Nationwide research is firming up the case for "intelligent" compaction, a construction method three decades in the making that could save billions of dollars a year in potholed roads, cracked bridges, broken dams and blown-out tires. But as it represents a huge cultural shift in project delivery, the industry is struggling to find a standard way to roll it out.
David White, a professor at Iowa State University, Ames, and director of the school’s Earthworks Engineering Research Center, estimates that the stiffness of soil, sand and aggregate—the building blocks of road embankments, building pads and bridge abutments—cost the public up to $100 billion a year due to poor construction.