How GPS & AI Are Rewriting the Paving Playbook

On this week’s On the Surface, host Seth Stevens and co-hosts Brad Marotti and Jordan Janet welcome back Patrick Lemley, Construction Technologies Manager at Delta, for a deep dive into how paving has evolved—and where it’s headed next.

Patrick maps the journey from labor‑intensive stringline control to today’s full‑GPS model-based paving that can auto-steer the paver, control end-gates, and hold grade. You’ll get a clear, practical breakdown of the paving train and why process specifics matter for ride quality and smoothness.

We cover the front end of the workflow too: high‑speed road scanning and rapid model building that lets teams predict leveling quantities and have better conversations with DOTs before the first ton is laid. Patrick also explains critical safety fail-safes, the workforce shift from hot, repetitive tasks to fewer, higher-skill technician roles, and why regulatory readiness will be key for autonomous equipment on public highways.

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

*Automatically generated by AI*

Seth Stevens (00:06)
Welcome back to On the Surface, the go-to podcast for heavy construction and general business. I'm your host Seth Stevens and this week, Brad Jordan and I welcome back Patrick Lemley, who is our construction technologies manager at Delta. Last time he talked about project management, this time we're talking about the evolution of paving and construction services and where we think it's headed in the future. Also, we're talking about 2025's buzzword,

⁓ AI and what it looks like in our industry. Let's go.

Seth (00:44)
Okay, now we're live. Remember, get your phone off the table.

Brad (00:50)
phones.

Patrick (00:51)
salesman.

Seth (00:52)
What are you a newbie? 

Brad (00:53)
phones on the table too,

Patrick (00:57)
He's got his own silent

Seth (01:00)
I'm glad you called me out.

Jordan (01:04)
I would have eventually.

Seth (01:05)
Yeah.

That's awesome. you. Man. That sucks. Okay. That's

Brad (01:12)
happens.

Seth (01:13)
true. Patrick Limley is back.

Patrick (01:16)
How you doing today,

Seth (01:18)
Good

man, good. So in previous episodes, we heard about all of your project management life and surveying life beforehand. And we teased a little bit technology and like the role that you're getting into now as construction technologies manager for Delta under our new reorganization. So I thought it'd be interesting maybe.

You know, lot of the automation and technologies that we've implemented so far have been around paving, so road paving. So to give people an idea of ⁓ things that have changed because they may not have understood how paving worked in the first place, why don't you give like a rundown of how you would pave historically?

Patrick (02:05)
So I'm gonna back way up. So when you're paving, know, everything's run off of a screed. Your screed's back there dragging the mat out. So in the past, if we were trying to do a leveling course or smooth something up, we would have our paver controlled by a string line. So you'd go through, you'd have a string line on the side, paver would be controlling the toe points of the paver. To help people to understand the toe points on a paver,

Seth (02:08)
Okay.

Patrick (02:34)
Those are your arms that control how that screed is floating. a screed, if your toe points come up, your screed is going to come up. If your toe points go down, you're going to try to push your toe, push your bagger down. So that's controlling that mat because asphalt's not graded. It's just ran through the machine and screed it off, just like you would kind of screed off concrete or gravel if you were trying to screed it off with actual screed. There's no blade to it. So it's literally a screed. You're floating this material in there.

So, you know, in the past you would take and use a string line. The string lines, they were real intensive. You had to have somebody, a surveyor come through. They were setting a straight row of hubs, shooting grade on them. Then somebody would come back, set that string line. And I mean, to set a mile of this up, it would take you, you know, a good solid week to get it to where you could pull one mile. So.

Brad (03:28)
So

that string line is the, if you looked at the string line, it's the perfect elevation of what you want your road to be. Your paper is reading that.

Patrick (03:33)
That's right. That's what you're, that's what your pavers

reading. That's what you're following, trying to make your paver float that line in. okay. The next step up from that was you started getting into some of the 3D paving. So like on our four mile interstate job that we were talking about in last podcast. On that job, we used some tremble technology with a cat 1055 paver. And on it, we were setting robotic total stations up down the center of the median.

Those were set up like every 500 feet to control that paver. And by that, it was working off of a 3D model that was built inside it. So basically, we built the model just like we would for putting on a machine, like a bulldozer, a motor grade, or any of that. We're using that on the paver to control it. That worked really well, but it's very, very labor intensive. Because paver's moving down the road, you know, 30 foot a minute, something like that.

and you're only able to have these out in front of the paver every 500 feet. We do a little math, you can figure out about every 15 minutes, you're having to have your next one set up. Then you run into communication issues. You got a high voltage transmission line, is it pulling away from it? Is it causing you to have radio issues? Because all of that is totally tied on radio communication back to that paver.

Brad (04:55)
CB radio from truck traffic also affects it too.

Patrick (05:00)
You actually

decide you want to move. we're pulling down the lane and we want to back up and go to a different spot. And you stack a whole bunch of trucks up. You put all those trucks with all that hot mix in there. I've seen that effect. So it can be very frustrating when it works. It's grand and beautiful. But when it doesn't, it'll make you pull out here. You've got left out.

Seth (05:21)
Yeah, so that's that was a solution, huh? That was a solution to manual string lines. was yeah. String dependent on radio frequency. Yeah. Okay, hold on. We're getting real technical and before that I wanted to back up real quick and just make sure we understand like what a paving crew or process looks like with the.

Brad (05:28)
Sorry.

Patrick (05:31)
Yes.

Brad (05:31)
right, but it's-

Seth (05:50)
equipment that's there, right? So first, I guess you do have a paver, which is basically a thing ⁓ on tracks or wheels, depending on which model you have. It's got a big hopper bucket in the front where the asphalt gets dumped out of a truck or a shuttle buggy or whatever into. And then that's basically just passed, like you said, through the paver to the back.

Patrick (06:00)
Tracks are wheeled.

Seth (06:19)
and it's just screeded onto the ground. And so it's like not compacted yet. It's just laid out in whatever width the paver is telling it to be in, right?

Patrick (06:30)
If you could imagine going to a Laffy Taffy factory, right? And watching how they make Laffy Taffy and they're stringing it out. That's how paver is. In my book, a paver is like making Laffy Taffy. It's just that material is coming through and it's just getting stretched out on the road. The road's just a conveyor taking it away.

Seth (06:34)
Okay.

Brad (06:48)
And the paver

controls the width and the depth. Yeah. the slope.

Patrick (06:51)
within the depth.

Seth (06:53)
Okay. All right. Well, so then, well, you kind of disagree maybe.

Patrick (06:57)
Well, when you say slope, it's depth. It's depth on either side. I mean, you're controlling how much material you put in there. And there's a lot of art to pavement. A lot of people don't realize there's a lot of art because, you know, like we were talking about, it's not compacted yet. So you have to make some compensations for that. Because when you're trying to hit a grade and you've got two inches on one side and one inch on the other,

Seth (07:01)
on either side of the

Patrick (07:25)
⁓ You can't necessarily set that slope. You got to be patient on the depth of what you're expecting for compact.

Seth (07:31)
Yeah, yeah. To hit your slopes. Yeah, just like if you have a ball of cookie dough or whatever and then you smash it down, it widens out, right? Yep. So behind the paver, typically, you got multiple rollers that are compacting it. So they'll vibrate, they'll be steel wheel, they'll be rubber tire, there's all kinds of stuff depending on what you're trying to do and how much compaction you're trying to get. But essentially, they're, I think we said this before, they're just like big.

Rolling pins. Yep, right smashing it down until it's a tight compact surface That's not gonna move or anything under you while you're driving, right? And then that hardens because as the oil cools down and all that stuff it gets stiff ⁓ That's all the paver and the way back right and so you have people you typically got three people on a paver historically a driver and two on the screen

Patrick (08:15)
trip.

screen man, one on each side, making, watching their toe points, controlling her screen, watching the end.

Seth (08:34)
So they're controlling

width and depth, all that stuff. ⁓

Patrick (08:37)
And the paver driver is sitting up there trying to keep it going in a straight line, making sure his hopper is up under the shuttle buggy or a truck. On interstate paving, we're always using a shuttle buggy or a transfer machine to where we're keeping that mix coming to that paver all the time.

Seth (08:54)
Yep.

Brad (08:55)
So the paper operator is doing what? He's doing several things. What all is he doing?

Patrick (08:59)
driving a straight line, steering it, making sure nobody gets in between, making sure he has mix. He's the first person that gets to see the mix. If it's falling in, say we get some mix that didn't get coated in asphalt at the plant. He's the first one to see it. Well, hey, guys, be watching. You got something coming through. Or if it even, it's a, ⁓ whenever one of the trucker backs up and he's dumping into the show, buggy, say a mud flap comes off.

He could be first one to see it and stop and get it off wherever makes it through the paper.

Brad (09:34)
We want him to steer the paver straight so we have straight lines while also looking for all of these things.

Patrick (09:39)
for it.

Seth (09:39)
Yeah. Okay.

Jordan (09:41)
tell

people when I'm describing the paving spread to people that are maybe new to the industry, I typically tell them that a paver is actually two pieces of equipment. There's the paver operator that's actually pushing the truck and looking at the mix coming back to the screed. And there's a screed which operates almost completely independently of the paver that's just being drugged by it with two operators on it. And then you're going to get to what their jobs are next.

Patrick (10:01)
That's right.

You know, and you're dead on right, because really all that paper's doing is providing the hydraulics for the screed. can change the screed. That's right. So the guys on the screed, when we're not 3D paving or something like that, they're actually watching their toe points. They're adjusting for their depth. They've got, they've got a poker. They call it a poker and it's exactly that. It's a metal rod and they've got a little stop set on it for the depth they're looking for. And they're sticking their mat, making sure it's matching.

Jordan (10:11)
power.

Patrick (10:33)
making sure that the mat's out on the lines. You know, we'll go out, we'll paint lines. This is where this edge needs to be. This is where that edge needs to be. They're watching that, making sure that's all staying where it's supposed to be.

Seth (10:44)
Yeah, that makes sense. So then we mentioned the rollers. You got guys operating each roller, right? Because they're driving a pattern. They want to make sure that they hit certain areas so many times for ⁓ the best compaction and not go over the same area too many times, right? ⁓ And then in front of the paver, typically, like you said, on jobs where you have enough space and stuff, especially interstates,

going to be using a transfer machine or a shuttle buggy. And that's essentially just an extension of your Laffy Taffy stretcher. And it can hold more asphalt so you don't have any stops in your paver production, right?

Patrick (11:29)
The other big thing that a shuttle buggy is doing is your mix is hauled from a plant. So you don't know if that's a 10 minute truck ride or an hour and 10 minute truck ride. But what happens is some of that mix starts losing its heat. So when it comes out and it hits that shuttle buggy, that shuttle buggy basically remixes that to where you don't get these cold hot spots, mixes it all back together to help.

keep that from happening. So if you just had like a standard transfer machine, you're just dumping in a transfer machine. comes in, go straight in. It's not mixing it back together. Shuttle buggy helps keep some of that, help keep the quality control where we want it. Yes, it holds material. mean, shuttle buggy, you take and get a good shuttle buggy loaded up and you're going to have, I forget, eight to 10 tons. I may be off on my number there. It's going to have several tons of mix inside it.

Seth (12:01)
Okay.

Okay. Yeah.

Brad (12:19)
Yeah, depends on if it's a shuttle bug or your transfer machine, a shuttle bug will hold a whole truckload 20 times.

Seth (12:26)
Yeah.

Patrick (12:27)
So

like said, I don't ever have to keep up with the ton. It's not like the pavement for me. just know it's. They're, good enough. They'll be telling you like, keep going, keep going, stop. And they'll know where their measurement is, where they can check the rate.

Seth (12:30)
Yeah, sure.

Brad (12:32)
Pave and Foreman knows that number. Yeah. ⁓

Seth (12:41)
Yeah. ⁓

Jordan (12:42)
And there's something else about the shuttle buggy that I always try to highlight to people is it completely disconnects the paver from the truck. There is zero connection between the shuttle buggy and the paver itself.

Patrick (12:53)
That's right.

Jordan (12:53)
And that just highlights how particular and how sensitive we are to a smoothness factor on the mat that you're laying because remove the shuttle buggy from the operation. Do we have the capability of pushing a truck down the road with the paver? Absolutely. But there's a physical contact there. And every time you make a physical contact, you feel that in the screed. That's right. And you could potentially feel that in the mat on a high speed, smooth road surface like the intero.

Patrick (13:20)
Oh yeah, and then that's you know, that's another advantage of that shuttle buggy huddle and that much mix that allows that paver to not stop until you decide to So you're always feeding it mix, right?

Seth (13:28)
Yeah, yeah.

So

trucks are now dumping into a shuttle buggy if you're using it. Basically a shuttle buggy has a hopper on the front of it that trucks can dump into. It mixes stuff in its belly and holds asphalt. And then it basically has a shoot out the back of it that goes over the hopper of the paver and just dumps into it without touching it. So that's kind of what George was talking about. All right, that covers it.

Brad (13:56)
Yeah, so in summary a paving train starts with a shuttle buggy. Yeah, then the asphalt paver then likely two rollers Two steel wheel rollers and then one rubber tire roller in the back. That is a is a paving train. Yeah

Patrick (14:10)
That's our typical paving

journey.

Seth (14:11)
Yeah, okay. So, and so you'd have people operating all the equipment. You have a couple people watching ⁓ what you're actually laying, the mat you're laying. You got people, ⁓ you know, walking around as laborers with shovels and making sure that the edges are clean and you don't get any spots like that paver guys are calling, paver operators are calling out or whatever. And you'd historically do all that through very manual processes of string lines and etc. Right?

So then you started talking about the next thing we looked at, which was 3D. That's what you were calling 3D. Okay. And so that's having some automation in the string lines and like keeping the.

Patrick (14:46)
3D paving.

That's controlling grade. It's not controlling any of your edges, it's not driving. All it's doing is controlling the grade that that screed is floating at. So it's feeding inputs to the hydraulics to come up or come down to make that screed go up or down.

Seth (15:04)
Okay, yes.

Brad (15:12)
There's a sensor mounted to the paver that's pointed at that string and it moves that screed up and down as the string goes up.

Patrick (15:19)
Well,

now we're talking on the 3d right here. We're using the stations. But yes, on the, on the string line paver is right. You've got a sensor that's following the string.

Brad (15:22)
on the ⁓ 3D.

Okay.

Seth (15:31)
Okay, but you're talking about eliminating the string.

Patrick (15:34)
Eliminating

the string just using robotic total stations. You have a mast arm. You have a prism up on top. Prism is a piece of glass that reflects back. So what's happening is that total station is doing trigonometry to calculate where it's at in relation to that. It feeds that back to the machine. Through that, the machine knows to raise up or down to where it knows how it's screeds going down through there. ⁓

Brad (16:00)
So we're on the third evolution of grade control, basically. The first one was a string line. The second one was total stations, eliminating the string line. And now we're using just...

Patrick (16:14)
Now we're using just

Seth (16:15)
Real

quick to go back to the total, topo, total? Total stations. were saying the only, the problem is that a lot of that's radio frequency and you'd have to keep moving that station. Yes. Right? Yeah. Cause if you think about across a whole day, you can't like lay it out for the whole job. So you have to move it with you, right? Yes. Cause you're moving.

Brad (16:36)
And you don't have enough. we typically have three total stations, or we did on the job that we did, and you're leapfrogging them. you got control points set up for each one of those already established. And then you're setting one down, the paper's reading off it, and then you got to have the next one set ahead of you. And then once you pass it, you got to go get the one that you just passed and move it ahead.

Seth (16:56)
Yeah,

okay.

Patrick (16:58)
Everybody talks like it's great that you can go a thousand feet, but when you're paving on the interstate, right? You don't have room to have that out way outside you because then you start fighting your trucks. You got your truck traffic coming in for your that's feeding you everything coming in. So it's all in the center median. So the reason we're having to stay in front of the pavers, remember those rollers we were talking about your pavement terrain? When those rollers roll up in there and they're vibrating and beating that mat down like they need to, they'll knock those robotic total stations out of level.

So they have compensators in them to help them stay level. When that happens, they're no good. So you have to basically stop, reset up. So you can't keep going even though you've went past it because your rollers will knock that out of level.

Seth (17:42)
⁓ interesting.

Brad (17:43)
And that didn't happen too often, but that is part, you know, that's an issue that you run into with it.

Patrick (17:49)
And you know, issue you run into is when you saw it coming, you're like, you were having trouble getting a total station to connect. You know, we were in good communication with a roller operator. We could hold a roller operators back, but at the same time, when you're holding your roller operators back, you're affecting the fact that you're not getting on the mat when it's still hot. You're not staying up at the back of the paver. Like, like, you know, the quality control guys would really like for you to be. So you have to be careful. There's a fine line there of staying where you need to be. So.

Seth (18:17)
Yeah.

Brad (18:18)
Definitely

some inefficiencies that could be improved.

Seth (18:22)
So that

expands on that total station that kind of answers those questions. Now you're talking about going to the third, the third evolution of it, which is total GPS stuff. Okay.

Patrick (18:32)
Total GPS.

So in the current stage of it we're at, we're actually running full GPS. Now GPS still has to have a radio, but because we went to GPS, we've changed our radio frequency. So we're in a whole different band. We have a further range. We can get about a mile out of using GPS because the radio's in it. With having GPS, you don't have to worry about line of sight near like we did with the total station. You don't have to worry about the trucks come in and out.

with our GPS that we're running and the current configuration we've got on the paver, we also can steer the paver using the GPS. We can control our end gates using the GPS and control the grade. ⁓ So everything we're doing, when we turn that paver on and we're headed down the road, the paver is driving itself, controlling end gates and controlling its.

Seth (19:25)
Yeah, but how does it know how to do that?

Patrick (19:28)
All through a model. You have to build a model just like you were building a model for an earthwork job and feed that information into that.

Seth (19:36)
So there's a little more front end work that has to be done. Because somebody like, I mean, you're doing this now, right? Right. Because you're building that model on a computer. Right. And then you're loading it in saying, hey, here's how we want you to pave. Here's all your GPS points. See how to got to now follow this, right?

Brad (19:54)
But technology has also greatly decreased the time it takes to create a model today as well. So talk about that a little bit.

Patrick (20:03)
So like,

you know, our future, we want to be able to work on interstate and two lane overlay projects with this. So like on a two lane overlay project, I can go out with the technology we have now. I can survey and gather the information on 20 miles of road in one day. Then I can spend another day, day and a half designing the model to put on that paper to pave.

Brad (20:29)
Compared to weeks? Yes.

Patrick (20:31)
weeks.

Seth (20:34)
Cause you'd have

to do it manually. That's right.

Patrick (20:36)
Yeah.

And then the other side, because of what we're using and how we're using it, we're able to tell the DOT, if we're going to do leveling, hey, you may have gave us 2000 tons, but this is really going to take 2200 tons. I know I'm using small amounts there, but you take a 20 mile project and you start seeing the rutting and it starts to affect, it helps us help the client to where they can use their leveling in the best spots.

Seth (21:01)
Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓

Patrick (21:05)
You know, this is all technology that's coming and it's going to make paving better for everyone. It makes it better for us. It makes it better for the owner. It's a whole lot easier to go the owner before you start laying mix and say, this is what this is going to take rather than to get to the end of the job and then be like, Hey, you overran this job this many tons. You're just going to have to pay for that. Well, no, we didn't. I mean, we did what you asked.

Brad (21:31)
Right. So you're able to get those, see the rutting and give ideas on leveling quantities because of the profile that you get now versus a typical survey of a road is you taking points across the road and then connecting lines to each one of those points. And today you're scanning the road with this high-speed scanner and it's taking millions of points.

while you're driving at 50 miles an hour.

Patrick (22:02)
While we're

driving at 50 miles an hour, we're getting every two inches down the road and every quarter inch across the road. As to where traditional, you're going to do three points across the road every 50 to 100 feet. So you're not going to catch any.

Seth (22:08)
Yeah.

Because you're having to manually record all that. And now

you're just scanning it with technology. That's right. That's insane.

Brad (22:26)
And with the pro road scanning, that's the only thing that makes using GPS feasible on a normal job. Right. Because you can do it so much faster and so much more accurately today.

Seth (22:38)
Okay, that makes sense. what's what comes next? Like what's out there that is the next step or in the future? I know you dream about this every night.

Patrick (22:50)
don't dream about Blyford Night. Believe it or not, I'm not the big techie guy you all might think. But what's next? You know, it's kind of like, I think you asked me what my question to leave for the next person was. What would I tell myself? And I told you, was dream, as big as you can. You just dream. I can tell you that we'll take it places that people won't probably be ready for it. But you know, we automated Shuttle Buggy.

automate rollers, we'll automate whatever we can to make the life better for our people and our jobs. You know, at the end of the day, all this helps create better quality for our customers. And if we can provide better products for our customers, it makes it better for the traveling public. It makes it better for everyone. So, you know,

Seth (23:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's all kind of using, like automating a lot of the rest of the paving spread is already kind of using the same technology like GPS, SOTNR, stuff like that, like things that already exist, right? And there's actually proof of concept already like in China, I think, where they're paving like three or four lanes of road at the same time with followed by a ton of rollers. It's all completely automated.

You can look it up. There's a video. It's pretty wild. Yeah, there's a it's it's wild. It's the largest paver I've ever seen. ⁓ But what like do you have any ideas of that's all technology that exists. Right. So like if you're dreaming, what do you think comes next after like all this GPS stuff? Do you have any ideas or thoughts?

Patrick (24:17)
whole song.

Seth (24:45)
Who knows? Who knows? mean, you can't account for stuff that hasn't really been invented yet, I guess. But do you ever see anything that's used in other industries that could be implemented within the paving spread? Does that make sense? Like there's a ton of agriculture technology, for example, in farming and whatever. So like what we've had internal conversations about is farmers have been using GPS longer than we have in paving, right?

Patrick (24:46)
Who knows?

Yeah. And even if you look at the agriculture GPS, like I think in my mind, a lot of like what we're doing with our paver is the same as a farmer's already, believe it or not, because a farmer has to go out there and survey their field, right? They can't just go out there and go, Hey, I want to go from here to here and farm this field. Yeah. They go out there. They'll survey their field. They'll basically go around and get the corners of their field, or they'll do what's called an AB line. So an AB line means

Seth (25:28)
Okay.

Patrick (25:43)
I want to start here. I want to go this direction with A B line. All it does is parallel. So, you know, you can look at sonar and detection stuff and all that, but I think by using GPS and building the limits and having surveys, we're making that machine go where we want it to. When we start letting like AI or something decide where that machine's going to go, we don't have that control. When we tell it to follow our GPS line, then it follows our line.

Seth (25:48)
stuff. Yeah.

Patrick (26:13)
to like with what we're using with some of the stuff on our paver, it has a fail safe built in it. So it has, if you lose that signal, it can stop that paver. If we have to, that paver loses its GPS signal, it will actually auto stop that paver. When we're working around the traveling public, those fail safes have to be there. They have to be there for them and us. Because at the end of the day, it's our job to keep everyone safe, our crews and the public.

Yeah, so that's why I mean to me a lot of what we're doing right now. It's right there with what the farming stuff is Just because we're having to serve it before we actually start using it Yeah, I think everybody thinks they talk about automation and how they're using it There's some machines out there that are following lines and all that but they're having trouble with the photo eyes Things of that nature and they just stop was actually serving it and saying this is the line you're following I feel like we're gonna get better results

It's just like the farmers out there. like the farmers, you you've mentioned them with John Deere, like how some of what they've done, they've got a whole network and they provide like an RTK service that those farmers are using. So that's how they're able to get such close roles back, you know, back on top of each other.

Seth (27:29)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Jordan (27:30)
of tying in some of the technologies that we are seeing and you brought up AI Seth. ⁓ know, looking at where that's being utilized in our industry elsewhere, like at the plants, things like that. And then we're already, and then with the addition of the advancement of thermo cameras and thermo sensitivity, we've got intelligent compaction already as a thing out there on the quality side of it, on your paving spread. And you mentioned, you know, the potential of automated rollers, right? You start tying in AI.

thermal imaging, and the improvement of those sensors. Like you were talking about photo eyes having an issue. Like we had all those issues at the asphalt plants and they've started to become, they've started to overcome those challenges. And now that's a far more simple system than what we're talking about on an automated roller. But I could see, you know, those technologies being brought in to make that happen.

Brad (28:19)
Yeah,

I think the manual processes of still getting in the truck, driving the scanner down the road, and taking that scan, although it saves us a bunch of time today, you're still having to take that scan, dump it into a computer, manipulate it somewhat ⁓ to tell the paver what to do. Well, I think, you you're going to use drones. You're not going get in the truck. You're going to fly a drone. It's going to come back to you, and AI is going to optimize that file.

to have the best performing pavement and you don't have to touch it. I think it's gonna come to that.

Seth (28:55)
I had that as a note because farmers, you know, wouldn't have typical road access like we would. So like they already use a lot of drone technology because it's easier to fly over fields and not cause harm to their crops and that kind of stuff. So I'm glad you brought that up. Then the AI, I just had this thought pop in my head of, you know, what are the possibilities of AI like analyzing an area

and suggesting like infrastructure and building like the best, most efficient routes in and out of metro areas and all that kind of stuff. And then doing all of this automatically and then saying, okay, well, here's your file to go run the equipment. then I think that, I mean, I just made a lot of steps in my head, but

Patrick (29:43)
Well, I think it's coming quicker than you think, honestly. because, you know, I look back at like CAD routines and stuff where you would make it go through and like do subdivision layouts for you, things of that nature. know, and you've got drainage software that goes through and you say, I'm on a road right here. All the water, it helps to tell you how many pipes. Really? You're not that far fetched, Seth. I mean, I think it's way closer than you think in your mind.

Jordan (29:43)
It happens.

Brad (30:10)
There may be companies that are already using for design. ⁓ that's true. I would say that they're probably.

Patrick (30:15)
If they're using

something like civil 3D or maybe even Revit, that stuff may be already happening. Just we're not in that. I mean, we're not in that.

Seth (30:24)
Metro

area and like design firms and stuff like that. Yeah, that's cool. ⁓ Probably a question a lot of people have is like, how does this change the, you know, how does any of this GPS and automation of equipment and the paving train and stuff like that change positions and processes and job duties for people ⁓ going into the future?

Patrick (30:51)
You know when the equipment all gets set right I think you will start to see some reduction in labor forces some The biggest thing I think you're gonna see is now your guys are focusing more on quality metrics You know are we keeping trucks going back to the plant right because you know in the pavement industry our business is Spencer's trucking We didn't say anything we want, but it's trucking are we getting our material there do we have trucks setting? Can we speed the paver up? Do we need to slow the paver down? You know?

we're going to have, think you're going to be able to focus more on that stuff.

Brad (31:22)
because you're taking away the monotonous tasks that can be done by GPS, just like we were talking earlier about the paper operator having to focus on steering a straight line while also trying to pay attention to these other things that often get missed. Now he can just focus on those other things, these quality metrics like Patrick's talking about. For me, I see for the last 50 years, mean, we've...

We've been doing paving the same way. Technologies have increased, sensors and slopes and things like that. The way that we calculate and measure those things have gotten better. But if you just look at the entire paving train, we've been using a paver, a couple of rollers, and eight to ten people for the last 50 years. And what I can see, what I hope to see change in the near future is that you are reducing. You don't have to have ten

12, 14 people out there. mean, it depends on the route, obviously, but you don't have to have that many people out there. And you're also like upgrading these jobs. A lot of the jobs, you take example, running a rake or being a dump man. mean, it is the pavements 300 degrees. The work that they're doing is manual using shovels. I mean, I could see us eliminating a lot of these tougher positions and elevating the types of jobs that we have on the park.

Instead of having 10 labor positions, we've got five technicians that are utilizing technology and focusing on quality type metrics. That's a much more appealing job to people. You got all this equipment that talks to each other and runs off of each other and runs off of a model that you can just stand beside and watch and a couple of people can do that. That's a much different picture.

Seth (32:56)
That's true.

Brad (33:12)
than what it is today. the technology is, mean, it's obviously, I think they're doing some of it in China. It's obviously here. We've got to push it forward.

Seth (33:19)
Yeah, because like I feel like manufacturing style industry like a ⁓ non-changing environment has had a lot of more automation and technology already just because it's static. It's a static environment. So now we're almost getting to the point where technology and automation is allowing for this like mobile manufacturing station where you're elevating a lot of the jobs like you're saying where you're now monitoring the process and the quality and all of that.

like a manufacturing warehouse type environment except now it's moving.

Brad (33:54)
And it's tapping into skills that kids and the generations that are coming up automatically know anyways. They're growing up with phones in their hands, with using different gaming consoles and computers. So, you know, they know the technology. They know it better than we do. And this is going to be right up their alley.

Jordan (34:11)
the

point I was getting ready to make is it's kind of wild to think that, you know, those of us in the industry now, this generation is creating the path for our kids' generations that are growing up with that very skill set. And everybody thinks it's a problem. Well, it's like our environment is changing to pretty well, I mean, they're going to fit, they're going to fall right in.

Patrick (34:30)
Yeah. You know, and I sat there and listened to him think about it and then I saw all these things pop in my head, you know, talk about getting around to the right guy or something like that. You know, there's these little skidsters running around right now that you can control the remote control. Yeah. I mean, I make them wheelbarrow size. That's what says. You can't put great control on it. It go up there, dump it, kick it out, backtrack it down to the elevation you need for roller even rolls over it. I mean, we really, I think the future is kind of...

It's up to us. What can we get the manufacturers to help provide us with to where we can do our job easier and make it better?

Brad (35:07)
It starts there. It's going to take some legislation. We're going to have to talk to DOTs and get approval to use autonomous ⁓ equipment on highways. That's not something that we're allowed to do right now. So it's going to be a process. But ⁓ yeah, we got to start talking about it and pushing it for sure.

Seth (35:28)
That's awesome. Is there anything else that is you think is worth mentioning or keying people into?

Patrick (35:37)
You know, what started it all for us in my book, our little robot, ⁓ our line painting robot. mean, you know, everybody, when we started out with our line painting robot, everybody was like, ⁓ me, they're now taking a job doing this. That line painting robot has painted a lot of miles for Delta and done it very well. I mean, that's right. I mean, I've painted

Brad (35:58)
and kept a lot of people out of... ⁓

Patrick (36:04)
I don't know. painted the J a 71 job up there in Lawrence County, like 20 miles, took it down to BB and painted 20 miles with it down there. I mean, just for us to follow. And we say it like that because we go back to our traditional paving. didn't have a paver run on GPS. Still have to have a guy driving that paver, having a good line to follow. Well, we're able to put that line on the ground with that robot. It makes it life really good for the guys. Yep.

Seth (36:32)
Yo.

Patrick (36:33)
I think we kind of skipped over him, but that's what pretty much pushed us to take and go to an autonomous favor.

Seth (36:42)
Cool. We were talking just before this about how we had just made a fresh post on LinkedIn and Facebook and social media stuff with like a low down on the autonomous pavers and pictures and ⁓ videos. So if you're interested, be sure to check that out for sure. Cool. All right. Until next time.

Brad (37:08)
Adios.

Patrick (37:09)
See you.

Seth Stevens (37:13)
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