Title: NEW ZEALAND'S PERFORMANCE-BASED PAVEMENT DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION SPECIFICATIONS: CASE STUDIES
Abstract: Current specifications for pavement materials and construction are recipe based and somewhat restrictive, so performance based contracts are being progressively introduced by Transit New Zealand to provide contractors with an opportunity to be innovative and to take greater responsibility (and risk) for road construction projects. Transit's B/3 performance based specification for structural design and construction of flexible unbound pavements, including chip seal surfacing, was introduced as a provisional document in 2000, to foster the use of marginal and non-conforming materials that give similar performance to standard base course and sub-base materials. Another objective is to preserve prime quality aggregates, so that road construction is achieved in a sustainable manner that mitigates any adverse environmental effects. This paper provides an overview of B/3 and its accompanying document for materials. Two projects completed under TNZ B/3 are briefly described as case studies. The first project involved a 10 km realignment of State Highway 6 85 km south of Nelson (located at the top of the South Island), from Glenhope to Kawatiri. As this was the first B/3 project for Fulton Hogan, the contractor's quality plan had a rigorous testing regime that greatly exceeded the norm. The second project is the Hawkes Bay Expressway, a 4 km new construction on the east coast of the North Island. This road is being built through an estuary, and had a wide range of environmental, design, material and construction challenges. The paper includes the respective views of the contractor and Transit as to the experiences gained thus far with the two projects described in the paper, and the benefits of a performance based specification for structural design and construction of flexible unbound pavements. It is intended to provide an insight into the process so that other road authorities might also adopt performance-based specifications for road construction, to allow best use of local resource to achieve the required pavement performance.
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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