1  Welcome

Welcome to the Washington State Department of Transportation's Pavement Guide Interactive.  This document (or "Guide" for short) is a multimedia CD-ROM based document whose primary purpose is to provide a general pavement overview covering all aspects from materials to design to construction to maintenance.  Many sections offer supplemental information beyond this general overview in a series of in-depth or WSDOT practices pages.  It functions as a “Web site” that resides on a CD-ROM and requires only a PC/Mac and minimal freeware to access the information.  All total, it consists of 275 Web pages, 2500 images, 50 animations, 14 videos, and 11,000 hyperlinks.  The following subsections describe the target audience and intended function of the WSDOT Pavement Guide Interactive.

1.1  Target Audience

In a broad sense, this WSDOT Pavement Guide Interactive is motivated by the desire to assist those both inside and outside the pavement community including contractors, government agencies, private consultants as well as future industry members.  As a result, it is applicable at a broad range of potential users including engineers, architects, technicians, equipment operators, inspectors, managers and college/vocational students.

1.2  Function

The WSDOT Pavement Guide Interactive functions both as a learning tool and a ready reference; users can learn about pavements as well as use it as a reference to look up typical values, methods, practices and resources.  Learning is comparable to that of an instructor-led classroom course and locating information for reference is relatively straightforward.  Specific motivation for the Pavement Guide Interactive is multifold:

• Provide a multimedia, interactive product that will benefit those who want basic pavement knowledge.  As such, this Guide can be useful for Federal, State and local agencies, inspectors, design consultants, contractors, operators and students.
• Provide in one interactive product, the major features associated with designing and delivering pavements.
• Improve the connection between different pavement aspects such as mix design, structural design, construction, and maintenance/rehabilitation.
• Increase awareness of included products and documents such as MultiCool, a multi-layer flexible pavement cooling simulation for use in construction operations.

1.2.1  Self-Directed Learning Tool

The WSDOT Pavement Guide Interactive is a self-directed learning tool.   The term “self-directed learning” refers to learning and teaching methods that rely on the direction and guidance of the learner such as distance learning, and learning from computers or video.  As a learning tool, the Guide is designed to provide you with:

1. A broad and well-rounded introduction to pavement in the areas of pavement types, materials, design considerations, mix design, structural design, construction, quality assurance, specifications, evaluation, maintenance and rehabilitation, and pavement management.
2. The option to explore in-depth information and WSDOT practices where applicable.
3. The option to investigate other sources of information on the Web or in print form through the use of extensive references.

After covering a pavement concept in the WSDOT Pavement Guide Interactive, you should, in general, be able to:

• Describe the pavement concept covered
• Describe the importance of this concept
• Describe when this concept applies
• Describe the typical equipment, methods and procedures used
• Discuss and interpret typical measurement values encountered
• Apply this concept in actual practice

1.2.2  Pavement Reference

The WSDOT Pavement Guide Interactive is also an extensive pavement reference.  Users can browse the Guide or use the search tool to look up typical values, methods, practices and resources.  It can also be used to assemble multimedia pavement presentations or lectures through simple cut-and-paste of text, pictures, videos and animation.

The rest if this introductory module provides a bit of pavement history as well as a brief overview of pavements today.