To obtain the required quality and strength, a certain temperature and humidity conditions must be maintained during this activity. For this reason, under extreme rain conditions and with the currently-used techniques, this process had to be halted, which created a huge impact on project costs (labor and machinery) due to delays.
In April 2018, Sacyr, an important multinational in the construction sector, decided to launch a challenge to find solutions that enable the asphalting process regardless of the weather conditions.
The company was looking for a new process or asphalt mix that avoided an increase in humidity and maintained the temperature during ten minutes after laying the asphalt. Besides, the solution had to be easily adaptable to the current process and the available machinery, and had the best possible business case.
In six weeks, 35 engineers participated and the Portuguese professor Henrique Miranda won the challenge with an innovative solution that solved the problem by adapting the currently-used machinery while making the process more sustainable..
