Brisbane City Council, Australia’s largest local government authority, maintains a road network of 5,700 km, ranging from residential access streets to major arterial roads. Pavement configurations include granular and cement stabilised granular with thin asphalt surface, concrete and deep strength asphalt. Traffic loadings range from local residential streets through industrial access roads to arterial roads giving an on-going need to investigate new and innovative road maintenance solutions to economically maintain this network. How do you implement research and development in an organisation with over 9,000 employees where the in-house capability in asset management, pavement design, quarrying and asphalt production and placing is spread across many branches?

The Asphalt Innovations Committee is the focus for collaboration and stakeholder engagement to overcome the unique challenges of a complex organisation structure to investigate new pavement and surfacing techniques. Collaboration extending across external organisations and universities culminated in the first demonstration project of the French EME2 High Modulus Asphalt concept being undertaken in Brisbane. This pavement is still being monitored by Council and ARRB Ltd and the information generated to date has been used in several Austroads reports.