Overview
Good road infrastructure is a fundamental basis on which to build a strong economy and society. As the ability to conduct proper maintenance is largely influenced by the available budget, budget definition is an important starting point in realising the overall goal.
The objective of the project is to assess the budgetary needs and optimisation of maintenance strategies for multiple assets of road network.
Funding
Results
Based on a comprehensive investigation in the form of interviews with public road administrations and private sector concessionaires, a large quantity of information on good practice in budgetary assessment and optimisation of maintenance strategies, as part of the overall management of road assets, were collected during the last 4 years from around the globe. As an output of these activities, recommendations have been given for an improved, or better asset management of actual or planned road infrastructure assets. This has been summarised as follows:
- many road authorities have some sort of long term strategic plan that relates to many performance indicators. This long term strategic plan is relevant to the prioritisation in budgetary allocation
- from the interviews it was observed that all road authorities face constraints in definition of the budgets. Constraints are either related to budget or qualities to be delivered or both. Also the extension of road network and/or changes in assets within the network results in a constraint on the budget. A way of coping with the budgetary constraints is to present choices related to the strategic plan. One of the approaches is by using business cases presenting both, the ideal situation as well as alternative strategies in showing the expected results and consequences. Consequences to be shown with respect to spending, resulting qualities and/or risks.