What's New with ISSA Technical Director Bob Jerman- May 2021

It’s hard to believe that it’s already May!  The year is moving ahead at an amazing pace!  It’s really been an interesting beginning to my first year of “retirement”.   Or, as our ISSA President, Chuck Ingram, reminds me, “semi-retirement”.   For those of you that may not know, I retired at the end of 2020 with just over 34 years at Ingevity but am blessed that the ISSA Board of Directors asked me to continue in my role as the ISSA Technical Director.  It’s an opportunity that I’m passionate about and am fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of at this time.  I am very appreciative of the opportunity to continue active participation in this amazing industry. 

The challenges are numerous, exciting, expanding and our progress is steady on multiple fronts. We remain intent on listening to the membership and our industry partners to ensure that we are focused on the highest priorities to them.  Keeping those projects providing the greatest benefits in support of best practices at the forefront of our objectives, our goal is to promote and support the pavement preservation treatments fundamental to ISSA membership and their partners.

Our dominant technical priority for some time has been the total revision (“re-write”) of the document previously known to you simply as the “Inspector’s Manual”.  It will now be the “ISSA’s Design and Inspection Manual for Slurry Surfacing Systems”, covering both Slurry Seal and Micro Surfacing.  The content has been completely updated to accurately reflect our industry’s best practices. “Notes” for both system designers and inspectors have been inserted appropriately throughout the Manual. We are excited to announce that the new Manual will be available in early summer 2021. More information will be announced in the coming weeks! My sincere appreciation goes out to Debbi Deep, Tim Harrawood, Chuck Ingram, and Larry Tomkins for the hundreds of hours of dedication for the new technical content required for the re-write of this Manual.  Additionally, this effort could not have been accomplished without the support of Ali Mostardo, Anne Walhout, and Bobby Betsold for their formatting, graphics, and administrative support in getting the Manual ready for publication.

We have many other technical objectives in front of us.  A few of those include updates to our ISSA Technical Bulletins (currently revising TB No. 109), the project with NCAT to develop a quick, safe field sampling procedure and evaluation for asphalt content of slurry surfacing system mixtures, updates to the A165 Chip Seal Guideline, development of Design and Inspection Manuals for Chip Seal and Crack Treatments, and revision the A143 Micro Surfacing Guideline.

I encourage you to reach out to us with your technical questions and ideas on where our committees should focus their attention.  In turn, we need you to participate in your Association.  We need you to support the work of ISSA Technical Committees as we come to you with questions, surveys, and polls to gather information that provides us with the input needed to complete revisions to existing technical methodology and guidelines or to generate new ones. I’ll discuss that in greater detail next time.

"Every day is a gift!  Never take a single one for granted!"

Sincerely,

Bob Jerman

ISSA Technical Director