Innovation can come from anywhere. With limited time and budget, ways to do work safer and more efficient are always priorities.
Nebraska LTAP didn't receive any entries in 2021 so we are sharing examples from across the country to use in your departments or to inspire submitting your success stories. We accept entries year-round, and LTAP staff can help you prepare the application materials.
Arizona
- Pokey Picker-Upper
- What’s a “pokey picker upper,” you ask? This uniquely named idea implemented by Timothy Mitchell, highway operations supervisor for the Quartzsite Maintenance Unit, has allowed his team to spend less time transporting equipment to the shop and is creating savings in repair costs.
“When we were doing regular spot litter removal, the number of flat tires we were getting was so high, we needed to come up with a way to reduce that waste,” Mitchell said.
That push for a countermeasure became the idea of the pokey picker upper. - https://azdot.gov/adot-blog/pokey-picker-upper-tool-gives-maintenance-crews-pick-me
Iowa
- Bucket Extension
- Many times, riprap needs to be placed beneath bridges near the abutments or piers to prevent erosion. This is often very challenging due to clearance and slope issues. Sometimes benching of the slope is required which is both time consuming and disturbs stable vegetated areas.
The bucket extension allows for the placement of riprap beneath bridges from the top or deck portion of the bridge reducing time and additional slope disturbances. - https://iowaltap.iastate.edu/iowa-innovations/
New Hampshire
- Arrow Stencil
- Josh Brown with the Concord General Services team has won the 2021 University of New Hampshire Technology Transfer Center’s (T2) Build a Better Mouse Trap Competition.
Josh entered a new metal arrow stencil he developed for the purpose of painting arrows on the roadway to identify and point to stormwater drains, to facilitate snow removal from drains in the winter. Josh designed this stencil using an old one-way sign that he bent in a 90-degree angle and attached it to a metal pole to serve as a handle. The team paints hundreds of arrows a day. - https://t2.unh.edu/sites/default/files/media/press_release_josh_brown_build_a_better_mousetrap.pdf
Pennsylvania
- Snow Fence Winder
- For its winning entry, the Penn Township public works crew designed a winder that makes it easier to put up and take down snow fence. “The township has an aging workforce, and to be on our knees rolling up the snow fence can be difficult,” roadmaster Daryl Lefever says. “Rolling up snow fence in higher grass and corn stalks is also a problem.”
The crew came up with a way to use the hydraulics on its small dump truck to create a winder that rolls up the fencing on a metal rod. - https://gis.penndot.gov/BPR_PDF_FILES/Documents/LTAP/Summer2021NL_color.pdf
West Virginia
- Tack Coat Sprayer
- The steps involved with tack coat, from the initial mixing stage to transporting to applying to potholes needed to be more efficient. Previously, tack coat was taken to the job site in five-gallon buckets, mixed on-site, and applied using paint brushes or brooms to get the tack coat material into the hole. The tack coat sprayer allows our crew to mix and haul from 1-gallon to 55-gallons of tack and spray it instead of brushing or brooming it on. This makes the process quicker and more efficient. Being able to patch holes faster benefits both our crews and the traveling public. We have also made additional units for other maintenance crews within the WVDOH.
- https://www.wvltap.org/mousetrap
More details at: https://www.ltap.unl.edu/neltap/Build_A_Better_Mousetrap.asp