IMPLEMENTATION AND BENEFITS OF A LOW COST PMS FOR MUNICIPAL ROAD NETWORKS

Local road authorities in Belgium manage about 90 % of all roads but these municipalities often only dispose of a very limited budget for road maintenance. Preventative maintenance actions have to prevail for optimising the use of the budget. For this, only an objective observation of the current network condition allows decision making and planning of the most cost-effective and technically efficient maintenance works at the right time. In this contribution we present a pavement management system (PMS) for assistance on technically sound decision making that needs very little of the limited financial and human resources of the local authorities. The approach consists of simple tools for the set-up of an inventory, a method and tools for visual inspection at network level, the definition of a "visual index" and the categorisation of the inspected road sections by the use of thresholds, a first straightforward interpretation of maintenance planning for road sections, simple prediction models, and advanced analysis techniques and software for the technical and financial optimisation of road maintenance with long term planning. In the paper we will show that this stepwise approach is feasible and sound, and that it can be applied in an autonomous way by the technical staff of a local authority as well as by service providers. We will discuss the immediate technical benefits (improved network conditions, reduced number of urgent local repairs) and the long term financial benefits. We will describe hurdles, challenges and organisational advantages encountered when introducing this PMS approach.