COLLABORATION
MAKING MAGIC HAPPEN
who made it happen became local heroes. Driv- ers honked their horns in appreciation as traffic resumed, and Buckley, Filshill, and the rest were feted at a massive thank you party.
Buckley and his team may have been accustomed to high-stakes emergency repair, but they don’t normally work projects with such high visibility. It wasn’t just the Governor of Pennsylvania show- ing up to survey the damage to an important trucking corridor, but also Secretary of Trans- portation Pete Buttigieg and even President Joe Biden, who said during a briefing at the Philadel - phia International Airport on Saturday, June 17, “There’s no more important project right now in the country as far as I’m concerned.” When the governor asked what issues might slow the project down, Buckley noted that, with I-95 closed, there was no quick way to transport the foam glass provided by AeroAggregates. So, Gov- ernor Shapiro along with PennDOT Secretary of Transportation Mike Carroll arranged for a state police escort. Filshill didn’t know what he was in for Thursday morning. “I get down to the plant at 4:30 in the morning, and when I pull up, there’s five news vans and the state police already there,” AeroAggregates’ Filshill recalls. “And they say, ‘Hold up, we’re waiting for one more escort!’ And then the state police heli- copter shows up!” Struck by the production, Filshill called his wife to say, “You’re not going to believe what’s going on—” She interrupted: “I’m watching you on the news right now!” Turns out the Philadelphia public also had a keen interest in the I-95 repair job, spurring PennDOT to install a webcam to livestream progress at the site. The stream was shown on TV screens at local bars and a Philadelphia concert venue even hosted a massive watch party. Consequently, when the highway reopened on June 23, the construction workers
“That was a satisfaction,” Buckley says.
But the construction veteran was more heartened by the way his own employees and colleagues ral- lied to make it happen. “You know where you stand in the industry, when you pull something like this off,” he says. “It’s kind of like a lifetime achievement award.” Meanwhile, Filshill demonstrated the sustainable potential of recycled foamed glass. “We figured it was the equivalent of 8 million bot - tles diverted from the landfill,” he says. Not only that, but when the temporary road was later dismantled, all the foamed glass aggregate was repurposed to another project. It was right back to the grind for Buckley & Co., to work on a permanent repair for I-95. In November, freshly reconstructed outside lanes opened, and Buckley says the governor challenged him to have the new interior lanes completed by June. “We want to say that it’s done in less than a year,” Buckley says with a laugh. “So, we are still work- ing seven days a week. We haven’t really had a day off since June 12th.”
FOAM GLASS AGGREGATE FROM RECYCLED GLASS BOTTLES
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