Welcome And Series Overview

Kim Swanson 0:02

Welcome to AASTHO Resource QA. We're taking time to discuss construction materials, testing, and inspection with people in the know, from exploring testing problems and solutions to laboratory best practices and quality management. We're covering topics important to you. We're here with Brian Johnson, and I'm Kim Swanson. And this is going to be the first in a three-part series talking about the changes to ASHTO R18 in the newest version, which was released in on July 31st, 2026. So over the next week or two, we're going to have three different episodes. And here you can watch the full recording on our YouTube channel, but here is the first episode.

Brian Johnson 0:50

Hi, this is Brian Johnson from AASHTO Resource.

Kim Swanson 0:54

And I'm Kim Swanson, also from AASHTO Resource. And today we're going to talk about AASHTO R18-26, what changed and why it matters.

Why R18-26 Took Years

Brian Johnson 1:05

That's right. And the reason the reason why we're talking about this now is because this standard, after many years of balloting, is finally ready for release. And as of today, it has been released.

Kim Swanson 1:19

Yes, it is released or has been released on July 31st, 2026. And question the previous version of this that was from 2018, correct?

Brian Johnson 1:32

That's right. Which is pretty old. So a typical standard has to be updated within uh eight years or it goes off the books. Now, this standard had gone through some um ballots over the years, but nothing that could finally get passed until last year. Uh and and it takes a while for it to get published. So this is this is the release of many years of edits coming to fruition.

Kim Swanson 2:04

Yes, I know you've worked really hard on these edits because R18 is the basis of AASHTO accreditation.

Brian Johnson 2:12

That's right. Yeah, the reason why it took so long is because it is such a critical standard. Uh that we've gotten a lot of feedback from people over the years on wording that they would like to see added or wording they would like to see removed or modified so that could be more clear and easier to understand. And that all sounds good, but then you go into the balloting process, uh, which uncovers a lot of different other ideas that maybe weren't originally intended and compromises. Uh, and and this is true with any standards development process. You have to address the negatives. Sometimes you have to address them in a way that wasn't exactly what you had in mind in the first place. But you if you can get consensus from the voting body uh on that wording, then that is a success. And and one thing that's really important to keep in mind with standards development, it's never done. So the this is the this is the 2026 version. There will be another version in the future and another version after that. I mean, it just keeps going as long as it's being used.

Kim Swanson 3:24

Yes, and this is, as you mentioned, a consensus standard, and it is created by the AASHTOne member states. So it's it's the Committee on Materials and Pavements, and those are all DOT uh employees, basically, right?

Brian Johnson 3:41

Right. Yeah, it it's typically the state materials engineers uh for the DOTs or the voting members in that group. And uh they they rely upon the experience of their staff to to get input when they're voting on these things. So if there's an area that they don't really understand or or don't have direct experience with, they can get feedback from their staff and bring that to the table.

Kim Swanson 4:07

Awesome.

Key Dates And What Changes When

Kim Swanson 4:08

So we I've said the new standards have been released as of the recording of this uh video. But what other important dates are important to know for uh people who use AASHTO R18?

Brian Johnson 4:21

Yeah, listen up, everybody. This is very important. The standard is out now. Uh, you have until January 1st to implement these changes uh as it pertains to being assessed for conformance to the requirements. So uh it's understood that it's gonna take a while for people to adopt some of these changes. Most of them are gonna be pretty easy, like there's nothing completely earth-shattering in here. Uh, but there are some new things that will have to be added to people's uh strategies, their quality management systems uh that they're going to want to update. So a lot of a lot of people go through iterations of up making updates in different times of the year. Uh, hopefully towards the end of the year, people can work on that this year so that starting next year they'll be able to be in conformance.

Kim Swanson 5:15

As far as ASHTO resource assessments and CCRL assessments, and that it's not really taking effect until the beginning of 2027, right? Just want to recap that. Okay.

Brian Johnson 5:28

Yep. Yeah, we'll start assessing in January, January 1st, uh, 2027 for these changes. Uh now it's understood that people are going to be making updates between now and then. So there may be some areas where they have to explain to the assessor, hey, we've implemented some of these already, uh, and we need to be uh certain that we are not writing non-conformities for people getting ahead of things. Uh so that that I have a feeling there will be times where that call gets called into question just because it's just the you know the nature of uh change is that it can be messy at times. So uh I do expect that that will probably happen at one point or another, but people just need to communicate uh openly about it and and we can get it resolved.

Kim Swanson 6:19

Yeah.

Removing Arbitrary Compliance Hoops

Kim Swanson 6:20

So you've talked about some of these already, but what were some of the other rationales for the update to the standard?

Brian Johnson 6:28

Well, uh, like I said earlier, a lot of it came out of feedback that we've gotten over the years. Uh and and it also came about because of uh just confusion with some of the requirements or uh norms that exist out there that were not exactly permitted the way the standard was worded, but it wasn't really intentional. Uh, I'll give you an example of that. The the uh requirement for position descriptions, for example, it said you had to have education as a requirement for position descriptions. However, uh for some positions, that's not considered to be relevant uh as a it's not a limiting factor when they're hiring for certain positions. So for them to list it just to meet a requirement is not really what anybody wants. Uh so now there's a uh just a little phrase that says we're relevant, and that allows them to shape their position descriptions based on what their needs are rather than some arbitrary requirement and a standard.

Kim Swanson 7:38

Yeah, so it's trying to remove some of the arbitrary hoops to jump through just for the sake of jumping through them.

Brian Johnson 7:46

Right. Yeah, the the goal is it's always continual improvement, right? With with with quality. And we we have we are trying to continually improve. The standards need to continually improve, and and that should lead to hopefully the laboratories adopting some of these changes that will lead to additional continual improvement at their uh facilities. You know, some people might say, well, you know, you keep talking a lot about accreditation requirements. You know, why are you writing this around accreditation requirements? I'm just speaking about accreditation requirements because I I work for an accrediting body and we see a lot of these things. So I I'm I'm talking about this a lot through the lens of the accrediting body, even though this really is for the laboratories for consistency uh and quality improvement. Um, it also does largely help the industry if everybody can be on the same page. Uh and why you know somebody might say, why is this stuff not just in your procedures manual and not in R18? Well, we're not the only game in town. Uh I mean, there are other accrediting bodies throughout the world that that might use AASHTO R18 as a basis for accreditation. Uh, and this will ensure conformance uh among the accrediting bodies that are accrediting to R18 rather than just, oh, well, if I go through AASHTO, they're gonna look at this, but if I go through this other organization, they're not gonna look at this because it's it's only in their procedures manual, not in the standard. So you really want to get anything important in the standard where where you can.

Kim Swanson 9:22

Yeah. So this is these changes and these types of changes, everyone sees a benefit outside of just AASHTO, right? So it's a benefit to the whole industry as a whole to have clarity and transparency around these things. Great point. Thank you for clarifying that.

Terminology Updates That Reduce Confusion

Kim Swanson 9:39

Well, and I noticed in the new standard um section three terminology has some improvements, so to speak.

Brian Johnson 9:46

Yeah, there there are some changes, and it and the reason for that is just because we want to make sure that everybody uh is speaking the same language. Like we're all understanding when it says this, this is what it means. And and the we don't want to one thing that's tricky about terminology and standards is you're you're really not supposed to define dictionary definition terms. However, we did valid those over the years because there was confusion about what those dictionary definition terms meant.

Kim Swanson 10:19

Yeah.

Brian Johnson 10:19

For example, in the past, we put date, we defined date as month, day, and year. Um, because we had people arguing with us that no year is good enough. It's like, well, that's not really a date.

unknown 10:31

Yeah.

Brian Johnson 10:31

Um, but it is it's part of a date.

unknown 10:34

Yeah.

Brian Johnson 10:34

So you get partial credit. Uh but this time we we defined some things like customer complaint. Uh, some people will say the reason why we're defining that is because some people say, Well, we don't have a customer. It's like, yeah, you have a customer. You might not, it might not be a paying customer, but you have a customer. Like you're so the what you're doing is for somebody, right?

Kim Swanson 10:56

Yeah, you're not doing this just for fun.

Brian Johnson 10:58

Yeah. So so we tried to define that. Uh, we we didn't, I wanted to define customer because of that issue, but I that that was one of those compromises that uh I wasn't really uh able to do that. But uh customer complaint is just a documented statement of dissatisfaction made by a laboratory's customer uh that may indicate a problem with the quality of service provided by the laboratory. So may indicate another area that is important, and and we get into that later when we get into the discussion about the requirement for how laboratory handles the customer complaint. Uh, and there's some other other documentation in there, other discussion and example that follows just kind of help um people understand it. Next, we uh another dictionary definition thing, name. So name comes up quite a bit.

Kim Swanson 11:51

That's what I was when I was first looking, I was like, oh, okay, I need more details on why this was added and all of that, because I don't know the background. So yeah, there's a backstory.

Brian Johnson 12:00

There's a backstory for years we had been seeing findings in uh some reports that indicated that the full name of a technician was not indicated. And we when we would get those, we would say, okay, well, what uh what's the problem here? Let's look at it. And sometimes there really wouldn't be a problem, it would be very clear who that person is in the org chart, and there you know, there wasn't really confusion about it, but it wasn't the person's first and last name. Uh, but that is not really critical. Uh, so we define name as just the identification of a person, document, piece of equipment, or other entity. So it's a broad definition on purpose so that someone does not take the word name and say, well, this is a specific thing that I think it is. So the the idea is it just gets everybody on the same page.

unknown 13:07

Yeah.

Brian Johnson 13:08

So there's not confusion.

Kim Swanson 13:10

So the it's the a unique identifier, is what I'm hearing.

Brian Johnson 13:14

So that if we have typically unique, yeah. So for like a name of a person, it needs to be unique. But there are times where it's like, you know, the name of the equipment, uh, you know, like uh, well, it's a shaker. Uh yeah, okay. Or, you know, so there are times where name is used. So we had to, I originally did ballot unique identifier, but then yeah, I was presented with several examples where the word name is used where it's not unique. So we're like, okay, we're just gonna make it broad. But that broadness in itself, even though it doesn't sound like it's clarifying because it's so general, but it it does clarify that it's not gonna be that specific sometimes, and that's okay.

Kim Swanson 13:50

Okay, but you do need if you have, you know, 10 Johns working in your office, then you do need to somehow differentiate the Johns on paperwork and things like that.

Brian Johnson 14:03

You do, and we do have that problem in our office. We have yes, I shouldn't say problem, but it's not really a problem that we have so many people named John.

Kim Swanson 14:10

Yes.

Brian Johnson 14:11

It would be a problem if we just wrote John everywhere and no one knew which one it was.

Kim Swanson 14:16

Exactly.

Brian Johnson 14:16

Lack of accountability for the for the John group.

Kim Swanson 14:19

For all the Johns.

Brian Johnson 14:20

Yes. Uh but then we've also got uh original observation that comes up. You know, what is an original observation? Uh so what we what we define that as is the first recorded instance of data, whether handwritten or digital, before any transcription or transfer occurs. Okay. I like that one. I I I hadn't read that for a while. I I'm I'm pretty satisfied with that. But we'll see. I'm sure somewhere along the line we'll find out that somebody had a problem with it.

Kim Swanson 14:50

And then we'll more changes in the future to make the that's right. Again, continual improvement.

Brian Johnson 14:56

Yeah, resolution of measurement instrument was another one. Uh this is surprisingly uh difficult to define, but it's the smallest quantity of measurement that results in a change to the measurement displayed on the measurement device. Now that sounds tricky. Um it so there are um you can't say the smallest quantity of measurement, period, because that could be anything, right? It could be the tiniest little adjustment, right? Um, it has to be what results in an actual change in the displayed measurement. So where we see this uh most evident uh as a differentiation is some of the calipers where the last the last measurement um that in the decimal place is a is a five. So that there's some tipping point where it will go from zero to five and then to the next zero. Uh but it it's it it's that smallest quantity of measurement that results in the change to the measurement displayed on the measurement device. Awesome.

Kim Swanson 16:00

And those are the major those are the big ones.

Brian Johnson 16:04

Those are the big ones defined. Other other terms were dumped uh in there that were kind of scattered throughout the document. So there were a couple of terms that were put in notes for some reason uh that should have been in terminology the whole time. So we just relocated those.

Kim Swanson 16:20

Awesome.

QMS Examples Move To The Website

Kim Swanson 16:22

All right. Now going on to I know this has been kind of a change that's been working that we've been working on for a while because I'm been personally part of the last half of this.

Brian Johnson 16:33

Yeah, you know this one very well.

Kim Swanson 16:34

I know that I know this one, and that doesn't happen. I'm not gonna be able to say that for many of the other sections here, but for this one, um, the appendix of the standard has been removed. So the example QMS documents have been removed from the standard and moved to the ASHTO resource website in the document library section. We have a bunch of examples there. Can you explain a little bit of why we've made that change?

Brian Johnson 17:02

Absolutely. The the this has been a problem for a really long time. Uh, as you mentioned in the beginning, this was a 2018 version, which means that all the examples were also 2018 versions. And even though we have found much better ways to create examples and we've seen much better examples of different documents and uh forms out there, we have not been able to easily present updated ones to people uh to help clarify things. So um the best solution was really just get rid of this appendix completely. And if people want to see good examples, we can post them on our website. Uh, that one I wasn't really sure if we would get agreement on uh from the subcommittee, but they did like that and agreed with it. And it allows us to do some really great things with our examples. So they're not going to be uh uh just a flat PDF document. Uh we have the ability to put Excel documents in there that have calculations that are helpful for people uh because some of them are not evident uh when you look at the requirements, like how you calculate this. Um so we we were trying to be strategic about the way we create and display these examples and which ones we have and which ones we don't. Uh, the idea is not to give everybody a fill-in-the-blank uh quality management system, uh, but we did want to have a few examples so that people could could get off uh on the right foot when they're creating if they're a new lab, when they're creating their quality management system, they'll know exactly what kind of information they need to provide and what it should generally look like. And then we also tried to add ones where we we know that people are confused or we regularly see uh problematic records, and we can say, no, this is really how you do it. And and that that is helpful for people if they use it. And we don't want them to just use it straight up. They can they can take it and and convert it to their own format, but at least they'll have the cells uh that they can use for their own.

Kim Swanson 19:10

Yeah, so this is an example, not a mandatory you're have you have to do it this way. So just to be clear, this is what it could look like. And this the one that we show as an example does meet all the requirements of the standard, but you can have more information if you need that for that, like for the person or the the laboratory, if they need somehow more information or whatever, they can make it work and add to it. But that is kind of you know that meets the requirement in the examples, right?

Brian Johnson 19:40

That that's right. And the other the other problem is that in R18, when you put a an example, it's generally gonna be a one-page uh shot of whatever that is. And that doesn't really work if you want to have an in an effective internal audit, for example, or an effective management review is not going to be a one-pager.

unknown 19:59

Yeah.

Brian Johnson 20:00

So this allows us to give a good example that has the uh the right kind of questions on it, instead of trying to shoehorn everything into a one pager uh that really is not sufficient for for an effective internal audit or an effective management review.

Kim Swanson 20:17

Yeah, you don't want to necessarily have the document example limited just for layout purposes and publication purposes. That doesn't make sense to do it that way.

Brian Johnson 20:27

Correct.

Part Two Preview And Contact Info

Kim Swanson 20:28

And we'll be back with part two uh coming up shortly. Thank you. Thanks for listening to AASHTO Resource QA. If you'd like to be a guest or just submit a question, send us an email at podcast at ashto resource.org. Or call Brian at two four oh four three six four eight two oh. For other news and related content, check out AASHTO Resources social media accounts or go to AASHTO Resource dot org.