I-4 Ultimate Wins International Award

I-4 Ultimate at night

The Best Transport Project award was given to Florida’s I-4 Ultimate at the 2015 P3 Awards ceremony, held October 8 in New York City. P3 (public-private partnership) Bulletin annually hosts this award ceremony to review and distinguish the most outstanding projects throughout North and Latin America.  Among many entries, the $2.3 billion highway project was recognized for its scale, complexity, and overall performance.

Stretching through Orlando, the I-4 Ultimate project is a massive makeover of 21 miles of highway.  It includes over a dozen reconstructed interchanges, 74 rebuilt bridges, 53 new bridges, and construction of four new express lanes. The most compelling example of the benefits of this model project though, according to the P3 Awards judges, “is the fact that the project could be delivered 20 years sooner than if conventional procurement was considered”.

The award-winning project team consists of companies that design, build, finance, operate, and maintain the facility.  This includes a partnership between Florida DOT and I-4 Mobility Partners. Within the I-4 Ultimate team are the pavement engineering specialists at The Transtec Group in Austin, Texas, who provided the pavement design. With the use of Transtec’s Alternative Technical Concepts (ATCs), contractors were able to significantly accelerate the rate of pavement construction. Transtec’s Chief Engineer Robert Rasmussen noted, “An ATC that truly understands local conditions can significantly reduce cost and risk while improving performance.  Fortunately, our innovative ideas were implemented by the team and helped deliver such a successful highway project.”

I-4 Ultimate includes a variety of other innovative benefits from Transtec’s pavement design such as better traffic flow, shorter travel times, increased safety, and the use of recycled and reused materials for greater environmental responsibility. This highway’s new efficiency will set a new standard for future Florida DOT highway projects, and potentially others across the Americas.


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