Strategic Total Highway Asset Management

Abstract

The last decade has seen significant developments in highway asset management. A key component to successful asset management is long-term network investment planning. In order to successfully manage a significant quantity of aging roadway infrastructure and growing traffic volume, agencies are faced with challenges in developing reliable long term plans that maximize the network performance through value optimization. Current practice typically involves relatively independent planning for the bridge and pavement networks; with a very slight number of situations allowing for reliable trade-off analysis between the two. While a situation in which the choice to improve two structures rather than one pavement section may yield a greater percentage increase in the bridge network performance, than the opposite choice would for the pavement network - the reliability of this choice being right and at the right time significantly decreases over time. Introduction of mutually inclusive highway asset planning in this research, by integration of the bridges into an equivalent measure of the pavement network results in significant increases in the long-term planning reliability - is proposed. Data from the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario is used to demonstrate how this proposed approach would work. A key point of this Strategic Total Highway Asset Management Integration (STHAMi) approach is the Conceptual Structural Integration Factor (CSIF). Application of CSIF and Bridge Condition Index (BCI) integration into a pavement performance index allows for representation and treatment of bridges as equivalent pavement sections. This allows for a better comparison of the assets over time. Compared to the traditional approach of mutually exclusive network level planning, STHAMi resulted in a higher percentage of network treated per unit of value, coupled with consistently higher annual network performance over the long-term. In addition to significantly higher long-term sub-asset trade-off reliability, STHAMi offers potential for significant increases in organizational efficiency with respect to longterm highway asset planning. Key benefits include introduction of one pavement performance indicator as an all encompassing performance indicator for the complete highway asset, as well as the potential for long-term bridge network level planning execution within a pavement engineering oriented organizational unit. Further STHAMi development is recommended through integration of other network performance measures such as operational and safety indicators.