COLLABORATION
CALLING IN REINFORCEMENTS
infrastructure construction projects. It provides an alternative to the fill often used in such proj - ects, which is made from crushed stone, sand, and gravel, and typically weighs 120 pounds per cubic foot. By contrast, foam glass aggregate weighs in at just 25 pounds per cubic foot. “They’ve been doing foam glass for 20, 30 years in Europe. We’re just the first to bring it to the States,” says Filshill. PennDOT was the first department of transporta - tion in the U.S. to embrace the recycled material and even introduced it to the Buckleys. But like many innovative inventions, it took time for foam glass
In the short term, getting the freeway back online meant Buckley & Co. couldn’t rebuild the over- pass as they normally would have—bolstered by engineered concrete slabs and structural steel. Instead, they put up 22-foot retaining walls where the overpass had been, filled the empty spaces between them, then paved over the top to reconnect the six lanes down the center of the highway—three northbound, three southbound. But another piece of the puzzle had to fall into place before the project could be completed. Directly beneath the accident site were 1960s- era sewer and utility lines, which were unlikely
" We figured it was the equivalent of 8 million bottles diverted from the landfill. "
to withstand the weight of 10,000 cubic yards of filled-in roadway, assuming it was built with con - ventional filler materials. Fortunately, they happened to know of another business that might be able to help. Buckley wasn’t the only Graham client tapped to help that Sunday. Archie Filshill answered the call just as he was getting an early jump on traffic from the Jersey Shore back to Philadelphia. Filshill, who earned a Ph.D. in civil engineering, is CEO of AeroAggregates of North America, which is based in Eddystone, Pennsylvania. Eddystone is about 24 miles down the Delaware River from the crash site, making Filshill one of the unlucky commuters affected by the broken highway. He founded AeroAggregates in 2015 and estab- lished the Pennsylvania plant to manufacture a foam glass aggregate from recycled glass bottles. Though it sounds simultaneously brittle and soft, foam glass aggregate is durable enough to use in
aggregate to be accepted as an industry standard. Securing insurance coverage for AeroAggregates was challenging due to its start-up status and its novel product, says Sean Brogan, Esq., managing director, Graham Company. “We had to extensively search the market and leverage our strong underwriter relationships to identify insurance carriers willing to provide broad, cost-effective coverage,” he says. Graham’s hard work paid off. Not only did Aero - Aggregates have the foam glass aggregate ready to go; Filshill had worked on similar retaining wall projects. He was able to repurpose existing plans from a recent project to fit the emergency highway repair. By the following Tuesday, the project had gained traction: plans were settled, materials ordered, work scheduled. All that was left was for the con- struction crew to do its thing. Then, on Wednesday, the governor made their ambitious plan public.
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