Washington County recognized for 200 miles of concrete paving

Washington County Secondary Roads received a 200th Mile Award from the Iowa Concrete Paving Association at their annual workshop held in Des Moines Feb. 6-8, 2019. This special achievement award recognizes 200 miles of Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) slip-form paving completed by Washington County from 1962 to 2018. With this recognition, Washington County became the sixth county in the state of Iowa to place 200 plus miles of PCC slip-form paving.

Slip-form paving started in Washington County when Bob Huber became county engineer in 1961. He placed the first slip-form pavement on a county road in 1962 with a 6.5 mile, 20-foot wide, 6-inch thick pavement on the Riverside Road from Washington to 190th Street. This was placed by the Fred Carlson Company at a cost of $28,678/mile. Huber placed the 100th mile of slip-form pavement in 1986 with a 2.3 mile job in the southeast part of the county, a 22-foot-wide 7-inch-thick pavement by the Fred Carlson Company at a cost of $100,169/mile. Washington County Engineer Jacob Thorius stated, 'By the time Bob retired in 1995, he had placed approximately 150 miles of slip-form pavement.”

The second county engineer to pave in Washington County was Bob Bauer, Huber's longtime assistant. During Bauer's tenure as County Engineer, he placed approximately 18.5 miles by the time he retired in 2004. Following in Bauer's footsteps as the third county engineer to pave in Washington County, was his assistant, David Patterson. While Patterson was the county engineer, he placed approximately 17.4 miles of PCC Pavement. Current Washington County Engineer, Jacob Thorius, is the fourth county engineer since Huber to do slip-form paving, and he was Patterson's assistant for several years. During Jacob's current tenure as county engineer, he has placed approximately 16.7 miles of PCC Pavement.

Throughout most of the PCC slip-form paving history of Washington County, there has been one other individual involved in this work, Lyle Moen. From March of 1969 till June of 2011 he was a technician and later an assistant to the engineer and played a big role in making sure nothing but the best pavement was placed in Washington County. According to Thorius, 'Lyle was a great technician and instrumental in placing over 145 miles of quality slip-form PCC pavement during his 42-year career with Washington County.”

Under the direction of four different county engineers, Washington County has worked with 14 different PCC paving contractors to place over 203 miles of slip-form PCC pavement in the last 56 years. The project to put Washington County over the 200-mile mark was a 3.9 mile, 32-foot wide, 6-inch thick PCC overlay placed during the 2018 construction season by Streb Construction at a cost of $538,850/mile. Thorius stated, 'This project overlaid nearly 4 miles of Bob Huber's first county PCC slip-form pavement on the Riverside Road in 1962, the birth of PCC pavement in Washington County.” Thorius went on to say 'I'm honored to be a part of these 200 plus miles and will continue to work at building quality pavements for the citizens of Washington County for years to come.”