In the new feature 4 Questions With..., we shine a spotlight on various Resilient Roadways members, asking them four questions around the theme of resilience. This edition of “4 Questions” features a Q&A with Scott Edgecombe, President of Western Hemisphere for Tensar International. 

What is the relative importance of road resilience at Tensar?

For Tensar and the transportation industry the concept of road resilience is somewhat new, but I believe it has always been a part of what Tensar believes and does. Tensar has always been about innovative solution that delivers performance, and we have a lot of solutions and products that can offer resilience. Rom my viewpoint, this gets us really excited and we are confident we can be an active participant in how resilience is defined in the future.

What do you think is the biggest hurdles to developing more resilient road infrastructure?

The biggest hurdles are going to be the traditional methods in construction of these infrastructures. For example, the concept around the lowest cost wins. Also, there is no real definition around LCCA and no real definition around civic to resilience. There is also, right now, the unwillingness from public agencies to accelerate or sign off around the methods to deliver the type of innovation which can bring better value to the whole lifecycle.

What type of data needs to be gathered to understand and provide more resilient roads?

So I think it's in general, just what the cost is to provide the resilience, and whether we're willing to, as a society, to pay for it. At the end of the day, what is the actual cost, what is the resilience being delivered and how are we willing to pay for it? I believe as society we are starting to get fed up with things just not lasting the way they should. The tolerance is going down and people are looking for answers to make our infrastructure more robust and bounce back.

As an industry, how might we influence policy makers, politicians, to fund designing and building for resilient roads?

I do think there needs to be some leadership around the Federal level. For example the FHWA, they are generally not designing roads they are funding roads and they have low and pushing to mandate solutions. But, if we could get them to mandate design life or performance, this would trickle down to the DOTs and other agencies and it will demand adoption of innovative solutions that can provide this answer at reasonable costs. I believe we can do this with traditional methods and solutions that are cost effective.