Scott Haines, CEO of the H&K Group, likes a challenge. So when the New Jersey Department of Transportation asked if his company could cut the time to refurbish a 21-mile stretch of I-295 in half, Haines immediately got to work. At stake was a $99 million contract with bonuses and penalties of $100,000 a day. The job: reconstruct three lanes of a 20.9-mile stretch of I-295 in Burlington County from Mount Holly to Rte. 130 . . . 62.75 lane-miles of work in one year while minimizing disruption of traffic.
To achieve it, H&K’s NJ Division in Belmar formed a joint partnership with Intercounty Paving Associates of Hackettstown and started the reconstruction of both north- and southbound lanes in February 2010.
The work included rubblizing and overlaying of the existing concrete pavement, pavement removal, subgrade, sub-base, concrete slab repairs and application of a bottom-rich asphalt base course. The asphalt shoulders were reconstructed. Areas under bridges were undercut to maintain or increase vertical clearances. Acceleration and deceleration lanes were lengthened. The project also included drainage and other work.
The biggest challenge came at the quarries, said John Haines IV, Scott’s father and one of the company founders. “That meant double-shifting and moving people. We’d haul, remix and rehaul all within six months—more than 1.3 million tons of aggregate.”
Project manager Tony Leotta agreed.
“If you don’t have the capability on the material side, it doesn’t matter if you can man-up on the project,” he said.
“It was also our first time working with a JV partner and we had to mesh the two teams together,” Scott Haines said.
All three emphasized that they could not have finished the job in time without the help of NJDOT and Mack Trucks Inc. For the I-295 project, H&K used more than 100 of its fleet of 453 trucks—nearly all Macks—including the state-of-the-art MackACK Granite running EPAUS’10-compliant Mack MP engines and the company’s ClearTech SCR system.
Scott Haines said he likes the Mack trucks because they are easy to maintain. Fleet superintendent Dan Alderfer appreciates the fact they can run 24 hours a day along with the crews.
“I’m not saying we abuse them but we work them hard,” Alderfer said. “I don’t know if there’s another truck out there that will take that kind of a beating. Less downtime means less out of your pocket.”
