< PreviousFor thousands of years, concrete has been one of the most widely-used building materials in the world for many reasons. It is relatively inexpensive, extremely durable, and not prone to rot, rust, or decay like wood or metal…AUGUST 201810Written by Robert HoshowskyThe history of concrete is one of innovation and resource-fulness. It was first used by the Bedouins in 6,500 B.C. and then embraced by ancient Egyptians and Romans instead of brick for its flexibility. It could be poured into forms and shaped into everything from solid flat surfaces to archways and domes. The material entered the modern age in 1849, with the inven-tion of reinforced concrete by French gardener Joseph Monier. The coming decades saw reinforced concrete used in the construction of many iconic structures, including the world-famous Hoover Dam between Nevada and Arizona, completed in 1936, and the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in Washington State, completed in 1942.Asphalt is another popular building material, especially in North America. And much like concrete, asphalt’s history goes back thousands of years, with the first known use being to construct a road in Babylon in 615 BC. It was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans as a sealant for baths and aqueducts and later for caulking wooden ships. It was poured on top of stone roads in Scotland around 1803 and used to pave roads in America in the 1860s. A few decades later, in 1901, asphalt was introduced by the H.M. Reynolds Shingle Company as an alternative to wood or slate shingles with the slogan: “The roof that stays is the roof that pays.” Despite the introduction of metal, solar, and other mate-rials over the years, seventy percent of houses across North America still use asphalt shingles on their roofs.Needless to say, nothing – not even the most well-built concrete structure, paved road, or asphalt-shingled roof – lasts forever. Concrete cracks and breaks, roads wear down, and asphalt shingles erode from wind, rain, snow, and blistering heat. For many years, old asphalt or concrete past its prime was often hauled by trucks to landfill sites and dumped. This was problematic for a number of reasons, from the pollution gener-ated by dump truck emissions to taking up considerable space in dump sites.Fortunately, there are today many initiatives aimed at reducing, reusing, and diverting concrete and asphalt waste from dump sites and giving these materials a new life, saving the environ-ment and money in the process. Because it is often thick and heavy, concrete needs to be broken down before it can be repur-posed. In cases where it is contaminated with other materials such as rebar, wood, or wire, these need to be removed as well. While softer than concrete, old asphalt also must be crushed into smaller pieces and screened for foreign materials, which can be done through mobile asphalt screening and crushing equip-ment to produce reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP).“Nothing – not even the most well-built concrete structure, paved road, or asphalt-shingled roof – lasts forever.”11With environmental and financial forces in play, the market for RAP has grown in recent years. According to a survey of asphalt producers conducted by the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), over seventy-nine million tons of mainly reclaimed asphalt pavement and recycled asphalt roofing shingles were used to make new asphalt pavements during 2016 – the most recent year for available survey data – and the news keeps getting better. For every construction season since 2009, about 117 million tons of warm-mix asphalt (WMA) was produced in 2016.It will come as a surprise to many that asphalt rather than glass or plastic was identified as the number one recycled product by the Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Highway Administration in a report to Congress, twenty-five years ago. According to the NAPA, “It [asphalt] continues to be reclaimed and reused at a greater rate than any other product in the U.S.“A wide range of waste materials are now incorporated into asphalt pavements, including ground tire rubber, slags, foundry sand, glass, and even pig manure, but the most widely used are reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) and recycled asphalt shingles (RAS). The use of recycled materials in asphalt pave-ments saves about fifty million cubic yards of landfill space each year.” In fact, recycling and reusing asphalt cement in RAP and RAS “saved more than $2.1 billion in 2016 compared to the use of virgin materials and saved nearly 50 million cubic yards of landfill space from reclaiming RAP alone,” says NAPA.It is estimated that worldwide, transportation – including road construction – accounts for fourteen percent of greenhouse gas emissions, while in North America alone, this figure is closer to eighty-five percent. And in some provinces, such as British Columbia, estimates put the figure at around forty percent. Greenhouse gas emissions are an issue and contribute to global warming. One way to lessen these emissions is to reduce the number of vehicles on the road, including dump trucks taking heavy loads of concrete and asphalt to landfill sites. Diverting these heavy loads and repurposing old broken concrete for infill or road base material means not only less waste ending up in landfills but materials being hauled shorter distances, reducing the amount of fuel used and lowering our carbon footprint.Just as old asphalt roads and shingles can be recycled into new roads; concrete is another construction material ideal for reuse. Although it can last hundreds of years, concrete, like asphalt, is heavy, and moving concrete in trucks requires considerable fuel and manpower. According to The Cement Sustainability Initiative, a report prepared by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, over nine hundred million tonnes of waste concrete is generated every year in the United States, Europe, and Japan, and “concrete recovery is achievable – concrete can be crushed and reused as aggregate in new projects. As part of the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI), the cement industry has been looking at recycling concrete as a component of better business practice for sustainable development.”“Old asphalt must be crushed into smaller pieces and screened for foreign materials, which can be done through mobile asphalt screening and crushing equipment to produce reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP).”AUGUST 201812The advantages of recycled, recovered, and reused concrete are many, from lowering the use of new – virgin – aggregate to reducing transportation costs, fuel emissions, and unnec-essary landfill. Waste can even be eliminated with the goal of zero landfill for concrete. This can be achieved by crushing and reusing old concrete as an aggregate or fragments for making new concrete. This will be important in coming years, partic-ularly in the United States, as many of the roads constructed during the boom of the 1950s have outlived their lifespans and urgently need to be replaced.Likewise, asphalt is a key component of road replacement. There are over 2.2 million miles of paved road in America, and about ninety-three percent is surfaced with asphalt. Much of it – if mixed with reclaimed asphalt pavement – will result in considerable cost savings over using new materials alone. Since the Federal Highway Administration introduced a policy in 2002 for states to use recycled asphalt and other materials when possible, there has been a significant, positive increase in asphalt recycling.While the concrete and asphalt we use for roads and other infra-structure today may not have the longevity of roads built cen-turies ago due to the wear and tear of cars, trucks, and other vehicles, recycling and reusing asphalt and concrete represents a significant step towards a cleaner, greener future for the planet.13Written by Robert Hoshowsky Executive experience counts, and few realize this more than Advanced Pavement Group’s Chief Executive Officer, Joseph J. Tinney Jr. Signing onto the role in October of 2017, he is focused on an aggressive growth strategy. With years of experience working for business service industry giants, he is helping to deliver significant revenue growth. Leveraging this experience, Tinney has already helped the organization meet some of its expansion goals.As Tinney has been instrumental in leading companies to success, he is seeking to usher Advanced Pavement Group to a different level. “The vision is to be a super-regional company,” he says, “and what we mean by that is to blanket the northeast with self-delivery capability. We are not trying to be a general contractor, but trying to execute the work that we sell. So if we Advanced Pavement Group (APG) provides extensive asphalt, concrete, drainage, and maintenance services including asphalt milling, paving, pavement maintenance, concrete, masonry and hardscaping, excavation, and site work. It works on everything from small parking lots to massive retail centers, roadways, and office parks, serving clients across the Northeast.do work for company X, I want to be able to do it in New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts – wherever they are – I want to be able to do the work.”Advanced Pavement Group was created in 2016 when the then-family-owned company, Powerhouse Paving, was sold to a private equity group. Advanced Pavement Group is composed of several founder-family businesses. These include asphalt and concrete company Supreme Metro out of South Plainfield, New Jersey; Richards Paving Inc., from New Castle in Delaware; Powerhouse Paving of Long Island, New York; Green Ways Plus, a product line of liquid and granular ice melts; PAM Sweeping, a parking lot sweeping company; Orange Industries, a drain cleaning and septic arm; and Refined Products, an asphalt production plant. The intent is to rebrand the businesses as Advanced Pavement Group. Tinney and his team are in the process of building through acquisition and are currently in conversation with at least half a dozen other companies to grow the enterprise. The advantag-es of having all these long-established businesses under one umbrella are remarkable for the company’s customers. While remaining committed to the values of the founders, Advanced Pavement Group is broadening its self-performed asphalt paving, concrete, and drainage services, and creating the highest quality available for parking lots, roadways, and exterior hard surfaces of all types.“While remaining committed to the values of the founders, Advanced Pavement Group is broadening its self-performed asphalt paving, concrete, and drainage services.”AUGUST 20181415CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS In February of this year, Advanced Pavement Group was the recip-ient of the prestigious contractor of the year award, presented by Pavement Maintenance & Reconstruction magazine at the National Pavement Expo &Conference 2018 in Cleveland, Ohio. Advanced Pavement Group was required to submit a dossier, and a number of criteria were analyzed. These included: years in business, growth (year over year), investment in equipment and infrastructure, company philosophy, markets served, company culture, and use of and investment in technology. Advanced Pavement sees the award as a huge achievement. Advanced Pavement Group will be launching its new website this summer and is in the process of rebranding vehicles and other equipment with a sleek, modern logo. The design has four solid boxes – two orange and two grey – representing the brand’s four services of asphalt, concrete, drainage, and mainte-nance, as well as the four corners of a customers’ property, and the four elements of a property assessment: condition, safety, life cycle, and plan. The company strives to be “an organization that not only delivers superior quality asphalt, concrete, drainage, and maintenance products and services, but superior quality in supporting func-tions as well.” It maintains world-class levels in every aspect of its orga-nization, including its service delivery system, sales team, human resources, financial team, and leadership.Advanced Pavement Group delivers superior performance to shareholders and stakeholders, is a trusted partner to its custom-ers, and is known as an employer of choice and an industry leader. “As such, people recognize us for our learning culture and talent.”For Advanced Pavement Group, rebranding is vital, as the new brand messaging and imagery is professional, builds culture, creates messaging uniformity, shares the brand’s purpose, and “expresses the foundation and backstory of the organization.” Unlike companies that purchase a business and immediately change the name, Advanced Pavement Group recognizes that whenever it acquires an existing company, there is significant brand equity in the market in which it operates and will use that during a gradual transition. One example is Richards Paving Inc., now a division of Advanced Pavement Group. Over the next eighteen months, it will phase out the reliance on the Richards name and use Advanced Pavement Group. Some acquired companies, like Islip-based Powerhouse Paving, have already been rebranded as Advanced Pavement, and other acquisitions remain dual brands for the time being.Advanced Pavement Group may subcontract small portions of unique projects, but the majority of work is all performed by its 165 employees. This can result in cost- and time-savings, greater project flexibility, and increased coordination. “What we are trying to do is provide a single point of contact,” states Tinney, “and what we’re doing is giving the same quality, “What we’re doing is giving the same quality, consistency, and service delivery wherever we can perform.”Joseph J. Tinney Jr.CEO of Advanced Pavement Group AUGUST 201816consistency, and service delivery wherever we can perform. Think about McDonald’s; if you get a Big Mac in San Francisco, it’s the same in Philadelphia. When you deal with Advanced Pavement Group, we want it to be the same in Islip, Long Island as it is in New Castle, Delaware. The same quality, same finish, same attention to detail, and same customer intimacy.”Advanced Pavement Group aims to provide every customer with high-quality, consistent service while maintaining and respect-ing client budgets and timelines. The company has highly trained teams to ensure project success from the very beginning. Advanced Pavement Group is pursuing clients with multiple properties and is managing portfolios for many clients in the region. This provides for stability and growth to safeguard the future of the company.“It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when we have another economic downturn,” says Tinney. “It’s the nature of our business. And the more we can mitigate any variability in our service markets, the better off we are.” Some markets, he says, are more predictable than others. In times of worsening economic conditions, retail stores cut back, while colleges spend money no matter the financial climate, and homeowners’ associations tend to have money in HOA funds.In winter months, the company’s premium snow and ice man-agement services include snow plowing and liquid anti-icing. These benefit customers from corporate office building loca-tions to retail shopping centers, hospitals, and sports complexes.“Everything starts with the customer,” says Tinney. “We’re in the retail space – and retail is defined as retail banking, restau-rants, shopping and strip malls – we are in the HOA space 17CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS which is multi-tenanted residential space, whether it’s an apart-ment, condominiums, or managed residential areas. We are in corporate office parks. We can work directly for corporations and multi-tenanted office space like a typical suburban office park, as well as those areas that have just one tenant, like a big Johnson & Johnson manufacturing facility. And then we are also in the institutional spaces like colleges, K-12, healthcare, and hospitality. We have a specialty capability to do tennis courts, basketball courts, and similar recreational surfaces. You’ll see us in [recreation] centers and sports complexes often.”Advanced Pavement Group has an impressive portfolio, and continues to take on large-scale projects for well-known retailers and box stores. And as part of its acquisition strategy, Advanced Pavement Group recently purchased Refined Products, Inc., a sister company to Richards Paving based in Delaware. Refined Products is an asphalt plant, and owning the plant, which will have its name changed, means APG will be able to supply asphalt to its operations in Delaware and the surrounding areas.Advanced Pavement Group is a one-stop destination for cus-tomers with an impressive portfolio involving milling, grading, paving, drainage installation, curbing, concrete sidewalks, and concrete flatwork. Among the company’s innovative services is raising and stabilizing sunken concrete slabs using dual-com-ponent polyurethane foams pumped in underneath. This is a far less costly alternative to grinding existing concrete, replace-ment, or ignoring this tripping hazard.It is not unusual for Advanced Pavement Group to be called upon to tackle projects that take weeks or even months. Some projects, like the roadway and driveway improvement for a private com-munity, saw the company contracted to reconstruct driveways and roads, make drainage improvements, and perform concrete sidewalk and curbing installations. The project, which ran over two full months, also saw the company responsible for full-depth removal of existing driveways, including the sub-base layers, surface milling, and paving of all roadways.Another project at a community association took place over three years, from 2012 to 2015. The highly-involved project included reconstruction of courtyards, roadways, and drive-ways for the private community, with asphalt milling, paving, overlays, some concrete sidewalk and curbing installations of concrete and Belgium blocks. Drainage improvements were also required to carry out the work, and this required the assis-tance of uniformed traffic officers. Advanced Pavement Group established and maintained uniform traffic control patterns from project start to comple-tion, was responsible for surface milling and paving, full-depth milling and paving, asphalt overlays, installing drainage struc-tures, working with engineers, restoring disturbed areas, and more. The project had a value of over $2,500,000. Advanced Pavement Group is in the process of adding more staff, and it has hired a chief financial officer and shifted the role of Ralph Cerullo, director of business development, from a local position to a corporate position. It hired an IT resource, made investments in growth and administration, and is going to retain a corporate level human resources person.“The vision is to become the largest, highest-quality, self-performing pavement, concrete, drainage, and excavation company in the Northeast,” states Tinney. “And the value of that to our employees is to create career opportunities, growth, and stability for them. For our shareholders, obviously, it is to get a return. For customers, it is to become an ‘easy button’ for them. So, rather than trying to find a concrete contractor for one of their portfolio properties, they can just call us. It’s back to that one-stop shop for single-source delivery.”Following its most recent acquisition in Delaware, the company has been seeing some major customers in New Jersey and New York already feeding work to the Delaware operation. The company is already known to them, contracts are in place, and they can expect the same great quality service. “Where most companies have to go out and have value creation, we are lucky we have value migration,” says Tinney of custom-ers’ already flocking to the new company in Delaware, “and our hope is to accelerate that as we increase our distribution points by other companies. Conversely, our business that we acquired in Delaware is feeding work to our business in New York.”AUGUST 201818“The vision is to become the largest, highest-quality, self-performing pavement, concrete, drainage, and excavation company in the Northeast.”Tinney says there are a host of advantages to APG employ-ees, especially young men and women embarking on their careers who want to work for a company with a real growth trajectory. Employees who work for the company have plenty of opportunities ahead. And this is a company that invests in both its people and the business. “It allows us to create innovation, technology, dashboarding – things that we are confident our customers desire from us. At the end of the day, to pave a parking lot – you can do it; I can do it; the guy on the street can do it. If you can find it in the Yellow Pages, chances are most of those guys can do it. What we are trying to create for customers is an experience, in that they just need to deal with us. This provides significant cost reductions, and they want to be partners.”“I don’t want to pave a parking lot; I don’t want to stripe a parking lot; I don’t want to put in sidewalks. Anybody can do that. I want to do all that and be a provider of information that enables them to make better decisions through the application of technology and the additional advantages we provide.” 19CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS Next >