Overview
The long-term maintenance of infrastructure is a core task of the owner. The funds available for maintaining infrastructure are in fierce competition with a large number of claims. This comes in the context of continuously expanding infrastructure networks with accordingly high maintenance requirements. In this situation, it is important that the responsible authorities determine the funds needed for maintaining the infrastructure networks and demonstrate it to the political decision-makers in a transparent and comprehensible manner. They also need to be able to point out the consequences of a lack of funds. Hitherto, there was no uniform approach to addressing this issue.
With this study, a uniform set of indicators to control costs, performance and impact of the maintenance of roads shall be developed. This study is aimed to:
- formulate the prevailing conditions and shows its validity as well as the limits of this approach
- describe a generally applicable procedure to define the requirements of maintenance
- illustrate the process on case studies
- elaborate the basics for a corresponding norm
Following activities will be done during the project
- providing of research activities (literature, research reports, norms)
- holding expert interviews
- preparing case studies
Funding
Results
The Basic Model for Maintenance is made up of the 3 elements object view, network view and measurement of effectiveness. From the object view (bottom-up view), the condition assessment and action planning are performed for each object (= section of road). The latter provides input for coordinating with the plans of other parties involved. The measures to be taken are established during the coordination process. The main result of the object view is the annual maintenance costs. From the network view (top-down view), the average age-related loss in value and the annual funds needed, can be estimated for the inventory of the road network. If this corresponds to the outgoing expenses (measures taken), the average condition of the road network will remain constant. In this case, it can be assumed that the maintenance strategy is sustainable. As a link between the object view and the network view, the change in the average condition is used as an indicator for measuring the effectiveness of the measures taken.
Based on the Basic Model for Maintenance, this research project formulates the prerequisites for the procedure for determining the maintenance requirements and points out its significance.