A new road construction season has undoubtedly come to its rights: large-scale works have been launched both on the republican road network, and on regional and local roads in most parts of our country. Congratulatations! In light of this, information about our Unified Base of road construction materials is especially relevant.

When we started to develop the Base last year, we admit that we ourselves did not expect such a scale. But, as they say, one gets an appetite when one eats. Having established a survey and digitisation of quarry, and having built a system for introduction of new materials and technologies, as one friendly team we started to implement one idea after another! As the great writer Mark Twain said: «A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds». By implementing one idea after another, studying the existing problems in parallel, and offering our own solutions, we are moving towards our main goal - to be useful to the industry! And we are already receiving positive feedback regarding the Database, the registry of new materials, and the map of ABZ. As of today, over 500 users have already registered in the Database, including design engineers, technical and author's supervision engineers, material suppliers, departmental organisations and other parties involved in road construction. Expressing our sincere gratitude to all those who supported us, we are pleased to announce the pilot implementation of the "Unified Base of road construction materials" information system. The pilot implementation period is 1 year. During this period we and you will have time to test the efficiency and reliability of the Base and to develop new areas.

Our platform keeps evolving. We have continued to survey the quarries of the country with the inclusion of new quarries in the GIS-map, testing of modern materials and technologies. New tabs appeared in our Database: registry of technical safety equipment, registry of accredited laboratories. A digital catalogue of modern road construction machinery and mechanisms (Registry of Machinery and Mechanisms) is currently being developed, which is a list of new and innovative machinery and mechanisms for road construction, the purpose of which is to collect information on new machinery used for updating technological maps. Work has started on a survey of manufacturers and the creation of a Registry of Mineral Powder Manufacturers. Road marking paints are being tested in different parts of the country, and we will inform you about the results in the next issues of the magazine.

Our goal is to create a single digital tool where any material, technique, quarry, factory, laboratory - everything related to road construction can be quickly and conveniently found. In general, our Department of Road Construction Materials and New Technologies continues to show good results, and we have demonstrated our ability to introduce new ideas and realise them for the benefit of road construction. We are always open and looking forward to your suggestions!