Identifying Optimal Highway Asset Maintenance on the Basis of Performance Targets and Budget Constraints

Abstract

The majority of maintenance optimization literature is focused on pavement maintenance related to pavement management systems. The literature does not cover well the proper procedures for optimizing the full range of typical highway maintenance activities based on measurement and prediction of performance. In addition, practitioners are only now getting started in this area of maintenance optimization, in which they use software tools to aid in planning non-pavement—related maintenance. Although much of the optimization work to date focused on predicting deterioration explicitly over time, the method of maintenance optimization that is presented in this paper, called maintenance analysis, assumes a steady state is reached with regard to maintenance activities. This maintenance analysis method allows maintenance managers to use level of service and utility functions to define maintenance indices. With this method, managers are able to identify and plan the optimal mix of maintenance activities to (a) maximize performance with respect to maintenance performance indices based on user-defined budget constraints and (b) minimize cost based on level of service targets. A simple numerical example is presented to illustrate the method.