THE EFFECT OF A PRICE ADJUSTMENT SYSTEM ON THE QUALITY OF EMULSIFIED AND LIQUID ASPHALTS IN ONTARIO

Prior to 1989, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation had supplied bituminous spraying materials (both liquid asphalts and emulsified asphalts) on all their contracts. The Ministry attempted to divest itself of this arrangement but the contractors were reluctant to accept the responsibility for the supply. One of their major concerns was that the quality of the materials was generally poor and historically a large number of samples failed the specified tests. The Ministry therefore agreed to address the product quality problem prior to any introduction of contractor supply and in 1985 introduced a price adjustment system based on test results. This paper presents background to the development of the system, an outline of the procedure and the effect the system has had on material quality. It is concluded that the end- result price adjustment system has significantly improved the overall quality of spraying materials supplied to the Ministry. The contractor has been required to supply spraying materials on all Ministry contracts since June 1989.(A) For the covering abstract of the Conference see IRRD Abstract No. 807716.