ASPHALTopics | Fall 2015 | VOL 28 | NO 3

Meet Vince
by Abigail Wright Pereira
Vince at the Grand Old Opry
in Nashville with his daughter
Amanda in the spring 2015.
EDUCATION
University of Toronto B.A.Sc.
(Civil Engineering) 1982
EXPERIENCE
1982-84 Chih S Huang and
Associates, Geotechnical
Engineer
1985-88 Peto McCallum,
Project Engineer
1990-94 MTO, Senior Bituminous
Engineer
1994-95 JEGEL, Senior Pavement
and Materials Engineer
1995-97 Advanced Asphalt
Technologies, Director
of Technical Services
1997-99 Golder Associates,
Senior Materials Engineer
1999-2005 OHMPA/Asphalt Institute,
Technical Director
2005-08 Bitumar Inc., Ontario
Asphalt Sales Manager
2008-15 DBA Engineering Ltd.,
Manager of Pavement
Engineering Services
2015 - OHMPA, Executive Director
PERSONAL
Married with four children aged 18-25
Over a decade and a half has passed since the first
“Meet Vince Aurlio” article graced the inside pages of
Asphaltopics. It was the summer of 1999 when Vince came to
OHMPA as its first technical director. That summer the Toronto
Blue Jays were hot, finishing third in the American League East Division,
and the hot button issue of the hot mix asphalt industry as cited by Vince
was building quality pavements that last. Fast forward 16 years, the
Blue Jays are even hotter, and according to Vince the challenges
facing the industry remain the same.
For over thirty years Vince has been a tremendous supporter of and
contributor to the road building community. I sat down with Vince to
talk about what he is looking forward to as he takes to the helm of the
association as Executive Director and to also tell a bit about himself.
What influenced you as a young person to become
interested in engineering?
A: Starting at the age of 10, I would spend summers back
in my parents’ home town of Vitulazio, Italy, which is about
35 kilometers north of Naples. In between summer school
math and Italian classes, I worked on my uncle’s farm picking grapes to produce
the family wine for the year and threading tobacco leaves for air-curing. Just
behind the town there were several small hills that were being mined for
limestone; at five o’clock each day the alarms would sound to signal the start
of blasting operations. Watching the operations at the quarry piqued my
interest in learning about geology and how things work. Additionally, I think
a combination of having a diverse education, learning a good work ethic at
an early age, and just enjoying taking things apart and putting them back
together again set me on the course to study geotechnical engineering.
Q: As you started your career, what led you to the asphalt industry?
A: Early in my career I was a project engineer with Peto McCallum (PML). At first
they wanted me to work on concrete projects, but to me concrete was not as
exciting as hot mix asphalt. There were not a lot of applications when it came to
building roads, and working with asphalt provided me with more opportunities.
Early on I had the opportunity to work on some prominent asphalt jobs where
I did forensics. I was fortunate to work with several good people, including
Phillip Sun (PML) from whom I learned a great deal about engineering
materials and properly building a road from the ground up. After that I was
hooked and continued to focus my career on improving asphalt pavements.
Q: Prior to becoming OHMPA’s first Technical Director in 1999, when
did you first become involved with OHMPA?
A: I first became involved with OHMPA in 1997 when I came back from
working in the U.S. to work for Golder Associates. Teri McKibbon (1998
OHMPA President) invited me to speak about Superpave and Performance
Grade Asphalt Cement (PGAC) implementation at the Fall Asphalt Seminar.