Title: Pavement Management Applications in Contract Maintenance
Abstract: Over the last several years, contract maintenance has grown as a viable means of performing maintenance in a variety of situations. For instance, some agencies have been able to demonstrate that contract maintenance is a cost-effective means of maintaining facilities at a higher condition level than was achieved under traditional approaches. Other agencies have found that by contracting out the maintenance of certain corridors, they are better able to allocate resources to address the maintenance and rehabilitation of the remainder of the network. In other words, when contract maintenance contracts are in place, a transportation agency can provide better coverage to the rest of its facilities. This is the type of contract maintenance contract referenced in this paper. Contractors who bid on contract maintenance projects do so with the intention of providing all necessary fence-to-fence maintenance over a warranty period, including mowing, pavement maintenance, guardrail improvement, and snow removal. One of the largest cost components of the contract is the preservation of the pavement surface at or above performance specifications outlined by the contracting agency. Because of the importance of pavement preservation to the profitability of the entire contract, pavement management systems have been used effectively by contractors to identify maintenance and rehabilitation needs during the contract period. Traditional pavement management systems can not adequately address the needs for contract maintenance. This is largely because traditional network-level systems have been designed to better allocate all available resources among competing priorities each year. Contract maintenance contractors, however, are not responsible for allocating fixed sums of money each year. Instead, their responsibility is to maintain the pavement surface above a particular condition level; they assume the entire risk associated with trying to provide this level of service at a cost lower than the contract amount. This requires a different type of optimization than the approach traditionally followed by public agencies, because instead of selecting projects to match available funds, the pavement management system must identify the most cost-effective strategy that provides the level of service required. This requirement alone requires changes to the pavement management philosophy that has been used for so long. This paper discusses the use of contract maintenance for asset management and the pavement management issues that are involved in these types of contracts. Differences in pavement management philosophy, analysis, and data that can be expected are introduced.
Publication Year: 2001
Publication Date: 2001-08-01
Language: en
Type: article
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