District 3's Carl Vaughn named Maintenance Person of the Year

ITD honored Carl Vaughn, lead worker for District 3’s Hammett area, as the 2013 Maintenance Person of the Year for his tireless efforts to provide safe travel. The selection was announced at last week’s Transportation Board meeting in Boise by retiring Chief Engineer Tom Cole.

Vaughn has been lead worker at Hammett the past nine years (since June 2005) and has worked for ITD since 2002. He received the “Road Scholar,” Level 1 certificate from the Idaho T-2 center in 2009.

Colleagues who nominated Vaughn for the award listed the following major accomplishments in his first 12 years at ITD:

  • Carl provided assistance to the Interstate 84, MP 90 to MP 114 ASR Cracking Mitigation Study by doing necessary calculations and programming the spray truck for the proper application rate of Lithium Nitrate and applied the material. During and after the project, Carl received praise from the Federal Highway Administration for his willingness to help and for his expertise in the operation of the application equipment. During this project, Carl trained another individual on the programming and operation of the application equipment and assisted in setting up an instruction book to train future operators.

  • Carl installed a 2,500-foot fence and gate around a material source in Glenns Ferry. He designed the fence in accordance with the Standard Drawings, and the job was completed in less than three days.

  • Carl coordinated an asphalt overlay on the Hammett railroad overpass. He arranged for the county highway district to assist with a paving machine and roller at no cost to the state. He arranged all the details to include staging the equipment, gathering the necessary materials, ensuring the proper personnel were available and ready, and he developed a workable and safe traffic control plan.

  • A new business moved onto a vacant lot on the Hammett Business loop and had problems with water draining off the road into the lot. Carl designed and built a storm water catch basin to solve the problem.

  • Carl is always looking for ways to improve production. He located a self-propelled shoulder-building machine in District 4 and arranged to borrow it. Under Carl’s direction the crew was able to build up and repair the shoulder slopes on I-84 from milepost 90 to 114 in three weeks, half the estimated time. Shoulders also were repaired on U.S. 20 and Idaho 51.
    Carl developed and presented a winter safety program to more than 400 students at the Mountain Home North Elementary School.

  • He identified the need for a snow fence on U.S. 20 and planned one that was cost effective. He decided on a living snow fence and orchestrated the entire project by contacting the appropriate agencies to get ideas from experienced contractors. He implemented the project and saved the department thousands of dollars in the process by finding agencies willing to donate material and equipment and finding the best purchase prices and equipment that needed to be rented.

  • Carl worked as an inspector on a project to repair the concrete slopes on Cold Springs Creek in Hammett. He identified additional repairs that were not in the contract and came up with a solution that saved the department nearly $8,000 by using the Hammett Maintenance crew and the Idaho Department of Correction road crew. Also during the Cold Springs project, he identified the need for an unexpected repair that was completed on the spot. Carl developed a fix that was approved by the maintenance engineer and found the necessary materials for the project locally. He also used maintenance forces to haul the material to the site, saving the department the hauling cost and further delays of the project.

  • Carl discovered a drop-box grate on I-84 at milepost 120 on the right shoulder that had come loose and was run over and destroyed. Carl had the grate rebuilt at a local welding and fabrication shop, resulting in the quick repair of a serious traffic hazard. Carl can be counted on to handle any situation, including emergencies.

  • A company hauling large windmills to a customer in Glenns Ferry did not have the room needed to make the turns off the interstate and through Glenns Ferry. Carl worked with city and county officials and developed a plan to widen approaches and temporarily relocate signs to ensure safe delivery of the windmills. Carl puts a priority on the needs of the public, and is always ready assist.

  • He always looks for ways to improve operations and save money in the process. Carl has made some improvements in the equipment used for crack sealing. A swivel adapter was installed on the sealant applicator, eliminating the need for a person to squeegee behind the applicator. He also found a backpack blower to clean the pavement cracks before sealing, which has eliminated the need for an air compressor, a truck to tow the air compressor and a person to drive the truck. The cost savings from those changes will easily pay for the modifications in less than two days.

  • Carl developed two PowerPoint presentations, one on the living snow fence that he designed and built on U.S. 20, which he presented at the annual state foreman’s meeting, and the other on improvements he made to the crack filling equipment and operation. That presentation was given at the June 2013 District 3 foreman’s meeting.

  • He had two I-84 ramps in the Hammett area that were particularly troubled by litter. He found some concrete trash cans that another district was giving away and placed one at both ends of the littered ramps. The litter problem went away. Now he spends 15 minutes a week emptying two cans instead of two hours picking up scattered trash.

  • Carl focuses on projects from the annual work plan to ensure the work in his assigned area is completed, and then presses on to assist others. Carl always makes time to take on extra tasks. Because of improvements he made this year, the district was been able to run two or three projects simultaneously that normally would not have been possible. With fewer people needed to fill cracks, the district began roadside mowing in May instead of July, and was able to mow a larger area.

  • Carl also designed a modification to the shoulder-building machine that now allows maintenance workers to add material to eroded shoulders behind guardrail, saving hundreds of man-hours annually.

Several years ago Carl put a road kill composting operation in place at the Hammett Maintenance yard, providing a way to dispose of road kill without having to haul them to a landfill.

His efforts are well known and respected. Representatives from another ITD district recently asked about the process he used to create a composting facility since many landfills no longer accept road-kill animals.

Published 11-29-13