Creating the perfect haul road for your construction site is the primary task of the site manager and his team. A good haul road will allow you to bring in and carry out goods easily from the location and a poor one can have a disastrous impact on productivity and employee health, as well as damaging your environmental record. In order to create an effective unpaved road design that really works, you will need to hire experts in analysing your site and developing a haul road plan for your location.

Analysis and evaluation

Your experts will start their design by conducting an evaluation of your site. The environmental analysis will gather evidence and data to learn more about the material makeup of the site. In the past, most haul roads were constructed from materials that were transferred onto the site during the first stage of site development. This leads to inconsistent settlement and compaction, causing higher maintenance demands and costing more. By conducting an assessment into the soil type before construction, the haul roads are then built to take account of the site environment.

Stabilising the road

The environmental analysis allows consideration for several types of resources associated with constructing the road, including:

  • Raw materials
  • Local skills and services
  • Equipment levels
  • Compaction aids
  • Potential access to outside resources, such as training.

Once this data has been collected, the stabilisation process uses technology to build a mechanistic design that caters directly to materials and traffic conditions. The new technology has resulted in roads making use of stabilisation products, such as polymers, bitumen and hydrated lime. This improves the strength, drainage and functionality of the road, so it is constructed in the most suitable way for the site.

Tailoring the design

The final part of the design is a tailored construction, which uses the mechanistic unpaved road design to create a solid and stable road, with the compaction and drainage features a focal point for the build. Lastly, a maintenance program is established and used to keep the haul road operating at the highest level possible, reducing the time taken to correct problems and preventing the road from disintegrating. By using a mobile monitor to check the condition of the road and training staff to take positive action to prevent soil loss, companies can keep their haul roads operational for longer periods.