Texas Department of Transportation maintenance crews in the Dallas area are steadily expanding the road and bridge work they perform in-house rather than relying on contractors, according to an Aug. 6 story published in the agency’s newsroom.
Over the past several years, crews have added concrete repairs, bridge joint maintenance, and full seal coat operations to the work they handle themselves, an expansion the agency said benefits both drivers and its workforce. Denton County Maintenance Director Wayne Powell described the growth as deliberate and meaningful. “We’ve expanded some of what we have done in the last five years,” Powell said. “The crews are learning more. They’re getting some more skills under their belts.”
Crew Chief Kade Erwin pointed to a widening range of tasks, including concrete spall repairs, riprap and washout repairs under bridges, sidewalk panel replacement, and bridge joint cleaning. “We’ve always done washout repairs, but now we’re doing larger ones under bridges,” Erwin said in the story. “And seal coat, that’s a big thing we’ve started doing in the past couple of years.”
The move to complete seal coat operations marks one of the most notable milestones, according to the agency. Crews previously handled only patching work, so they selected a low-traffic road scheduled for treatment as a training ground, running practice passes to determine the right rock and oil rates before taking on full operations. The teams went on to complete about five miles of seal coat roadway in a single season, something the story said the Dallas District had never done before. “We had one or two guys who had been on a chip spreader before, but with Wayne being out there, we just started working on it, testing it, and figured it out,” Erwin said. “It worked out really well for us.”
The same learn-as-you-go approach carried over to a paving project on FM 1385, where drivers hooked up to a laydown machine for the first time. For newer employees, the agency said, the large-scale projects have become among the most rewarding parts of the job, giving them seat time on equipment they would not normally operate. TxDOT said the growing in-house capabilities stretch resources further while building a more skilled, versatile workforce prepared for the work ahead.