Road Builders Upgrade The Florida-Alabama Line

It's become increasingly apparent over the last handful of years that certain parts of the country are getting hit with increasingly severe weather events which takes added toll on critical infrastructure. For parts of the southeastern United States like Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, the hurricanes that struck in 2023 and 2024 accumulated billions in total damages. However, those acute storm events are the full story. On top of the emergent damages these states, and subsequently their road builders, there is still the regular amount of maintenance and upgrades that must be done.

Provided by CWR Contracting

Such is the case with CWR Contracting, operating and working in northern Florida, near the Georgia state line. While they worked last year on several Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) projects, their resurfacing assignment on SR-83, near DeFuniak Springs, FL, represented the type of job that needs done even in the absence of century-storms.

"A lot of times when you have storms, these are heavily traveled road to get out of the Panhandle there," said Michael Gilley, Operations Manager at CWR Contracting, about this stretch of road and its use as an evacuation route. "It did play a small factor, because of the sheer amount of traffic, but I would say the majority reason was that the road had just deteriorated, and it was time to just resurface it."

There was a whole list of improvements and additional orders beyond even the asphalt itself, which included:

• Milling and resurfacing of SR-83 from north of CR-185 to the Alabama State Line
• Overbuild
• Radius and shoulder widening
• Guardrail upgrades
• Mitered end section replacements
• Curb and flume reconstruction
• Bridge joint repair
• New signage
• New pavement markings
• Minor flashing signal improvements
• Drainage improvements
• Ramp construction
• Utility adjustments for the City of DeFuniak

Provided by CWR Contracting

Checking All The Boxes

Being a busy thoroughfare, with a large amount of semi-truck traffic, one of the biggest improvements they had to make was to the radius of offshoot roads and turn-offs where large and heavy vehicles are exiting.

"On some of the side streets the turn radius for semis, it ends up not being wide enough. So, we widen that radius so they're not out there in the dirt," said Gilley.

This wasn't the extent of the dirt-work they had to get into, however, as there were several trouble spots that required additional fixes.

"The overbuild areas had to do with slope correction, for the most part," he explained. "If you're going around a super-elevated curb, where one side of the road is raised up higher than the other side of the road, over a period of time, it isn't where it needs to be anymore. To be as safe as they're supposed to, given the speed that you're traveling, we end up fixing one side of the road's elevated curb, and raise it back up, so that it's safer at higher speeds."

Just like banking in a turn on a NASCAR track. Gilley described the nature of their work as approximately 60% mill-and-fill projects, with the other types of maintenance and upgrades coming in to play a little less often.

"There are times where we'll have to work on the shoulders of the roads, where they get washed out from the amount of rain," Gilley said. "But probably not as much as you would think. We do live in an area where it's pretty sandy, so really, it soaks that up pretty quick."

On this project, CWR used Wirtgen milling machines to pull up three full inches off the surface, and repaved three and a quarter inches with their CAT 1055F paver in tandem with a Weiler e1250C shuttle buggy. Not too far behind, a pair of CAT BC13 rollers ensured optimal compaction in a minimal number of passes.

Provided by CWR Contracting

Working For The Man

CWR Contracting takes projects from all types of clients, not just the public sector. While at least half of the work they do from the Freeport office location Gilley operates out of, are for military base projects. However, they still take on plenty of private sector, commercial contracts each year, and there are some difference in working with one type or the other.

"At least we aren't building [structures]," joked Gilley. "but if they're building subdivisions, we'll go in there and do everything from clearing, to all the utilities, to the grading, and all the paving. We're fairly diverse in what we do."

For the most part, though, he doesn't have a personal preference between the public and private clients.

"It's most in just how they are set up, because they're ultimately not that different," Gilley said. "Even on commercial projects, they'll often tell us to just use the DOT spec anyways, just deferring to their way of doing things."

What he would say, though, was that the biggest difference was really in the level of complexity. The private work they do is largely new work, whereas the public sector jobs require a lot of working around existing infrastructure (fiber optic cables, electrical, gas lines, water, etc.) that has to be located, and/or moved. Those additional elements can be quite a headache. 

Provided by CWR Contracting

"There was one headache we had on this job with the utilities, where we did some of the widening. There was a bunch of fiber lines in the ground that were right where our pipe needed to be laid," Gilley remembered. "But our biggest challenge was when it called for us to set a new structure in DeFuniak springs, and we were supposed to tie into an existing pipe that ran under a road. It ended up not being where it was supposed to be."

With a ticking clock and a limited window to get the job done, while also working at night, the race was on to find the missing pipe. If they didn't have things turned back on by 5:00am the following morning, they could face fines from the municipality.

"It was a little further north than what we were shown," he said, relieved even now that they were able to get that sorted out within their narrow timeframe. 

As an employee of CWR for nearly twenty-four years, Gilley has a unique take on what working for the company is like after so much time with them. 

"They've always done the right thing, even if it cost them money," he shared. "They will always do the right thing, even if we don't get paid for it. Or if we mess up, we're going to do whatever we can do so, at the end of the day, it's as close to perfect as we can get. We stand behind it, because no matter what it cost us, we're going to do it right."