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The Public Works Nerds
Innovative Technologies in Pavement Management with Chris Evers
Episode 8 of Season 2 features Chris Evers, a 2023 APWA Top Ten Public Works Leader award winner. That's why I contacted Chris, but I'm so happy I did for many reasons. First of all, I was finally able to nerd out on pavement maintenance. But I was also able to meet a pretty funny, smart, and gracious person in Chris Evers. And since Chris brought up Stuart Smalley in the podcast, we can call this his Daily Affirmation (for those of you too young to catch the reference, google this hilarious SNL skit).
Listen in as Chris and I talk about innovative pavement maintenance and touch on Artificial Intelligence and APWA. And speaking of AI, here's the AI generated description of the episode. Enjoy!
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Picture the roads we travel every day as the unsung heroes of our daily lives, a network of paths that connect us not only to destinations but to each other. This week, the Public Works Nerds Podcast is honored to host Chris Evers of Pavement Technology Incorporated, an APWA 2023 top 10 public works leader, as we traverse the landscape of pavement innovation. Chris's journey is one of passion and perseverance, shaping the very ground beneath our wheels with advancements that extend the life and function of our roads. From the complexities of airport pavement maintenance to the role of community in public works, Chris's insights are as foundational as the pavements he champions.
Our conversation takes an exciting turn as we trade tales with public works directors in a roundtable that's as much about the power of collaboration as it is about the strategies that help us weather any storm, including the literal ones faced during Florida's hurricane season. The profound respect and recognition for leaders like Chris is felt in their stories, each one laying the groundwork for a stronger, more connected community. The episode is a reflection of the respect that these leaders command, a celebration of the commitment that extends far from the confines of their job descriptions.
Capping off our journey, we cast a spotlight on the technological marvels reshaping the pavement industry. From the environmental prowess of titanium dioxide in combatting urban heat islands and microplastic pollution to the futuristic intersection where artificial intelligence and robotics meet public works, the future is now. These advancements are not just about maintaining roads; they're about propelling public infrastructure into a new era of safety, efficiency, and environmental stewardship. So buckle up and join us as we ride along the cutting edge of pavement progress with our very own 'Pavement Avengers'.
Show Notes:
https://www.pavetechinc.com/
Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster 2021 Cleantech Innovation Award Winners
https://www.pavetechinc.com/smog-eating-roads/
Reclamite
FLCAJ Jan-Mar-May PTI Reprint.pdf
PTI Maltene Replacement Technology
Pavement Avengers Presentation (part of Florida LTAP Pavement Maintenance Webinar)
The Pavement Avengers – A Pavement Preservation Origin Story (by Chat GPT) - Florida LTAP Center
Welcome to the Public Works Nerds Podcast.
Marc Culver:Welcome to the Public Works Nerds Podcast, a Public Works Podcast of the nerds by the nerds and for the nerds. I'm your Marc host, Culver. Thank you for joining us. Today I finally get to nerd out about pavements. I've teased this topic a few times on some other episodes, where we started talking about seal coats and overlays and some stuff like that, but I have yet to dedicate an episode to this topic until today. So today we're joined by Chris Evers, the technical representative with Pavement Technology Incorporated. So, and Chris, is it pavement technology? You guys don't call yourselves like Pave Tech, right? It's pavement technology.
Chris Evers:We call it, we like PTI, you know, to shorten it up a little bit, we Pave Tech is in the Pave Tech Inc is the email address. So you know we'll go by anything, as long as somebody's saying our name, it's a good day.
Marc Culver:Absolutely good day. Absolutely, and before we get into pavement technology and what they do and what the and the innovative products that they offer, we're going to talk to Chris about Chris, because Chris is very worthy of talking about Chris and I found each other through my goal of interviewing the APWA 2023 top 10 public works leaders, and Chris is one of those awarded and recognized leaders. You're only my second interview so far of those top 10, but I'm working on getting the other ones, so hopefully we'll hear more in the near future of that, but you are one of the few recognized leaders in the private sector, chris, so let's meet Chris, let's find out why he was honored with this award and get to know him a little better. So welcome Chris. Great to finally sit down and chat with you.
Chris Evers:Thank you, thank you, mark. Thank you, mark. It sounded almost like a Frost from Stuart Smalley interview and Jack Handy.
Chris Evers:you know kind of all in there for the for the folks, my my era, the Saturday Night Live, which, which used to love those. So but yeah, this is great Thanks for having me and it is a great honor of mine too, because I've been following the, the nerds and the podcast since you guys kind of got kicked off and it's exciting time. So thanks for having me. I'm really just, you know, glad to be in this space. It's kind of not something that I ever anticipated.
Chris Evers:I graduated from Oklahoma State University in the Midwest and I really didn't know anything about public works. I definitely did the same thing everybody else does, which is, take it for granted and in essence, you know, started in the private sector. I've never been on the public sector, but my entire, you know, career in public works has been about serving the folks in the public sector, whether that be DOTs, cities, counties, even engineering firms. I get involved with a lot of engineering firms, engineering firms, I get involved with a lot of engineering firms and even, you know, airports, faa, ohio administration, so kind of all over the board really.
Marc Culver:Yeah, that's interesting, the airports. I actually I had a little bit of stint in my very, very early career where I was doing airport design and when I was in college it was the Top Gun era, you know, I thought I was going to get out and design and maintain airports, and so I was. I took some pavement classes with that in mind, but that's a whole another um conversation is just airport pavements, because those are massive definitely yeah, they are, they're no joke and and the you know, the thing people don't realize is they're very wide too.
Chris Evers:I mean some of them could be 150, 200 feet wide by a couple miles long. Um, so those they is, they're very wide too. I mean some of them could be 150, 200 feet wide by a couple miles long. So those they're, they're massive. I mean there's a lot there.
Marc Culver:Yeah, yeah, and a lot of issues with obviously maintaining that pavement but then runoff and what are you doing with the water and everything else going on.
Chris Evers:So yeah, they don't have a very big tolerance for potholes, let's say so. There are some things that are unacceptable, thankfully for us folks who fly, so you definitely have to maintain those pavements. Pavement preservation is critical to them, as it should be for everyone, and that's really where I've spent my career is both talking about pavement preservation, advocating for it, and preservation advocating for it, but really trying to explain why we should do our best to preserve these assets instead of just letting them deteriorate, instead of really deploying like a worse first strategy.
Marc Culver:Yeah, no, well said and we'll get more into that here in a couple of minutes. But first talk about your APWA involvement and how you got to the point where you know, hey, you are a top 10 leader, but you know, start with how you got to the point where you know, hey, you were a top 10 leader.
Chris Evers:But you know, start with how you got involved. Sure, I remember sitting in an office the gentleman's name is Cheech DeCelis and Cheech is great, he's actually a legendary Public Works leader. He's since passed, but he was the Public Works director down in a town in South Florida called Plantation and I sat in his office and in his office he had all these awards on the back. You know that I was staring at when I was meeting him for the first time and he, you know, could see me, you know looking at him and he said yeah, I'm very involved in the American Public Works Association. Are you familiar with them? And I said, and I was familiar with them from my Texas days, but I had no reason to join back then. Really it wasn't really my primary focus, I was more DOT centric. And so he said I highly suggest getting involved with APWA. So I took him you know to be a pretty serious guy about it. So as soon as I left his office and got back to my abode I basically joined and then started to get involved at the branch level in Tampa and then, in essence, really started to get into a situation where I started to get these leadership positions, basically with the branch and then with the chapter, and really by about 2012, I was elected president of the Florida chapter and before then I'd been involved in a lot of the different rotations in some of the committee chairs and that kind of thing. And then at that time in 2012, we have a pretty large chapter expo and so it was one of those things where it was like we need to bring something different. So we really kind of came up with something called the Public Works Director Roundtable and that really was kind of a genesis of some of my involvement up at the national level, where we took that eventually in 2014.
Chris Evers:So it's been a lot of fun. We just wrapped up one last week I'm sorry the week before and it's just a great opportunity to get the directors around a table. It's not always been a round table. There's been some funny stories where we've shown up at PWX and somebody didn't get the memo and no one's sitting at round tables. It's the classroom style. So, as public works do, mark, we improvise and so push the table out of the way and arrange themselves in a round table. So it was great, but it's fun. It's been a lot of fun. It's been very rewarding and it's one of those things where I cherish it. It's been great and it's, I'm sure, what led to that top 10 nomination from the Florida chapter and ultimately in receiving really what I consider the greatest honor in my career.
Marc Culver:So, yeah, no, and it's kudos to you for that and for the recognition. Kind of curious about the roundtable for setup and the format, you know, is it is it just, hey, everybody shows up and you just kind of go around the table talking about stuff, or is there a couple of particular topics that you have lined up and then you go into a round robin type of situation or like what's, what's the format of those? For those that might be thinking of doing it where they are.
Chris Evers:Or like what's, what's the format of those?
Chris Evers:For those that might be thinking of doing it where they are, oh, I would love for them to either join us at PWX or, of course, certainly reach out and we can give you the, the full roadmap to bring it to your chapter as well.
Chris Evers:I think all the chapters would be great to do it.
Chris Evers:But in essence, the real kind of strategy there is that what we want to do is we have a table full of networked kind of uh works directors, and those directors then are basically there to, you know, interact with each other. So we'll give them a topic and then, once we've given them that topic, then and we do a few uh, brief slides and then when, when we kind of tear them, turn them loose, then they kind of tear into the topics and and meander through it and then we try to bring them back into the fold, and then we'll go kind of round robin to each table and they'll basically pick a spokesperson and that spokesperson will then basically give the group, the whole group, the ins and outs of what they discussed, and so it's. It's really exciting. I've I've had a lot of directors say, you know, it is the highlight of, whether it's their PWX or or even their you know experience at the Florida chapter expo. It's it's why they come on this, to be able to interact with each other.
Marc Culver:So yeah, no, that's great. I uh, I've, you know, often get into conversations with with people about you know, professional organizations in that and you know really the yeah, there's some great conferences and you get some great technical um sessions and things like that. But really the value I see in in an APWA and some other organizations locally is making those connections and just talking to you know, with your colleagues about their experiences and just building off of each other on your experiences good and bad, you know Definitely, and it's really about their challenges, so the challenges they face.
Chris Evers:In Florida, we have obviously a pretty robust discussion, you know, as we roll into hurricane season it's something that we were talking about offline just a second ago and so we face some severe challenges and tribulations when storms, you know, occur in Florida, and so and we really try to help each other.
Chris Evers:There's been some really exciting things where, you know, we've all kind of banded together and brought different, you know positive things out of these storms, whether it's learning how to respond in a in a more, you know, effective way, or even to help our brethren when they are, you know, impacted by hurricanes, which we've done, you know, several times, and so that's that's one of those things where you know we say it's where directors go to grow. That's kind of our tagline, if you will, and so I think the biggest thing is it's also where directors go to connect and so they can help each other. So oftentimes that ends up what is happening and it's not reliant on myself or any of the other moderators it's been just about those directors saying, hey, give me a call. It's almost like a social network for public works directors if you will, yep, yep, no, absolutely, absolutely.
Marc Culver:Well, let me talk a little bit about and you said it was a great honor and everything but the Top 10 Public works leader award itself. Um, like, how did you find out and you know how, maybe what the process was? Um, and what does that mean to you? I mean what? What does it mean to you the award itself?
Chris Evers:Really. I mean I it's hard to to really put into words. I think for me it's the culmination of the way I live my life. It's a service first mentality. So you know, I think if you talk to people you know that I've been able to interact with a lot of times they'll just say, yeah, we really don't know.
Chris Evers:A lot of times there's no clear path to connect what he's doing to his job, what we assume his job to be. But I don't ever look at my job as just what I do for pavement technology. It's really about how I can help. So whether that's helping when somebody is impacted by a storm or whether that's helping, you know, in the aftermath. In the aftermath I got a call from actually it's the gentleman who just received word himself that he's a top 10 recipient, keith Bryant from Bay County. And I remember getting a call from some folks up in Panama City area and they had gotten into a battle with FEMA and they said will you serve as our pavement expert? And I said well, I'm humbled that you would think of me as an expert and I think I can help.
Chris Evers:But it's really not what I do, I'm not like an expert witness or anything. And they said we're really in a pinch here. It's going to cost Panama City $10 million. And they're saying that everything we did, that you know that we didn't do any. Um, you know pavement maintenance or preventive maintenance? And I knew for a fact that they had, because we had done a project for them, literally maybe three months before hurricane Michael, which is category five storm. So I said, well, hell, I can send you. I have a video that aired on, uh, you know, nbc affiliate there of us spray applying Rejuvenator on your roads. There's your proof. And they laughed and they're like I know, that's kind of why we're calling, we think you might be able to help us. And I said, well, what does it require? You know it could be maybe a 25 page expert report, the potential to serve as a witness and the three panel appeals court by Zoom, at least they didn't say by Zoom yeah.
Chris Evers:I was like, oh great, so so I just, you know, I said, ok, I'll do it. And they said they, meaning their consultant, who was their attorney, said you know what are your hourly rates for this? And I said I really don't have any hourly rates, so I guess you're going to get it for zero dollars. It's free, wow Day only it's free. So, anyway, you know, I just tried to put in some extra effort and jockeyed around my schedule and it worked out. And I have a really amazing, uh, employer.
Chris Evers:Um, colin Durante is always very supportive of APWA. He's himself like a, uh, you know, a lifetime achievement guy here in the Florida chapter, and and. So he said, if you can think you can help them, you know, help them by all means. So it happened and we went in there and and, uh and, long story short, we ended up I was a witness and it was a strange experience getting cross-examined by the FEMA attorney and they ended up winning and and uh. So you know, I ended up, um, lost about $3 million but saved about $7 million, and and it was to me like that, that recognition that I can do these kinds of things and that I can use.
Chris Evers:You know what I've learned over my career to help, even though to them there's no reason, like there's no monetization of what I'm doing. It's just I do it because I'm passionate about public works and so I think, I think there's a recognition that I'm that kind of guy and so I'm assuming that that's. That's one of the primary factors, and you know, getting nominated. So it's, it's been exciting and there has been a lot of you know, different accolades that come my way, but I I don't ever nominate myself, you know, for any of that kind of stuff. That said, for those folks who might get tapped to do the top 10, obviously no one knows you better than yourself. So it is a little bit of a heavy lift where you have to organize some of the materials and explain what you've done over your entire career. So I won't say that they just pick it up and run with it and, you know, can fill 20 pages or anything. You do have to help them.
Marc Culver:So yeah, yeah, no, I've heard that from a couple other people as well and it's a little awkward. I suppose if you go through that process and don't get selected, you know if you get nominated. But I think it's still a great honor whether you ultimately get selected for the national award or not. I think it's still a great honor and recognition that you know your local chapter thinks highly enough of you that they want you to, you know, pursue that process.
Chris Evers:Absolutely, absolutely, and that's part of it. I mean, I was honored. I really wasn't sure if I was going to get it because, as you mentioned before, I'm in the private sector and only about eight or 9%, I'm told, you know, have have won from the private sector, so it's a little bit more rare, I guess, or or harder to to do Um. And so you know I wasn't, I really didn't have a lot of expectations of whether I would be selected or not. But you know, just being nominated was was huge.
Chris Evers:And so when, when I got the call from President Keith Pugh, I had actually called him about something completely unrelated, you know, as a kind of a business call, because we do some work with Withers Rev now, and he called me back and it was just happened to be three weeks later, so I kind of spewed on for like probably a good five or ten minutes different stuff unrelated, and he and he's like, and I said, hey, anyway, it was great to catch up, like just ready to kind of end the phone call.
Chris Evers:I finished and he was like well, that's really not the purpose of my call. And I was like, oh really. And he said, uh, chris, I I don't know if you remember, uh, being nominated for top 10, but you're a recipient, you won and I was like all right way to bury the lead and let me ripple on, for you know, but you know, everybody who's been in that position will tell you the same thing Like you cannot remove the smile from your face for, like the next you know a day, it just there's just this incredible feeling and and it was kind of a realization that what you have done has, has meant something to someone, or to to more than one person, hopefully. And so it's, it's, it's a great feeling, it's, it was a lot of fun and it was you know fun to be up on stage with a lot of the top 10 recipients.
Chris Evers:that are amazing people. I've gotten to be friends with many of them and and you're going to get to hopefully interact with them in your journey as well.
Marc Culver:So yeah, yeah, yeah. If I don't, if I don't catch more of the 2023s, I'll, I'm gonna get an early start in the 2024s.
Chris Evers:So Anything. I can do to help. I can put you in contact with at least one of them, yep.
Marc Culver:Appreciate that, appreciate that. Well, thank you for well. Congratulations again on the award and thank you for your service to the industry and look forward to maybe crashing one of these Public Works roundtables.
Chris Evers:Please come, please come, because, as we stated before, we do accept recovering followers. You are completely in that camp, and so, even if you've turned to the private sector, we would love to have you. So it's 2024, is in Atlanta, so come on over. Yep.
Marc Culver:Hotlanta coming up Atlanta, that's right. So let's transition to the topic of the day here, and that's pavements and pavement maintenance. And we're really interested in what pavement technology PTI does and what they offer. In Minnesota here I would say the vast majority of our roadways are bituminous uh, particularly local ones. We do. We do get some communities that are using concrete for local roadways, but the vast majority are bituminous. And so we've got our our tried and trued um maintenance techniques and applications like crack sealing and seal coating and you know maybe some fog seals or slurry seals and obviously you know overlays, mill and overlays and such. But. And then we've just recently got into the use of rejuvenators, which is something you guys offer.
Marc Culver:Yes, Um but we have started seeing some issues with our seal coat and we can talk a little bit more about that. So we are looking for some more, and I'm sure some of the other listeners all over the United States and around the world I'm sure are, you know, interested in some of the more innovative, innovative techniques and applications and such, and so maybe talk a little bit about you. Know what PTI is offering, what your products are and how they're different from you. Know some of the traditional applications we're used to seeing out there.
Chris Evers:Yes, absolutely Mark. So really, to kind of take it back a little bit, pti pavement technology came out of the 1970s kind of, during that energy crisis of the 1970s, and it was really that realization that we could do more to preserve pavements Back in those days. Asphalt we don't even want to talk about what asphalt was per ton in place Single digits, it was very low and so there wasn't a big push to preserve them, because why would we do that? They're so cheap, we'll just remove them and replace them. But as oil for the first time kind of went up, then there was a move to rejuvenate the pavements and so Colin Duranty, who I mentioned before, started the company back in 1972. And it was focused around something that was relatively new at the time asphalt rejuvenation, and specifically because people kind of throw that word around a lot specifically called maltine rejuvenation, and so maltines are one of the fractions in the asphalt binder, so it's original to the pavement, and so what happens is those light ends are lost over time. So what happens is those light ends are lost over time, and so as they're lost, then the binder becomes more brittle and will crack, ravel and cause more and more distresses, especially as water or, in your case, ice and snow, penetrate down into that pavement. So really, the approach was let's spray, apply this asphalt rejuvenation and specifically the trade name and it's still called this is called reclamite and you are using reclamite in in minnesota, uh, and throughout the, the upper midwest and really across the country and world. It's probably the, the. It is the most well-known asphalt rejuvenator and the original, you know, purpose of this was to, you know, soften that asphalt binder and extend the life of the pavement by about five years. And so, you know, certainly places like florida, where we get a lot of sunlight, we get a lot of oxidation.
Chris Evers:We we a lot of times equated the analogy that we use. It's like putting sunscreen on before you go to the beach, and we all know, as a kid, you know, mom used to slather us up with sunscreen and then, you know, send us out there, and certainly you can do it. That's the best way to do is to be proactive, and so what we want to do is, while the road is still in relatively good condition, is put on our sunscreen. If you don't listen to your mother and you're being kind of you know, a difficult child then you'll go out there and first you'll get burnt and then you'll decide, ok, mom, I give up. You know, let's put that sunscreen on. Well, at that point you're looking like a lobster, you're burnt up and it's really too late.
Chris Evers:So we explain that to folks and we use this analogies, whether it be changing the oil in your car or sunscreen. You know a number of these different, you know kind of analogies. I even use dental care, you know they say you go to the dentist and he says you know, hey, what, what you here for? And he says well, I want to know, you know, which teeth should I brush? I need a little guidance. And the dentist will say it's really easy brush only the ones you want to keep.
Chris Evers:And so it's the same exact way with preserving your roads or any asset. Is you really? You don't have to preserve them all, only the ones that are important to your agency? So because those are the ones that are going to stick around longer. So that's really how we approach it. And for PTI, we operate across you know about 13 different states and then there's different distributors in areas like Minnesota, like you have a PTI equivalent in the upper Midwest CAM and they do work up in that you know area of the country.
Marc Culver:So so the rejuvenator, the reclamite product, yeah, and I've seen it in some limited applications. I've driven a couple of roads that have had it on there and it's a very translucent I mean, it's almost just like it looks like you've just poured oil over the road. It's like a pink. It's got that pink look to it. Yeah, so maybe talk about that application process. How long does it take before you can drive on it? And then you know maybe a little bit, and then how often do you recommend doing that? And then maybe you know just kind of like I think so many of our listeners that are doing pavement management are probably used to you know the chip seal model.
Bolton & Menk:How is that different from that? We'll work hard for you and we'll do a good job. We take a personal interest in the work being done around us and, at the end of the day, we're real people offering real solutions.
Chris Evers:And that I love ChipSeal. I mean, that's where I started my career in the mid-90s, was working for a supplier and we supplied the you know emulsion for ChipSeal, so ChipSeal is a fantastic process. This would be higher up on the what we call the you know, emulsion for chip seal, so chip seal is a fantastic process. This would be higher up on the what we call the deterioration curve, which you're probably familiar with, and so you know, really this is something we're applying to an asphalt pavement hot mix asphalt or warm mix asphalt pavement in the first year to three year to four years, and then we're going to reapply that in about five years from that first treatment. And so the earlier you catch it in the north is better, because obviously we have that freeze thaw that we don't have to worry about down here, thankfully. And so you know, in essence, sealing up this road, because it also acts to seal up the road and keep the water intrusion and some of the dangerous things that happen when water freezes. So, and if we can do that, then we're going to have much better luck. If we wait into that later timeframe, like, let's say, year four, year five, you already have a lot of that cracking that's occurred and it's not going to be as effective, just like I talked about with the dentist or putting the sunscreen on. It's just not nearly as effective.
Chris Evers:And so the premise behind it, and you're right, it's translucent. It does not have the asphalt teams, which is the black material in an asphalt, and so because it doesn't have that, we don't have to restripe. So therefore it's going to cost less and there's not going to be as much disruption to traffic. Typically it's going to penetrate in about that first 20 to maybe 30 minutes. Oh, okay, put a light coating of sand and then return it to traffic, and so it's very minimal disruption to the driving public, which is one of the things that people like.
Chris Evers:Oftentimes we say in public works we want to get in, get out and stay out. That's exactly the premise of this. If we can extend the life of that pavement, then we don't have to come in, do the chip sealing mill and resurfacing as frequently. Anything that we put on top of it too, mark, is going to perform better. You can imagine if there's less cracking, less raveling, than any surface treatment that we put on there, whether that be a chip seal or potentially microsurfacing, is going to perform better because it doesn't have as many of the distresses as if we just left it to its own device.
Marc Culver:Do you have agencies that are doing that, doing like a reclamite pretreat to a seal coat or something?
Chris Evers:a reclamite pre-treat to a seal coat or something, yes, and so we oftentimes kind of call it staged construction or phased construction, but it's not phased in so much as that. It's like a month later it's five years later, and so the whole premise is to extend the life of that pavement and to really flatten out that deterioration curve. And so really by doing this and by kind of that early intervention in the life of the pavement, we're able to. That means we don't have to chip seal at the same time. We may be able to wait years later and then it's eligible for seal coating or, for instance, for microsurfacing, where we might be able to wait before doing that, and so that's going to extend the life of that pavement and in the end it's going to lower the lifecycle cost for the agency and the taxpayer.
Marc Culver:Yeah, Just a real quick question. I know that some agencies use I think I've heard it called a Texas chip seal, where they actually do a chip seal on a milled surface and then overlay on top of that. Have you guys done that with the reclamation product?
Chris Evers:We typically wouldn't. I mean, by the time you're doing some of those things, you're beyond kind of that top of the curve. Preservation, I would say the most frequent is going to be that plain old, good old asphalt pavement that's been placed. We spent the big bucks on it, maybe we did some milling and resurfacing and then, after that final lift is down, then we'll spray, apply the reclamite on and then, in essence, let it go and make sure that it's performing well, but check back in with it in year four, year five to look at some retreatment, and typically we can do that. Two In Florida we've done it as many as three and four times before.
Chris Evers:We've selected a different strategy and then oftentimes that different strategy because there's not a lot of distresses. That different strategy might be a microsurfacing, and certainly we don't do chip seals as much down here, but for you then it might be that it's a chip seal and then a micro which would be more of a cape seal, for instance. So it's all about what we can do to extend the life and in the end lower the life cycle cost, because it's really just a math equation. We have to make sure we do as much as we can while it's less expensive, because, as we all know, these public works agencies just do not have unlimited funds. They can't, obviously they can't print money and so they can't, in essence, go in there and just wait and deploy worst first, and so that's a realization. I think more and more folks are kind of coming to. We're seeing a lot of people you know agencies move away from that worst first and deploy a full mix of what we call mix of fixes, where they're using all of these different pavement preservation strategies.
Marc Culver:Yeah, and I think you know. The fact of the matter is is whether we expect, whether we, whether we plan our pavements to be 20, 30 or 40 year pavements. They're in place. In more and more instances they're going to be in place for 40, 50 plus years before you're really doing a full, you know, reconditioning or reconstruction of that pavement. And so the more you can do to protect that underlying structural portion of that pavement, the so. The more you can do to protect that underlying structural portion of that pavement, the better you're going to that pavement's going to look in. It's still not going to look great at year 50, but it's going to look a lot better than if you're not doing some of the stuff that we're talking about here.
Chris Evers:Touche. I mean I use reclamite every, every day when I get up, and I mean I'm in my late seventies, so Wow, you don't look a day over 56, man.
Chris Evers:Oh, wow, okay, Well, I'm actually 50. So now it's a problem. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, it's true, though you know. The fact is that you know, we, we have this pressure to do something with the payments and people are like, sometimes the feeling is, what are you doing to that perfectly good road? And so I think what we, as a public works profession, end up doing a lot of times we don't want to be the bearer of bad news or we don't want to say something that might be controversial, but oftentimes, when I've heard people talk about what the citizen reaction has been when we tell them the reason we're doing something that's a perfectly good road is to make sure we can keep it perfectly good for as long as possible, and then we use these analogies, then we get a lot of positive reaction.
Chris Evers:It's not what, I think public works directors or payment managers expect, that they're going to take a lot of heat for preserving the asset. Most people in their own lives know that if you have a pinhole and leak in your roof, you're probably better off repairing that prior to the roof falling in and causing flooding inside your house, and so you know. I think they, by nature, are going to understand that it's just that we have to have that, that you know reaction to, where we'll use some of these everyday analogies to explain, instead of get you know to, where we feel like we're on the defensive, and especially with elected officials, and I spend some of my time, you know, helping the, the departments, with, you know, getting in front of the elected officials and being the not the bad guy, but being the person to to explain that in a way that it makes some sense.
Marc Culver:Yeah, yeah, well, that's, that's great, it's. It's always good to see another tool added to that toolbox for maintaining a roadways. We'll add it to that toolbox for maintaining our roadways. And, yeah, regardless of where you are in the US or the world, it's so important just to have a pavement maintenance strategy. You know, whatever you do, whatever you think is best, just do something.
Chris Evers:Do something.
Marc Culver:Yeah, and hopefully you're doing the right thing, but at least do something. So let's transition a little bit to another very innovative product you guys have and you've got the polo shirt on the Plus CI polo shirt there- the smog frog on.
Chris Evers:He's ready for action.
Marc Culver:But yeah, talk about the smog eating roads. I think you know this is really interesting, as communities are, you know, developing some climate action plans and trying to come up with methods to mitigate or manage the carbon dioxide coming out of their communities.
Chris Evers:Absolutely. It's not only the carbon dioxide markets. What we originally focused on when we started developing the product was really the NOx emissions, because the air pollution, the smog, the photochemical smog, comes from nitrogen oxides, and so the CO2 obviously is the predominant emission from the tailpipe and we think about it a lot, but a lot of the global warming potential. You know it can be 250, 300 times more potent with these nitrogen oxides or the VOCs or some of these other emittance, even though they're a smaller percentage. And so it really kind of began. I remember we were at a conference TRB the Transportation Research Board in DC and Colin and I were there and he attended he said Research Board in DC and Colin and I were there and he attended he said man the booth and he attended a session where it was all about photocatalysis and that'll be kind of the word podcast word of the day here Photocatalysis. Photocatalysis, it's the nerd word, only nerds use that word, but it's going to save the world and we all know nerds save the world in a way.
Chris Evers:So, the fact is that he came back and he said yeah, you're not going to believe this. There's this, uh, photoreactive titanium dioxide that you can uh apply to a pavement and all of a sudden, the pavement will eat smog. And I was like that's the darnestest thing I've ever heard, are you sure? And he said, yeah, there's all kinds of research and it's been, you know, understood since the 1970s. But the problem is that if you encapsulate it in building materials like concrete or cement or asphalt, then it doesn't work, because the UV radiation really is what activates and creates photocatalysis.
Marc Culver:So it's got to be at the surface.
Chris Evers:It's got to be at the surface and it's got to be whatever you're putting it on with has to be translucent, and you mentioned translucent earlier. We just so happen to have a material that is translucent and we have, you know, 50 years of experience, you know, introducing translucent material to the pavement. So he and I are kind of standing there and I was like, wow, that's kind of crazy, I wonder if it would work. So flash forward, you know, now it's been, you know, seven years or so and we've developed, pti has developed this product, and we call it smog eating roads. But it does much more than that. It's more generally. We call it plus TI, so it's basically the addition of titanium dioxide to your pavements, whether that be asphalt or concrete, and so what that enables these pavements to do is do some amazing things by harnessing the power of the sun, which is free. Every day the sun comes up, wakes us up with its brilliance, and once it does that, these roads basically, you know, kind of become activated by photocatalysis, and the catalyst is this photoreactive titanium dioxide that we embed into the top surface of the pavement and it is, in essence, able to enable a reaction whereby the emittance from the back of the tailpipe are basically captured and sequestered in the form of carbonates and nitrates which, you know, if we know from you know it's kind of our high school science those can wash off the pavement harmlessly with rainwater and end up acting, as you know lack of a better term plant food. And so, you know, this reaction and this kind of discovery has led us on a completely different, I guess, journey, and that is to tackle one of the most difficult problems out there in the transportation sector, and that's mobile source air pollution.
Chris Evers:And so you know, through this you know, process of doing our research and dialing into it, we made some other discoveries about photocatalysis and titanium one that it reflects this UV radiation and it basically ends up creating a cool pavement as well. And so, because we're, you know, in essence reflecting back that UV radiation, the pavement, especially that black asphalt pavement, has a higher what's called solar reflectance index. I don't want to get too sciencey, but in essence, if you can imagine fancy, but in essence if you can imagine, you know, a black, dark, black road absorbs most of the solar, you know energy and thermal energy from the sun and it heats up and then it emits it or re-emits it at night, and that's why we have pavement that's hotter at night and that heats the entire urban environment as well at night. And so that is the definition of really urban heat.
Chris Evers:Island is the premise that urban environments don't cool off in the evening hours like the, you know, basically nature does, and so that, you know, was a discovery that we made after we were working on it for a while, and then we discovered that, wow, well, photocatalysis also decomposes other things like microplastic pollution, and that's been the most recent discovery is that, you know, about 85% of the microplastic pollution is actually what we call road area microplastic particles, or ramps, and these ramps are basically tire wear and brake wear, and so even zero emission vehicles actually have more of these microplastics that are, you know, created because they're typically heavier, because of the battery pack being heavier, and so the promise of this is kind of morphed from just looking at mitigating the mobile source air pollution to all the way full circle to dealing with, you know, urban heat and microplastic pollution and even some of the safety factors with treatment.
Marc Culver:So how is it Then? There's a lot to unpack there, there's a lot of nerdy stuff there, which is great. But how does it? How does it impact that microplastic? But how does it impact that microplastic? Because I guess, as I think about it, I would think that that's really a consequence of just the friction of the road and just like the rubber just kind of wearing off on the roadway. So how is the smog-eating road, the titanium dioxide, how is that countering that it's not reducing the friction the old way.
Chris Evers:So no, in fact, actually just to spend a second on friction, because that's one of our most frequent questions is this going to degrade the friction? The other thing that's amazing about photocatalysis and titanium is that it actually also changes what's called the water contact angle of the water drops. So as you get rain it's able to basically increase the roadways ability to to basically get move the water off of the pavement, for lack of a better term. So if you can imagine, that's actually going to improve our skid resistance. But, to your point, you know, tire particles are absolutely a fact that these just tires are on our vehicles. We have hundreds of millions of vehicles and billions of vehicle miles traveled every day and those, you know, tires are going to bear the brunt of that, and the brakes a little bit too. But the tires obviously are going to bear the brunt of that, and the brakes a little bit too. But the tires obviously are going to wear and they're very micro, microscopic particles, and these particles, uh, then can actually become, um, you know what we call non-exhaust emissions, or knees, and the non-exhaust emissions are particulate that you and I could breathe in, or the proteins that we eat can ingest these, even sea life. Obviously, they find these microplastic particles everywhere. They become airborne and then are carried by the wind.
Chris Evers:So the fact that photocatalysis has been shown to again decompose and break down things it's really like an oxidative. You know we call it a super oxide or super radical. You know it's these hydroxyl radicals that then attack the bonds that hold things together. It was even used to break down COVID during the pandemic as well. When you introduce UV radiation to the photocatalyst, or in this case, the titanium dioxide, it's going to create this reaction, and it happens, you know, every time the sun comes up. And so once that reaction occurs, it's going to break down anything organic compounds, mold and mildew, covid. Not that roads are super spreaders, but certainly any surface that has this photo catalyst on it will begin to break down whatever's resting on the pavement in a positive way. And so, as we talked about that at first, we were really focused on emissions, but it seems that we've been able to discover other researchers, you know, have found these other, you know co-benefits, if you will, and the co-benefits are exciting as well.
Marc Culver:Yeah, no, that's super interesting and I'm interested in learning some more. I know you've done you've applied this in a road in Edina and I think that was part of Minroad's research and you've done it in some other areas, like I think Tucson is one right.
Chris Evers:Yes, so we've done quite a bit in Arizona for Tucson, phoenix, tempe, a small town called Avondale. There in the Phoenix area they are using it and everyone uses it for different reasons. So they they're really primarily focused on heat resilience, and it makes sense. It's the desert, it's extremely hot. I measured a pavement temperature of a black pavement of like 170 degrees when I was out there. That's way too hot and so, in essence, this heat also means that their roads deteriorate much faster as well and also contribute to obviously some dangerous heat conditions for human health.
Chris Evers:So there it's been primarily about extreme heat. Areas like Cleveland metro area, cincinnati has been more because that's in a non attainment area for EPA, then more because that's in a non-attainment area for EPA, same as like the Raleigh Durham area, charlotte, north Carolina, has been mainly air quality. I would say Charleston, south Carolina, which actually in 2023 won the Technical Innovation Award at PWX, at APWA National, and theirs was kind of multifold. It was both extreme heat resilience in disadvantaged communities and then also, obviously, the ability to neutralize the mobile source pollution.
Marc Culver:Really interesting. That's really interesting. So and then are you basically combining the titanium dioxide with your reclamide or rejuvenation product, so you're kind of, with your reclamite or rejuvenation product, so you're also getting the life extending qualities of that as well as all the other things.
Chris Evers:Yeah, no, you hit the nail on the head right there. So we actually incorporate it in with the maltine-based rejuvenator, the reclamite. We also have products for concrete pavement as well, which obviously does not need the maltenes in it. So that's a different product set. And, as we said earlier, titanium is very effective. Its hydrophobic, hydrophilic properties move water away, and we want to move water away from the longitudinal joints and asphalt pavement. And then, finally, we can utilize some of these products on things even like sidewalks, for instance, or tarmacs, ramps, you know building pads, so anything if there's a concern for any of these. You know detrimental environmental, you know issues. We can use photocatalysis to really bring in a solution that prior to this was really not available.
Marc Culver:That's interesting. And then, and you know, when we talk about the, the, the heat island effect and encountering that, you're not. You're not like changing the color of the pavement, you're not like painting it white, are you?
Chris Evers:No, that's.
Chris Evers:That's actually a great point, because that would be called albedo. And the problem with painting something white is that it guess what we drive on it and it becomes dirty and then we don't have that albedo effect or that reflection of the visible light and there is cool pavement that's out there and, to be fair, you know it will reduce the surface temperature. But our approach has been different. We felt, like you know, certainly on the public works side. What public works wants is something that's not going to drastically change the aesthetics and it's not going to change the, I guess, the potential safety or comfort to the driver. Because if you can imagine driving on an all white, bright white, you know, albedo product, there could be some reflection glare off of the pavement. The other thing that we use to measure that is called the wet bulb temperature test and what's been found is that a lot of these albedo based products will actually make pedestrians feel even hotter because it's reflecting, you know, the visible light right up to the space, and so the approach that we're taking is more nuanced.
Chris Evers:It's more that we're increasing the solar reflectance index, and that is really about just reflecting the UV radiation primarily, and that UV radiation is what really kind of superheats that asphalt and concrete all day and then re-emits it at night. So you won't see as much of a temperature change at the pavement level, but what you will see is that the evening temperatures will be lower, and you can see that through satellite imagery as well. So that's pretty cool.
Marc Culver:Yeah, that is cool. So you know, we've talked a little bit. We talked about the rejuvenator, we talked about the smog eating road, we talked about the Smog Eating Road. What do you see on the horizon, like, what are you guys working on next that you're willing to talk about? That is, or what do you see, you know, just in the industry in general, of kind of the next innovation.
Chris Evers:Well, you know, one of the things you may have heard the term environmental product declarations. We're working on that right now. That's a pretty hot topic and that really is about you know, being able to take and look at what the effect of your product and the manufacturing and use of your product does to what we would call scope one emissions, or the emissions that are released through the activity that you're currently doing. So if you're building a road, those emissions are charged to the construction of that road, versus scope three emissions, which are really what is you know, after construction, what is occurring like the use of that road, meaning those vehicles traveling up and down that road.
Chris Evers:So I think that the next exciting thing and we're probably just a few months away from this is, I believe, what's going to happen is we'll have the potential, the first environmental product declaration, that not only is really carbon neutral or negative in the scope one phase, meaning during construction, because we're really capturing emissions really on day one but the other thing is that we'll be the first to be able to capture these emissions and sequester those scope three emissions.
Chris Evers:And those scope three emissions are really what causes a lot of our air pollution across the country is the use of, you know, millions of cars and billions of vehicle miles traveled VMT, and so that scope three means that we'll be able to take this out there and say, hey, we can actually get this verified and potentially unlock the carbon credit market to where these pavements are negative carbon, negative infrastructure and that's something that we're very excited about. So the hard work of developing the processes and the technology will then enable this to kind of tilt into. We're going to turn or our vision is to turn our infrastructure, our transportation sector, into a carbon and NOx sink instead of the source. So if we could go from source to sink Mark, that would be a very big deal and that's something that really gets us excited and kind of gets us up for work.
Marc Culver:Yeah, you know, I wonder, you know I in Minnesota we are we had some new legislation passed last year and we're working on tweaking that this year, but it essentially requires MnDOT Minnesota Department of Transportation to account for increases in greenhouse gas emissions and and VMT Um but there's been a lot of conversation and then mitigate for those increases and actually mitigate to to um meet uh carbon reduction goals. And so I you know I've I've thought about this and you know how, how this could impact that and you know being able to use this as an offset or a mitigation measure. But how do you, is there a way to measure that on site, like you know, once the pavement's in, how are we measuring this as far as actual effectiveness?
Chris Evers:of that product, definitely.
Chris Evers:I mean, there's certainly different ways to do that.
Chris Evers:There's kind of the original research angle, and that was to prove that this really does work, and so the way that you would do that is you can take a known quantity of either NOx gas or CO2 and introduce it into a chamber. You know, once you turn the light on which would be the sunlight then we'll measure. You know, with a core in the chamber it will measure the reduction in these gases, and so that's obviously a kind of a tool that we would use. You wouldn't be able to do that with every single project, so instead we can use the what's called an XRF. What's called an XRF, and the XRF is a device that you, this handheld device, and you can either core the pavement and measure the amount of parts per million of titanium dioxide that are at the surface and doing their job, and we can basically use an indexing method to understand if there's, let's say, there's, 4,000 parts per million on this particular pavement. That will you know. 4,000 parts per million on this particular pavement, that will you know.
Chris Evers:Uh relate to or or or basically you know, be tied to a Knox reduction of 42%, let's say and. So you know there's and and the thing that's the real challenge is the. The fact is that every day is different on these pavements. There could be different clouds, cover, different sunlight amounts, different vehicle you know ADTs, there can be different wind speeds. So it's really difficult to you know say with any certainty, you know, down to okay, at noon the reduction was at X percent, x percent. But like most things, I mean there isn't. You typically don't have a real time, you know, measure of something you know. Just look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It seems like they're always adjusting you know the unemployment rate, right, and so it takes months for them to kind of figure that out.
Chris Evers:So what we were able to do is use these acceptable, you know, scientific modeling and methodology to come up with the approximation of what kind of reduction. And that's going to be based on. To take that back, that's going to be based on the average annual daily traffic, so AADT of a specific roadway. That's measurable and we can actually take EPA's guidelines for what a passenger vehicle and a truck generate in emissions. And again, we can, you know, take that and put it in the model and calculate okay, here's how many tons of CO2 equivalent reduction we're generating.
Chris Evers:And so you know that's really that's really the way to do it, because, again, every, every vehicle is different as well. I mean, you know you have vehicles that are not emitting any, you know like a Tesla, and you have some that are, that are maybe poorly tuned and it's a, you know a 1996, you know Celica and that thing is is, you know, a major problem. So you know it's, it's that's why we have to do it that way. But I think you know most of the. You know environmental stakeholders know that. They understand that it's a well accepted Um, and that's, in essence, what they're used to doing. You know to measure emissions anyway, uh, so really, looking at the kind of the big picture and the trends, yeah, Well, that's.
Marc Culver:that's exciting and really interesting. The last question I'll have on that is you know, in order to maintain a certain level of of effectiveness I guess you know 80% or 70% or I don't know what level would would be considered ideal, as we're trying to use it, maybe, as a mitigation measure, how often do you need to reapply that titanium oxide treatment?
Chris Evers:That's a great question. It kind of takes us back to what we talked about with reclamite, where we in essence are seeing around a five-year, six-year, maybe seven-year reapplication schedule. The good thing is we can actually test that using that same strategy or that same methodology that I talked about, where we're going to measure the parts per million on the pavement and we're going to determine is it time for you know, kind of that titanium dioxide booster, if you will, and then we can easily reapply it to the pavement to give it, you know, obviously kind of a little energized, you know, as far as its ability to capture more of the emissions that are occurring, and so that can happen once we see that it's dip below a kind of predetermined level that we've seen and through our research have determined is kind of the baseline where we want it to stay.
Marc Culver:Okay, good, good, you know, when we talked, we had a little pre-meeting. I talked a little bit about I'm interested in, like the major differences in pavement maintenance between northern and southern climates. You know, I know all about what we do up here in the North, um in the bold North, but uh, you know and and obviously you've talked a lot you know about how you know, the payments in the South, with the with the more direct sunlight and more sunlight exposure, um are breaking down quicker, they're losing those, those maltines, faster. Um, so what, in your experience, whatever the major difference is in how agencies maintain their pavements between the North and the South?
Chris Evers:Yeah, definitely I would say. You know, I grew up in Kansas and so we had, you know, winter weather, and I think the thing that's challenging there is you introduce, you know completely different. You know is you introduce, you know completely different. You know issues there like the snowplow, which we don't have down here, obviously. So the fact is that those speed up the roads as well, and so we have to look at different strategies, and so I know we were talking about chip seals, and so a lot of what we do down here, you know, really wouldn't be the best approach up there. I mean, and same thing down here, we have an expectation from all the tourists and everything else. They don't want chip seals, they see those as rough and and they want to be out there, you know, rollerblading and enjoying the outside and and expect kind of a higher level of service for what they're getting. And so I think, for what you see up there, it's really about that season of addressing these pavements. The best time is really in that fall, as you go into winter, and I know you already do this, meaning the north. It probably cannot be overstated, though is to take care of those cracks. Make sure you're using crack sealing. Everyone really should be deploying a pavement strategy that is including these top of the curves, things like asphalt rejuvenation, like, uh, crack sealing, chip sealing, you know, any of the things that we can do to keep the moisture out of the pavement, and that's really critical. It's more important than it is down here. It's still important down here, but we actually can cheat a little bit and defer those treatments, you know, deeper into the life of our pavements, whereas it's more critical for the northern climates to really be proactive, it's more critical for the Northern climates to to really be proactive. And so you know there's there's kind of that approach that you you know are we being corrective or proactive? And and then there's the final, which is predictive. And you know it's not like you guys are surprised every year when the weather changes. So predictive would be the best approach. Proactive is at least. Hey, it's, I noticed it's getting a little cool out.
Chris Evers:Let's run out there and crack steel some roads. Well, we actually already know through some fancy things like the Farmers Almanac much about. But the correct nerd approach is to really understand and diagnose the problems with the pavements through pavement management, understand the health of the patient, and that's always a better approach than just the shotgun approach where we don't really know what's wrong with this road. Let's just put something on it. It's really about that. I know the phones ring with the potholes and we still have to address the potholes. Obviously that's a safety issue, but we also know what causes them. And so if we can go in there, rejuvenate the pavements, if we can go in there and crack, seal, you know, chip seal, some of these things at the right time and use that predictive modeling and that pavement management you know approaches, then we're just going to be a lot better off, whether it's up north or down south, frankly, yeah yeah, yeah, we've.
Marc Culver:I think we've come a long way in the last 20, 30 years at least here in Minnesota and other areas that I've had conversations with people about. You know have developing that pavement management program, going out and measuring your, your PCIs and documenting that. And you know, you mentioned the curves before. You know, and looking at those curves and you know, recognizing that this kind of treatment here is going to bump the curve up and give us a little extra life and and just you know, having that developed uh program, that, um, you need to maintain over a long period of time, you know not just, oh, we got to go fix that road, it's got some potholes in it.
Chris Evers:Well, and the AI is there to really, as we get more advanced, it's becoming not only less expensive and less intensive, but it's enabling, you know, higher frequency of measuring. You know our pavement conditions, and so I think that's really putting the best intel in the hands of the people who have to make those decisions about our pavements, and so I think that's going to be a trend. Moving forward is more and more you know data, and using this data to correctly determine the exact perfect time to, you know, apply that right treatment. So pretty good yeah you, you, you.
Marc Culver:There's a great segue to one of the questions that I had on our on our sheet today, and and that is how are you seeing technology and pavement maintenance make a real big difference? And AI was one of those bullet points that I had on there, and I feel like we're going to be talking about artificial intelligence and like everything that we do everywhere, not just public works, but everything everywhere. So you kind of touched on it and you know, obviously we've seen some. You know AI applications where you know people are taking video of street segments and then you know, rolling it through and coming up, identifying the cracks and distresses in that and coming up with a PCI. But where else are you maybe seeing AI in this industry, or maybe even within PTI, being applied, or where do you see it maybe being applied?
Chris Evers:I think the realization. I did a presentation for the last uh Polarworks Expo where I had chat GPT was pretty new, chat GPT was new and I said, uh, what if I just let chat GPT large language model put together my presentation? And so I I did that and it was really funny. It was called the pavement Avengers and it came up with like a superhero based you know, uh, a superhero based you know, uh, you know kind of thing. And it and it even had like the, the pavement multiverse to where it it had and you'll get a big uh kick out of this. And you know what it identified as the, the evil, uh, you know kind of the evil uh baddie in this story. It was the corruptus maximus. That was the name of the. That was the evil politician that was stealing money from the public works department and and misallocating these funds.
Chris Evers:So I think that the funny part and we we make jokes about it, but what AI is doing is enabling, you know, a person using AI to outperform what that same person would have been able to accomplish by himself or herself. And so you know it's not that you can necessarily say you know AI is doing just this it will drive our distributor trucks. Eventually it will, you know, handle a lot of the traffic control with, maybe with a, you know, a Tesla robot, you know Optimus, or whatever his name is. So you know it's that we're going to take people out of dangerous situations and enable us to focus on some of the higher value you know activities, and you know, I know, I think it's this week is National Highway Safety Week, and so you know, I think, a lot about how many, you know people in this industry are killed every year by accidents, and I just wonder it's thousands, and I just wonder, you know, is that, whether it's AI, robotics, whatever you want to call it, is that also going to mean that more of our you know Polar's brethren come home at night, and so that's a big thing.
Chris Evers:I think that's one of the exciting aspects of it. It's not just about identifying a distress faster and more effectively, but it's about not putting people in harm's way and doing something. You know smarter, not harder, and so I think I don't think you'll be able to in five years. You know smarter, not harder, and so I think I don't think you'll be able to in five years, you won't be able to find an aspect of public works that's not, I would say, significantly impacted by some sort of AI robotics. You know, to that extent it's going to be almost irrecognable, I believe.
Marc Culver:Yeah, no, I completely agree, and I think the only thing that's going to slow that down because you mentioned it earlier you know AI is clearly dependent on data. It needs data to help make those decisions, to help, you know, analyze the situation and such and so how are we collecting that data? Where are we storing that data? How are we managing it? Those are the things that we need to come to grips with as a public works industry. Where are we putting sensors? How are we deploying this stuff so we can collect that data and ultimately, do better things with it? Oh, definitely.
Chris Evers:I mean it's. It's pretty amazing. I was watching a Terminator with my son. He's. He's a teenager, he's older now, and I remember him seeing the you know Terminator. Uh, you know at the end of the first movie and he's like, ah, that that is really low tech. And I'm like that's where we're at right now is it's the Terminator, the T-100 or whatever it was, is low tech. So I mean, you know, if we're here in five years to talk about it, I guess we've done something right. But but it is, in a way, it's. It's both exciting and scary all at the same time.
Marc Culver:It really is. It really is, but more exciting, I think. At this point I mean, you brought up Terminator, so obviously we're all worried about Skynet at some point, but yeah, there's a lot of good that can happen before we get to Skynet too. Definitely, definitely, touche Well great. Anything else you want to talk about?
Chris Evers:I mean, we've covered a lot of ground on, uh, you know, full circle, I feel like, um, you know, I'm trying to think of what kind of a story it would be appropriate to end on. You know, I think the biggest thing that I would say, you know, as we carry on and do what we both do and what the audience does, is is I is. I think the best part about this profession is that you know, when we go to these events, it feels like a family reunion, it feels like when you go to enough of these and that's what it's always felt like. You know, as I got into this because I never really imagined myself being in, you know public works, profession, but you show up and you know you greet friends and you hear. Show up and you know you, you greet friends and you hear about what's going on in their life and and you hear about, uh, you know what exciting things is going on in in, in their work. You know profession and all of the different things You're just left with.
Chris Evers:How lucky we are to be in something that not only is extremely impactful for society and for, you know, the well-being of the country, but also it's really, you know, one of those things where you take with you the relationships that you build through that mission that we're all on, which is to, you know, help, the you know common good with the infrastructure improvements that we make and the safety aspects of what we do, and it's just, you know. I take from it just the gratitude of being able to, you know, get up every day and do something that I think makes a difference, not just, you know, selling a widget or you know going punching the card. It really feels like we're accomplishing something, especially when you see projects that are completed and you walk away with that achievement where you say, wow, there's a lot of people that have no idea what we did here and that's pretty cool.
Chris Evers:They're oblivious to it, but they wouldn't be able to do what they do unless we did it. So that's really it, and it's time to watch the bridge collapse, unfortunately, where you, we did it. So that's that's really, and it's time to like watching the bridge collapse, unfortunately, you know where, where you think about it and just how big an impact not having some of this infrastructure you know can be, regardless of obviously it's tragedy, with the loss of life and all that. But if you just boil it down to you know, some of this major infrastructure, what life would be like without it is is, you know, pretty bad.
Marc Culver:So, yeah, no, well, well said, well said and and you touched a lot of points there as far as you know, leaning on each other within the industry, you know building that network, the family reunion you know at at the conferences and and things like that, and it really is very rewarding from that perspective, as far as the people that you meet. But obviously, the work that we're doing as well and I've quoted this many, many times. If you listen to a couple of my episodes, you're bound to have heard it at some point and that's we Make Normal Happen. And one of the public works directors up here in Minnesota I have to quote him or credit him with this every time I say it but Mark Ray, out of Burnsville, that's public works, we make normal happen.
Marc Culver:You said it. You know if it's, if we're doing our job and we're doing these really great things and we're so proud of them and we see the innovation and we're excited about it, the public just sees another road and it's just working for them and that's great. That's great Because when that road's not there, that's when they, that's when it's not normal anymore, and that's boom, we're in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.
Chris Evers:Oh yeah, we don't want that. We like to stay under the radar and we're as a humble group and it's, but it's very rewarding. So it's been fun hanging out with you and going through and definitely nerding out. You know it's fun to get a chance to go through some of these things and it's something I'm passionate about. So it's easy to do. Time just flies.
Marc Culver:Yeah, no, absolutely Clearly, and you're absolutely right. It amazes me how quickly these episodes go. But yeah, love your passion, love nerding out with you. Look forward to seeing you in person at PWX, hopefully, and we can nerd out some more on some payment management stuff.
Chris Evers:Let's do it For sure.
Marc Culver:Thank you. Yeah, thanks, mark. All right, one last thing before we go. If you have enjoyed this episode of the podcast in general, you ask that you help us spread the word um linkedin uh. We have a minor presence on uh instagram and and x and such, but help us spread the word, tell your colleagues about it. Um and uh. We'll keep delivering some great uh content and episodes for you if you guys keep listening. So thank you again, um. Thank you, chris. Thank you, tony nerds out. Yep. See you, mark. Thank you again. Thank you, chris. Thank you, tony Nerds out Yep. See you, Mark.
