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Federal Highway Administration / Publications / Focus / May 2006

Accelerating Infrastructure Innovations

Publication Number: FHWA-HRT-06-025
Date: May 2006

New NHI Course Promotes Effective Use of Maintenance Management Systems

Faced with the challenges of improving services and meeting increasing customer expectations with limited funding, transportation departments are turning to enhanced maintenance management systems (MMS) to better manage routine highway maintenance and operations. "An MMS provides managers with the business processes, management tools, and technologies to maintain a safe and efficient transportation system over the life of the highway," says Celso Gatchalian of the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Office of Asset Management. To promote the effective use of an MMS, FHWA's National Highway Institute (NHI) is offering a new 2.5-day course, Principles and Practices for Enhanced Maintenance Management Systems (Course No. FHWA-NHI-131107). The course was developed in cooperation with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials' (AASHTO) Highway Subcommittee on Maintenance.

Transportation departments are using enhanced maintenance management systems to better manage routine highway maintenance and operations.
Transportation departments are using enhanced maintenance management systems to better manage routine highway maintenance and operations.

The course features lectures, discussions, and interactive hands-on exercises. One of the primary course reference materials is the new AASHTO Guidelines for Maintenance Management Systems. Using the guidelines, the course looks at how an enhanced MMS for highways can be used to plan, budget, schedule, and report on maintenance work. Participants will learn:

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) hosted the pilot for the course in October 2005. "The course provided direction to us as we develop and refine our own MMS program. We got some answers to questions we had, so it was a validating process for where we are going with our system," says Richard Clarke, UDOT's Engineer for Maintenance. Lloyd Neeley, Deputy Engineer for Maintenance at UDOT, notes that the course's emphasis on the need to develop performance measures was valuable. "We were impressed with the focus on outcomes versus outputs," says Neeley. "That's what the public is interested in."

The target audience for the course includes State and local maintenance engineers, maintenance supervisors, asset managers, and their industry counterparts. The course is specifically designed for individuals responsible for directing and managing maintenance operations and budgets, maintenance project and treatment selection, and the monitoring of system conditions.

For more information on the course, contact your local FHWA division office or Celso Gatchalian at FHWA, 202-366-1342 (email: celso.gatchalian@fhwa.dot.gov). To schedule the course, contact the NHI Training Team at 703-235-0534 (email: nhitraining@fhwa.dot.gov).

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Updated: 06/27/2017
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