From the first road built in Kenya at the end of the 19th century, the Mackinnon-Scalter Road, a one thousand kilometre ox-cart earth track from Mombasa to Busia, to the first tarmac roads in Nairobi in the early 20th century, the geographical outlay of our country has evolved vastly to the over 200,000 kilometres of road networks today.
At the heart of this evolution is construction companies that are tasked with the seemingly impossible role of transforming ragged terrains into smooth pathways. Like all other fields, technological advancements have transformed the road construction industry, from the steam powered rollers of the 1920’s to the complex heavy machinery being used today.
With this advancement, the quality and structure of roads globally has improved significantly, however, quality and delivery timelines are still a major concern in Kenya due to lack of reliable contactors, poor workmanship due to poor machinery, use of low quality materials and shortage in professionalism.
As road construction projects are expensive to finance, and with higher demand of accountability and return on investment from the public, the choice of contractor, machinery and materials will largely influence the industry in the future in meeting expected timelines, delivering on quality, as well as offering smart solutions to road users in the future.
Before delving into the factors that are going to influence construction of our future roads, it is important to understand how they are made and maintained to begin with, as the process points to the needs. This is a process that may not initially seem complex to the layperson, but one that involves a lot more work going on behind the scenes.
The first step in any road construction and maintenance project is properly planning and evaluating the needs it is intended to serve. Local traffic patterns both current and future should be studied, and a cost-benefit analysis should be performed to ensure there will be good value for the investment. Potential legal and environmental issues are addressed at this point.
The next phase in a typical construction project is the design. Surveyors will physically visit the site and use laser technology to pinpoint the alignment, shape, and direction of the road. Location, terrain and soil properties, potential water access and drainage issues, and the potential for future expansion in the immediate physical vicinity are all addressed during this phase of the project, as well as potential impact on nearby residents, if any.
This is the step that most people will recognise as road construction. The intent of this step is to provide a firm, stable foundation, and if not executed correctly, the road surface will definitely experience premature failure at some point. Embankments, levelling, fill, compacting, drainage and sewers are all installed and inspected before the project continues.
Most modern road construction companies employ either asphalt or concrete for this purpose, however, this may possibly change in the future with innovations in alternative materials. The physical surface of the road is created, smoothed, and trimmed off to the appropriate level, then sealed, connected, and reinforced to prevent cracks in the future.
After the surface is successfully constructed, typically another array of quality control tests will be performed to close out the project, before it is truly considered finished. Drainage will be checked again, grading levels, landscaping and rehabilitation, and everything else. If all tests get positive results, the road can be opened and is ready to use.
Over time, traffic and environmental effects will damage road surfaces, which require rehabilitation. Life expectancy of any road will be determined by a number of factors such as the environmental conditions of a place and usage, but a standard expectation of several decades of service can be expected for well-built roads, with major rehabilitation efforts performed every 10 years or so.
In the future, there will be four key factors that will influence the industry and its work: efficiency and turnaround times of contractors, machinery technology, materials sustainability and integrated designs.
There has been plenty of attention on vehicles and their impact on the environment. Stricter vehicle emission standards and an uptick in electric and hybrid vehicles have helped to reduce automotive pollution. Now that those numbers have improved, it’s easier to see that the roads themselves are part of the problem.
The process of creating asphalt involves heating bitumen, a form of petroleum, to make it soft and sticky. Asphalt production is one of the biggest energy-consuming industries, and the heat and carbon dioxide emitted during production can be harmful to the environment.
Roads made with asphalt also develop dips and dimples over time due to various reasons such as weather, or an increase in traffic. While these dimples may appear subtle, they require vehicles to expend more energy to climb out of them, decreasing fuel efficiency and increasing carbon emissions.
All these therefore raise the need to develop more environment friendly solutions such as alternative methods of production, called warm-mix asphalt which is produced at a lower temperature than traditional pavement, and minimises energy used and fumes produced.
An increase in road use means that roads will need to be more durable. Newly constructed roads can be built using new construction materials (such as plastic) in their asphalt mix. This construction method can make roads up to 60 percent stronger than conventional asphalt roadways, making them better suited to accommodate more vehicles per kilometre of road.
Existing roads will likely also have to undergo significant refurbishment to meet this new demand. Since these upgrades will be limited to a road’s top-most layers, they will be cheaper than building new roads from scratch.
Advent in new materials such as polymer-based dust control and soil stabilisation process cuts down on the number of steps needed to construct a road. They also make the process of road construction four to 10 times cheaper than traditional road construction.
By reducing the number of steps needed to build roads, and by making other steps obsolete, technology trends are expected to completely disrupt the traditional road-construction process, decreasing construction time and cost.
By 2035, 15 percent of light vehicles sold are expected to be fully autonomous. As the share of vehicles capable of functioning without human drivers grows, driving precision is anticipated to increase dramatically.
The additional accuracy could eliminate the need for lanes that are much wider than vehicles.
Either embedded in the structure of newly constructed roads or positioned around existing roads, will be used to guide vehicles, which will enable them to drive closer together, potentially increasing lane capacity by up to 50 percent. This approach is currently being tested in China.
Other technological advancements such as smart street lights and traffic control mechanisms will also need to be integrated in construction, as well as dedicated lanes for cyclists and pedestrians. Companies that are able to borrow these ideas and integrate them in their work will without a doubt have the lion’s share of construction work in the future.
Given the still significant amount of manual labour needed to build roads, automation is a promising opportunity that will improve productivity in this low-margin industry.
The initial surveying, for example, could be further automated through the use of lidar technology, reducing time and costs. Data from multiple sources could be fed into a digital representation of the physical asset-known as a digital twin.
Such digital models allow contractors to visualise the entire lifecycle of a road, optimising its performance. The use of 3-D machine-control excavation systems may serve as a proxy to gauge the potential from automation in the latter stages of road construction. These systems combine geo-location services with digital models to partially automate earthworks. Excavators equipped with such systems can carry out excavating or grading up to 30 percent faster than machines that don’t use a 3-D system.
As Kenya’s road construction industry continues to grow, local contractors will require to rethink their strategies to be at par with international competition.
Rethinking the approach to road construction as a whole will be critical. In addition to the other factors that cut down on cost and time, contractors must guarantee they have the know-how to use and integrate new advancements in technology in their work. Partnering with professional training institutions to ensure their curriculum factors in current and future trends, to ensure they produce a workforce that meets the industries need will be very important.
Professional regulatory bodies must also ensure they hold their members to the highest level of discipline, and demand quality from them.
There is no doubt that the road construction industry in Kenya will undergo an overhaul in the future. It is therefore the role of all contractors and those looking to get into the business to work with all partners, both in the private and public sector to ensure they stay competitive and remain relevant to future market needs.
