This year’s Roadway Management Conference (RMC) was held in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and the 190 or so attendees praised the three-day event that benefited from great weather, excellent technical speakers, outdoor demonstrations, and lots of in-person social networking.
The Mid-Atlantic Region (PA, WV, MD, VA, DE) was back in person October 6-8 with this year’s RMC. In recent years, the annual conference, optimized to operations and maintenance personnel, was held in Gettysburg, PA and then Ellicott City, MD, but our plans for Charlottesville had to go virtual in 2020 and the Virginia LTAP Center switched gears on a dime to lead a great success. We rolled the dice for 2021 and caught a break on the weather, the pandemic, and well, everything. It was another great success, according to the many attendees that praised our collective efforts throughout the conference.
Our three-day conference was attended this time by about 190 folks from each of the five region states and a handful from farther away. As usual, we had a diverse array of technical and other speakers dealing with pavement management, pipe installation, inspection, winter maintenance, automated vehicles, ethics, a bunch of management and personnel topics, and a series of safety elements.
For our general sessions, we heard from some FHWA friends like John McFadden, Danielle Mathis-Lee, and Jeff Zaharewicz, as well as local leaders, such as Shanté Hastings, DelDOT’s Deputy Secretary and Chief Engineer. In our breakout sessions, we benefited from a collection of subject matter experts from across the region; with 18 breakouts and even more speakers, they are too numerous to list here. But for most of our speakers, you can find a copy of their slides at the 2021 website; find them under Agenda and click on More Info.
Of course, Wally the Work Zone Warrior was on hand and about a dozen highly relevant vendors gave attendees an ability to grill representatives and kick the tires. But another cornerstone of the RMC is our demonstrations and this year we were treated by DelMarVa Power and their natural gas safety trailer, a work zone cone deployment and retrieval demonstration using DelDOT’s cone trailer, a brush chipper safety walk-around, and a variety of pavement restoration and repair demonstrations. We were able to film some of the demonstrations and the first edited one is now up on Delaware T2 Center’s YouTube channel – the cone deployment trailer. More will follow so feel free to subscribe to see more in coming weeks.
The Atlantic Sands Hotel and Conference Center in Rehoboth Beach proved to be another great location for the RMC, providing lots of opportunities in the evening for attendees to stroll around town, see live entertainment, and enjoy seafood and other local delights (such as Delaware-famous Dolles salt water taffy and perhaps the best hot-fudge sundae on the east coast). These after-hours activities, organized or free-form, prove to be an effective way to link up folks from across the region and lasting relationships are borne that can be beneficial for years for local personnel looking to see how others solve problems they experience themselves.
We owe a huge thanks to a host of folks that helped us deliver a great conference this year. The Atlantic Sands and the City of Rehoboth Beach were excellent hosts and helped make a lot of things easy. DelDOT’s team provided a VMS, ensured that Wally made it to the conference, and demonstrated cone deployment and retrieval. Some thirty speakers attended from all over the region and brought thought-provoking ideas for our attendees. A dozen vendors answered endless tough questions from our attendees. Several of them provided demonstrations outside to further illustrate how their products work and how they could best be used. DelMarVa Power provided a powerful explanation of how the natural gas system works and the best practices for safety along all areas of the system. Slurry Pavers sponsored our refreshment breaks and Pennoni provided the conference bags. The American Concrete Pipe Association hosted a happy hour for participants. Finally, some attendees drove a long way to be at the conference, immersed themselves in the technical issues, met new colleagues, and joked and carried on with us for three days. Our goal was a casual conference where we can all learn new things to take back home with us and all these stakeholders banded together to make it happen.
With Rehoboth Beach in the books, the Mid-Atlantic Region staff are exhausted, but it is time to start planning 2022, when we look to return to West Virginia. Exact venue and dates are still in development, but watch this space for details because we would love to see a strong Delaware contingent at next year’s RMC.
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