Staff and contractors in offices throughout the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) are at work developing models to predict the performance, life-cycle costs, and other attributes of asphalt pavements. To give the people working on these models a chance to share ideas, keep each other up to date, and avoid duplication of effort, FHWA is forming a pavement models team.

"The FHWA models team will ensure that any overlap that does exist is relatively seamless," says Tom Harman of the Office of Engineering Research and Development and the team's chairman. "For example, if one group is working on a theory and another group starts a project using a similar theory, the team will ensure that there's no wasted or duplicative effort."

Team members are involved with such projects as the Superpave performance prediction models, models of life-cycle costs and other economic and policy questions, and performance-related specifications for hot-mix asphalt pavements.

The team will include staff from the Office of Technology Applications; the Pavement Division of the Office of Engineering; the Office of Engineering Research and Development and its Pavement Performance Division, which oversees the long-term pavement performance (LTPP) program; and the Office of Policy Development.

For more information, contact Tom Harman at FHWA (phone: 703-285-2772; fax: 703-285-3105; email: tom.harman@fhwa.dot.gov).