Defining road service to facilitate road infrastructure asset management

Road infrastructure asset management requires making decisions that affect how infrastructure provides service – for example, the intervention strategies to follow for specific assets, the intervention programmes to implement for entire networks and the way for interventions to be executed once it is decided that they should be executed. These decisions should be made to maximise the net benefit of infrastructure for all stakeholders and be made consistently and transparently. Currently, the definitions of service used by road infrastructure asset managers either are incomplete or are built on combinations of metrics, which give an idea of service but do not measure service directly. Neither allows for consistent and transparent decision-making that leads to the maximisation of the net benefit for all stakeholders. In this paper, a definition of the service provided by road infrastructure is provided that enables consistent and transparent decisions to maximise the net benefit for all road infrastructure stakeholders. The service definition is used to determine the net-benefit-maximising intervention strategy that shows its usefulness and its ability to let stakeholders see how they will be affected by decisions and that all of their concerns have been adequately taken into consideration when decisions are made.

Costs and effectiveness of standard treatments applied to flexible and rigid pavements: case study in Indiana, USA

Highway agencies apply rehabilitation and maintenance treatments to restore pavement condition and to reduce the deterioration rate, thereby extending pavement longevity and ultimately deferring reconstruction. Before agencies make decisions regarding the need for some treatment, treatment selection and timing and repair schedule (combination of treatment types and timings), the costs and performance effectiveness associated with each treatment must be known. In addition, agencies seek to identify and comprehend the factors that influence the costs and performance effectiveness of their standard treatments. This paper uses data from a Midwestern state in the USA to develop cost and effectiveness models for a number of treatments. In doing so, this study selects appropriate response variables, determines values of these outcomes for each pavement section under study and estimates the outcome models as a function of attributes related to the pavement and treatment. The paper confirms that treatment effectiveness is influenced by the pre-treatment pavement condition. In addition, the treatment average unit costs are influenced by the project size, road functional class and the pre-treatment pavement condition. The study also quantifies the sensitivity of the cost economy of scale to the dimensions of the treatment project.

A road infrastructure asset management process: gains in efficiency and effectiveness

There are a large number of efforts around the world to obtain more net benefits from road infrastructure assets. This can be seen through the proliferation of codes and guidelines and the increasing amount of research in road infrastructure asset management. Many of these codes and guidelines and much of the research, however, are focused on only part of the large complex problem of road infrastructure asset management. In efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the process, however, it is likely that it is useful to define clearly the entire road infrastructure management process. In this paper, this is done at a high level. It is hoped that using this high-level process as a starting point will help ensure that further efforts to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of road infrastructure asset management are successful not only in general, but also in particular through the exploitation of computer systems. The process can be used as a starting point by road infrastructure asset managers as they establish their own more detailed process, in which all involved stakeholders agree as to the activities involved in the management of road infrastructure assets and the reasons why.

Feasibility of long-term NDT programme for system-wide monitoring of bridge deck condition in Indiana, USA

Through effective and proactive monitoring, highway agencies can acquire information needed for deck repair or replacement timing decisions. However, system-wide monitoring of infrastructure requires a large expenditure outlay and therefore needs to be justified by comparing its costs to the potential savings if such monitoring leads to timely actions. This paper presents a framework that considers two strategies for managing a bridge deck network: a condition-based strategy that involves monitoring and repair and a time-based strategy that involves repairs at specific time intervals without condition monitoring. Using a case study, the paper calculates the life-cycle cost of each strategy as the sum of the monitoring and repair costs. The paper estimates that if a non-destructive test (NDT) is used as the monitoring platform system-wide, the unit monitoring cost will be $0·04–0·35/ft2 ($0·43–3·77/m2) of deck (average $0·22/ft2 ($2·37/m2)). This cost is expected to be different for other inventories due to differences in age, inventory size and bridge proximities. The paper determines that the NDT monitoring programme benefits outweigh its costs ($3·68–10·42 rate of return in repair savings for every dollar of investment in that programme). The paper also analyses the sensitivity of the outcome to key evaluation factors.

Costs and benefits of highway resurfacing: a case study of Interstate 465 in Indiana, USA

Highway restoration projects reduce subsequent agency maintenance costs while providing user and community benefits through travel time savings, safety enhancement and reduced emissions. However, in implementing the project, significant costs are borne by the agency (paying the contractor), the user (workzone delays) and the community (emissions associated with the production process). It is useful to quantify these impacts and to assess the benefit–cost trade-offs that exist within and across the various stakeholder categories. This paper presents a case study that carries out evaluation of a highway pavement resurfacing project in terms of the various costs and benefits that are incurred by three key stakeholders: the agency, user and community. Recognising that most costs and benefits are strongly related to the pavement condition, the paper first determines the impacts of the resurfacing project on the pavement condition. This paper not only provides an assessment of the overall economic efficiency of a resurfacing project, but also sheds light on the trade-offs that highway decision makers implicitly encounter in terms of the stakeholder costs and benefits.