Fabick Joint Seal - WisDOT "joint" project Sealed and Delivered New ideas can sometimes come in strange forms and in unlikely places. Take Dale Kitelinger, who found inspiration in the back of his truck. He and Steve Wiswell work for the state Department of Transportation's Travel Survey Shop, a bureau responsible for maintaining those sensors embedded in state highways that track how many cars travel on Wisconsin roads and how much the cars weigh. 
The WisDOT and Fabick, Inc. Teams WisDOT has hundreds of these sensors scattered around the state, and the agency uses the data they produce to help determine where to spend its $1 billion roadway improvement budget. The only problem is that the state installs or replaces about 100 of these sensors each year, and the sealant WisDOT once used to keep them in place took at least 24 hours to dry, leading to unwanted lane closures. To make matters worse, three years ago the sealant manufacturer changed the glue's formula, and the Travel Survey Shop discovered that the new product damaged some sensors or caused other to wear out prematurely. This meant that WisDOT had to replace even more sensors, compounding the number of lane closures, to say nothing of increased costs since each replacement runs up a $2,000 tab. It got so bad that the sealant problem threatened to shut down installation crews for an entire summer. 
FJS FX 1.1 on the street Then Kitelinger thought of the new pickup truck he bought a few years before...and he remembered talking to the manufacturer about the bedliner sealant, which had dried quickly and maintained its seal, said Joe Nestler, WisDOT's chief of State Highway Program Development. The sealant was a product known as Fabick Joint Seal FX 1.1, manufactured by Fabick, Inc. of Madison. Kitelinger and Wiswell got a sample of FJS FX 1.1 and tested it out on a site in Dane County. It worked, sealing in hours, doing no damage to the sensor and holding its place across a wide range of temperatures. The sealant didn't provide just a quick fix, either, as it held up over the long-term and even extended the life of the sensors, Nestler said.
"To me, this is really championing," he said. "This is a group of folks who are constantly looking to improve. They're constantly running into problems and refusing to quit."
Based on the success and additional positive tests, WisDOT last year made a wholesale shift to Fabick Joint Seal. The switch has helped a local manufacturer, shortened lane closure times and prolonged the life of the freeway sensors.
The agency has estimated that Wiswell and Kitelinger saved $43,000 in the first year and as much as $130,000 for every year thereafter.
Word has quickly spread. A national supplier to the traffic engineering industry verified the success of FJS FX 1.1 and put it in the annual product catalog....To See Full Article please go to Daily Reporter/WIBuilder/Innovator | 
