Abstract Manager

The Ministry of Transportation (MTO) has been developing construction tolerance specifications for highway cross slopes. As cross slope is one of the largest contributors to surface drainage of pavements and ultimately reducing hydroplaning on roadways, it is important to assess field conditions and make informed engineering decisions. Hand-held digital smart levels have been used in the inspection of highways for over three decades.  Over this time, many different devices have been available in the market and improvements have been made in the technology. However, the accuracy of the devices to rely upon for field data and quality assurance testing has not been established for this use. The Highway Design Office carried out field testing of industry adopted hand-held digital smart levels in a real-world setting to determine the precision, accuracy and reliability of these devices for measuring highway cross slope. A sampling of readily available hand-held digital smart levels were field tested and compared to field survey information. The results were further used to help inform decisions on the cross slope tolerance to be utilized in Ontario's new construction specification.