects will automatically be considered. Executive Summary   The Executive Summary describes the unique aspects of your project. Please edit this summary in a word processor to easily check for grammatical and spelling errors, and then copy and paste the content into the box provided. The Executive Summary is limited to 3,000 characters. Project Photographs   High quality project photographs are required with each submittal. They should capture the unique aspects of construction and show the finished project under traffic. High quality digital photographs are a very important part of the submission and subsequent activities. Submittals should contain a maximum of ten high quality photographs highlight both the project process and final product. Keep in mind that one photograph from a winning project may be chosen for a magazine cover. We recommend that each submittal have at least one cover worthy photo. Please click on the links below for detailed information on that topic: Camera Equipment   ACPA strongly encourages the use of 7 megapixel (or higher) digital camera1, although a 35mm camera also will work well. Older generation digital cameras also will work, but we recommend using at least a 5 megapixel or better digital camera. 1 Digital camera technology changes rapidly! Although 4 megapixel cameras were “state of the art” just a few years ago, the current standard is rapidly approaching 8 to 10 megapixels. Still, good quality, high resolution photos are possible with older cameras or lower megapixel versions. If you’re concerned or have questions, please call Bill Davenport at ACPA (847-966-2272). Camera Settings   Resolution and image quality settings should be as high as possible to produce images at the highest resolution and lowest compression ration possible. Outputs (images) should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi and should be at least 5x7 inches. JPEG’s are acceptable, as long as resolution is high. Tagged Image File format (TIF’s) or Bitmap (BMP) images are also suitable. Please use auto-focus or, if using manual settings, focus carefully. The images must be sharp and have good contrast. Please do not submit out-of-focus or soft-focused images. Composition   Whenever possible, please include something that conveys some action. Oftentimes this means workers doing something in the photo, or the roadway being used by traffic. If a photo is taken of a distant object, there should be something of interest in the foreground. This creates the perception of depth and enhances detail. Helpful Hints   Best time of day to shoot is morning (before 11:00 a.m.) or late afternoon (1 to 2 hours before sunset) for light quality. Horizontal or vertical formats are acceptable; however ACPA encourages a good selection of both. Shooting in sunny conditions? If you have a polarizing filter, please use it to reduce glare and give increase contrast. Shooting in cloudy conditions? Use the camera’s flash to improve lighting, but remember that most flashes only work within about a 20 ft (6.5 m) range. Shooting under a machine or in the shadows? Use the camera’s flash to improve lighting, even if you’re shooting during the day. Cover Photo Suggestions   Should be vertical format. There must be a blank space, or area of little interest (like sky) at the top so that the magazine masthead (name) can be inserted. There should be extra space either on the right side or at the bottom of the page for text describing the magazine contents. There should be some people or activity going on that draws the eye to the picture. Overhead or birds-eye-view shots often make excellent cover photos. Promotional Consideration   By submitting a project for consideration, you authorize ACPA and its agents to use information and illustrations for promotional and publicity purposes, as well as in technical publications. Judging and Project Review Criteria   For the National paving awards, a panel of industry professionals representing contractors, Departments of Transportation, FHWA, FAA, DOD, municipal agencies, consultants, materials & equipment suppliers, and other industry organizations will judge the entries. The judging panel reviews the nominations and awards points based only on the information provided in the submittal form. As such, every effort should be made to make the information as clear as possible. The criteria for judging of the National awards and points available are: Executive Summary (10 pts) Project Schedule and Scope (5 pts) Paving Process/Smoothness (25 pts) Safety & Quality (20 pts) Innovation (15 pts) Traffic Management (15 pts) Public Relations (5 pts) Judge’s Perceptions (5 pts) Up to five points will be awarded based on the judges’ overall impression of each project. The critera for judging of local paving awards is independent of the National awards. To find out more about your local paving awards judging criteria, obtain contact information for your local ACPA Chapter by choosing "Find local Chapter/State Paving Assn." and your state in the "My Locator" tool in the right column of this page. Plaque Information   The winners of ACPA National awards will receive three (3) complimentary plaques for each winning project. In the event your project is selected a National award winner, ACPA will work with the contact person, indicated in the Key Project Personnel Contact Information section, to review the plaques, and to order additional plaques at cost if desired.

For enquiries, please email ACPA at awards@acpa.org.