The political and socio-economic changes in South Africa over the past five years have had a significant influence on the South African HVS programme. From a fleet of three production machines operating solely in South Africa since 1978, only one now remains in the country, while the other two are used in the CalAPT programme in California. Nevertheless, the SA HVS programme has, in turn, had a marked impact on the development of pavement engineering technology in South Africa and has demonstrably effected significant savings to the country. In particular, the focus of the programme has been redirected to address the issues currently facing the South African road building industry.

This Paper gives an overview of the history and current status of the SA HVS programme and highlights the impact of the programme on both technological advances in pavement engineering and cost savings to the industry.