CIHT Qatar Group organized a technical seminar for Highways and Transportation professionals on “Challenges in Pavement Structure Design in Qatar” which was held on March 17, 2019.

Dr. Mohammed Sadeq, Pavement & Materials Engineer and General Manager and Ahmad Al Tawalbeh, Civil Engineer, Seero Engineering Consulting LLC, were the guest speakers who delivered their presentation from their expertise point of view. In the first session Dr. Mohammed Sadeq described the procedure of pavement structure design including AASHTO 1993 empirical method and Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design method.

In the second session of the seminar, Ahmad Al Tawalbeh described the main challenges including some limitations of Qatar Highway Design Manual and Qatar Strategic Transport Model which are mainly related to traffic survey, growth rate, truck factor, seasonal variation, and construction traffic. He proposed some recommendations based on case study where the main points were to prepare a separate guideline to design pavement structure. He also emphasis on the necessity of Heavy Good Vehicle statistics, specific pavement design inputs, and standard traffic counting system in Qatar.

Pavement design is a real challenge in Qatar which is one of the key factors in highway and road projects. It governs the major cost of the construction and therefore it is very essential to conduct an optimum design to save huge amount of resources and maintain environmental sustainability. It is the time to take initiatives to develop and improve the pavement design specifications and guidelines through the collaboration between Government organizations, Consultants, Academic, and Contractors in Qatar.

The presentation was well received by the audience, with a detailed question and answer session following the main presentation. This seminar is part of CIHT Qatar Group’s events. The Group thank their sponsors AECOM, BG&E, DCE, Egis, Fugro, Muhel, PAF, Salfo, Seero and WSP for their generous contribution to the event.