Effective road construction and maintenance cannot exclude the use of Cold Asphalt. The use of cold asphalt reduces fatality rate on the nation’s highways as prompt attention is paid to patching of potholes. Presently, if pothole of a square meter (1m²) is to be patched, hot asphalt would not readily be available for such a small square meter patch since no asphalt plant will batch asphalt for a one square meter patch. As a result, potholes are opened and left for days for accidents to occur.

With Cold Asphalt, one can place a few bags in the booth of the car, depending on the number and size of potholes, patch the potholes no matter how small, and then roll with vehicle tires. In effect, one man can patch a pothole with ease. It requires less equipment and is less labor intensive as only one man can patch and roll with vehicle tires. Cold asphalt could either be produced at ambient temperature and laid at cold or produced at elevated temperature and laid at ambient temperature. FERMA COLD asphalt is produced at elevated temperature and laid at ambient temperature.

FERMA COLD Asphalt now known as Blemddan Cold asphalt is the first ever indigenous government owned cold asphalt produced from 100 % locally available materials. The production process involves specially formulated concentrate which allows for a superior bonding strength that effectively ‘binds’ the aggregate tightly together to produce a strong, trafficable, long lasting and skid resistance waterproof surface. It is unique, in that it satisfies the engineering properties of binder and wearing course Marshal mix design FMW&H specification of the conventional hot mixed asphalt in addition to immersion index% test/boiling test. FERMA Cold Asphalt is a high- performance cold patch pavement material that is easily applied any time of the year under any weather condition. The advantage of cold asphalt is that it can be produced and used especially in the yuletide period (mid December – mid January) and also in the rainy seasons when most commercial asphalt plant are not operational.

FERMA cold asphalt has so far been used for direct labour works by FERMA in almost all states including highly trafficked Benin-Shagamu road and Third Mainland bridge in Lagos. The report has been very promising.

Until recently Cold Asphalt has not been popular in the nation’s road maintenance program. A lot of road product vendors have introduced different kinds of cold asphalt from within and outside the country to the Federal Roads

Maintenance Agency (FERMA) yet cold asphalt has not been fully introduced into the nations highway program. In 2011, FERMA decided to award /pilot study (research contract) projects to the underlisted contractors with the purpose of studying the efficacy in terms of service performance and also availability of the product for use as additional or complementary to the use the of hot mix asphalt for road works. The pilot study involved four different types of cold asphalt including in-house cold asphalt produced in-house by FERMA Research and Development Division (See table enclosed). The terms of reference of this report is on the performance and efficacy of the cold asphalt pilot study which would indirectly be used as a criterion for payment of claims in the interim certificates among other objectives.