Currently, there exists a trend towards mechanical properties monitoring during highway construction. An analytical approach for pavement design and structural performance assessment of the pavement system also considers mechanical properties, e.g., stiffness and strength of earthen materials. Several portable tools become commercially available, which are capable of rapidly measuring in-place stiffness and strength of compacted pavement layers. This paper presents the mechanistic based quality control using the Dynamic Cone Penetrometer (DCP) during highway construction. The DCP provides instantaneous in-place strength index monitoring for compaction quality control. In this study, the DCP measurements were performed in the laboratory test box and in the field test section. Test data collected from the laboratory and field tests indicated that the DCP exhibited good potential for quality control monitoring of the pavement materials. Results of this study suggested an adoption of DCP as a mechanistic quality control tool during highway construction as well as future development for performance specifications.