A Letter From President Todd Ryne

Dear Members,

Last month, we had a great Annual meeting in San Antonio, TX along with our other PPRA organizations, ARRA and ISSA.  The theme of this year’s meeting was Sustainability.  The presentations and other meeting details are located in the Members Only section on aema.org.

Highlights of the General Session included:

• Sustainability story of Oklahoma City by keynote speaker, Mick Cornett, former Oklahoma City Mayor
• TX DOTs plan for Pavement Preservation, by Buddy Williams of TXDOT
• FHWA Sustainable Pavement Program, by Heather Dylla of FHWA
• Panel discussions on Sustainability with Industry Organization Leaders and Executives
• Vario Consulting conducted a stimulating session on using RoadResource.Org  and how it’s improving the industry.

To enhance RoadResource.org, the Marketing Committee is continually looking for your help with testimonials of successful pavement preservation projects to show as examples and convince road owners to use Pavement Preservation and Recycling.

At this year’s Awards Breakfast:

• Logon County IL, Asphalt Materials Inc., Tri-State Asphalt, Dunn Company and Micro Surfacing Contractors were awarded the Past Presidents Award for the Logon County Highway 25 Road Improvement Project.      
• The AEMA Excellence in Manufacturing Award was achieved by 31 new locations and 21 locations renewed their certification.  To receive the award, the operations are required to meet a comprehensive list of manufacturing, safety, quality control and operating requirements. 

After a positive feedback at last year’s annual meeting, we again had short promotional presentations given by our generous sponsors.  The presentations were given during the general and association sessions in addition to the promotional exhibits during networking sessions in the exhibition hall.

We had a total of 372 registered attendees which was close to the record attendance two years ago. Our next two annual meetings will be in Tampa, FL followed by La Jolla, CA.

In March our fourth annual Manufacturers Volume Survey was sent to manufacturing members. We strongly encourage members to participate in this confidential survey.

Our members should also be aware that the AEMA Board completed our annual review of our association strategy.  Over 70% of our objectives are completed or have made significant progress, for the strategy that was developed back in 2017.  The board plans to update our strategy at our June meeting.  

Our PPRA Sustainability Committee had its first face to face meeting at the Annual Meeting to develop a plan to complete our Sustainability objective to demonstrate the sustainability of Asphalt Emulsions, Pavement Preservation and Recycling.

In closing, thank you for your membership and participation in AEMA. Please feel free to reach out to our board, committee members or CM Services with any questions or suggestions.

Thank You,
Todd Ryne
AEMA President