A Different Kind of Project

If you’ve been reading our blog, articles, or even talked to one of us, then you know we’re all about differentiating your company to your brand community and prospects. In short, we do this to help you stand out and for you to help your buyers have a way to choose the best contractor instead of just looking at price.

Once in awhile, a different kind of project comes along your way that you can’t pass because it is challenging, high profile, and/or just different for the sake of mixing things up. This year our team has had a few different and quite large design projects, but I want to share a great job by one of our clients, Barriere Construction. We’ve been Barriere’s construction award team for over 5 years and as a heavy infrastructure contractor, we’ve done a lot of projects in the transportation category and occasionally the infrastructure category. I never would have thought we’d be entering their newest project in the sports complex category for ENR Best Projects of 2012 for Louisiana and Texas (due later today).

Aerial view of the kart track.

Whether Barriere’s project wins or not (which we hope they do), we wanted to share why this project was special for them. Barriere spent the past year laying over 79,902 tons of asphalt for a high speed race track, kart track, autocross pad, and numerous access roads and parking lots for NOLA Motorsports. Barriere who regularly paves interstates, highways, and streets with asphalt and concrete built probably the best asphalt roadway in Louisiana. The tracks required an incredible asphalt mixture specially created for the tracks, the best grade of asphalt their plants have ever created–then the crews had to pave it. Paving required the team to do a “perfect cut” that has no seams or joints. This is common for a straight airport runway, but the tracks where mostly curves so Barriere had to create a change to their machine. One of the other biggest challenges was paving on dirt. Nearly all of Barriere’s asphalt  paving jobs are either paving on top of the current roadway or removing the top layers and then paving over the base – they rarely have the need to pave of dirt.

The project manager's daughter "tests" out the track.

The team had numerous other challenges, but the exciting part is Barriere sought out this project because of its challenges. They knew if they could do this job, they could do anything else. It was a change of pace for their teams from the crews in the field to the plant and the executive team was very hands on with the project.

Sometimes you do things for the sake of doing things differently and other times you do them to set yourself apart from your competitors. This racetrack gives Barriere a huge advantage in future highly technical, high quality asphalt projects in Louisiana.

Does your team go after unique projects? Do you share them with your clients and prospects and tell that story?