U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590
202-366-4000
Focus
| Accelerating Infrastructure Innovations |
Publication Number: FHWA-HRT-05-026
Date: May 2005
Are you missing the data needed to determine whether your agency's preventive maintenance activities are cost effective? Have you spent maintenance funds on a road scheduled for construction work, resulting in wasted money and effort? Or have you begun a pavement preservation program without knowing if you can achieve your goals with existing funding levels? Find out how to get the data you need, incorporate your preventive maintenance strategies into your pavement management system (PMS) so that work is coordinated and cost effective, and achieve your pavement preservation goals by attending the new National Highway Institute (NHI) course, "Pavement Preservation: Integrating Pavement Preservation Practices and Pavement Management" (Course No. 131104A).
A pavement preservation program uses an integrated, cost-effective set of practices to extend pavement life, improve safety, and meet the expectations of motorists. Pavement management systems, meanwhile, aid in collecting and analyzing pavement data and making planning and budgeting decisions. Bringing the two together is the focus of NHI's new course. The course details how to integrate pavement preservation programs into an overall pavement management process. "Pavement preservation programs provide significant benefits to highway agencies, while pavement management systems provide the data that agencies need to measure the benefits. This course provides the essential tools and techniques to integrate the two," says Jim Sorenson, Construction and System Preservation Team Leader in FHWA's Office of Asset Management.
Among the topics covered are the types of management decisions that are made by transportation agencies and the data that is needed to support these decisions. The course then demonstrates how pavement management tools can be used to support project, network, and strategic level decisionmaking, and outlines the benefits of including pavement preservation strategies in the pavement management process.
"Integrating a pavement preservation program into an overall pavement management plan can help highway agencies develop a more comprehensive and coordinated road improvement plan, which includes maintenance needs as well as capital improvements," says Katie Zimmerman, President of Applied Pavement Technology, Inc., which developed the course and will be teaching it for NHI. "Times have changed," notes Tom Deddens, Preservation Engineer in FHWA's Office of Asset Management. "It is no longer about identifying roads in need of rehabilitation, repair, or reconstruction. Today we must extend our highway investments by addressing surface deterioration and functional needs to get the most life out of our roads. This is preservation: selecting the right road for the right treatment at the right time. We need a PMS that includes preservation-related distress and maintenance strategies."
The 2-day course is designed for pavement and maintenance engineers who manage pavement preservation programs, as well as planning and programming personnel. The course development was supported by an expert technical panel that included representatives from Federal, State, and local transportation agencies. Industry representatives also provided support through the Foundation for Pavement Preservation.
A pilot course was held in Raleigh, North Carolina, in August 2003. Since then, the course has been presented in Bal Harbour, Florida, for local and State highway agency personnel, and Lincoln, Nebraska, for staff of the Nebraska Department of Roads.
"It was a helpful course," says Gary Brhel of the Nebraska Department of Roads. "It gave us some tools and processes to use to help us integrate pavement preservation into our pavement management system." Jerry Sudimick of the Florida Turnpike Enterprise attended the course held in Florida. "The class was very informative," says Sudimick. "We have not implemented a pavement preservation program. However, I will be going back to the Turnpike Enterprise with considerably more information and techniques to consider in order to prolong our system's pavement life."
The new course is the fourth in a series of pavement preservation classes. Other courses in the series available from NHI are:
For more information about the course content, contact John Taylor at NHI, 703-235-0524 (email: john.taylor@fhwa.dot.gov), or Tom Deddens at FHWA, 202-366-1557 (email: tom.deddens@fhwa.dot.gov). Information is also available on the NHI Web site at www.nhi.fhwa.dot.gov/home.aspx. To schedule the course, contact Danielle Mathis-Lee at NHI,703-235-0528 (email: danielle.mathis-lee@fhwa.dot.gov).
