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| Improvement of Responsive Maintenance of Road Structures: 2009-2011 |
Both proactive activities and reactive
activities are essential in a road maintenance management system.
Preservation has received much attention of road administrators.
Responsive maintenance, on the other hand, is a concept that is yet to be
incorporated in many still-evolving management systems. The purpose of
this research is to improve the efficiency of responsive maintenance
systems.
In 2009 fiscal year, the state of responsive maintenance
practices was surveyed. For example, the Asphalt Industry Alliance
has conducted an annual survey which investigates the effects of the level
of maintenance funding on the condition of roads and the impact on planned
maintenance, for local authority controlled roads in England and Wales.
The main result is as follows:
1) Key findings of the survey clearly
demonstrate that over a quarter of the total budget has been spent on
responsive maintenance, that the agencies would take more than ten years
to clear the backlog of carriageway maintenance work even if they had
adequate funding and resources in place, and that the amount of staff time
spent on defending claims has increased.
2) Excessive expense to
responsive maintenance practices has pressed the budget for planned
maintenance programs. The authorities argue that the delay of planned
maintenance programs is the reason of undesirable state of roads and it
causes a great deal of trouble to road users consequently.
The business
process of responsive maintenance activities will be analyzed, and the
improvement framework of responsive maintenance will be examined in the
future.
In 2010 fiscal year, the business process
of responsive maintenance activities was analyzed from the viewpoints of
road administrators and users, and the improvement framework of responsive
maintenance was examined. The main result is as follows:
1) Discovery
(recognition of problems) and response (settlement of problems) are the
agency's tasks in a responsive maintenance system. Maintenance needs are
discovered by the administrator or recognized with a call from the
traveling public.
2) The public can participate in the discovery stage
as a potential reporter about road performance, and in the response stage
as a judge of the agency's performance.
3) Two stages and three
objectives (cost reduction, time shortening and customer satisfaction) can
produce six basic strategies/policies for system improvement. This
framework gotten from the viewpoint of a system owner is consistent with
the perspective of system users as a beneficiary and a taxpayer.
Based
on the framework developed this year, considering the state of responsive
maintenance practices in Japan and overseas, some tactics/means to come to
a successful responsive maintenance system will be examined in the
future.
| Improvement of Maintenance Technology of Light Traffic Road in Rural Area: 2006-2008 |
There are proactive maintenance and
reactive maintenance in road maintenance. Since reduction for road
maintenance expenses is urgent business, study about AMS which is the
former representation is advanced by MLIT. On the other hand, the latter
is directly connected with the daily service level, correspondence of each
road administrator is various. Most local road administrator have high
weight of the latter approach, and the efficiency improvement of
responsive maintenance is an important problem. So domestic and abroad
Best Practices about efficiency improvement and Hints&Tips about the
new technology and the method which is possible to introduce into the
field are desired.
This research is executed aiming to analyze a
domestic and foreign Best Practices with the improvement of the
maintenance efficiency of the rural light traffic road, and to propose a
new technology and the technique that can be introduced into the
maintenance field in our country.
In 2007, Good Practices in
improvement of the road maintenance management efficiency (reduction in
cost and maximization of VFM, etc.) from the past document and the
internet, etc. were collected and each case was analyzed from the point of
view which are ingredient, equipment, information and system, etc..
In particular, response time as a performance indicator for responsive
maintenance was discussed. This indicator was classified as a
service-output indicator. Current status of standards and purposes of this
indicator mainly in U.S.A. was surveyed. It was shown that this indicator
was put to practical use for administrative rules, contract conditions or
communications between administrators and residents. It was clarified that
improvement of this indicator was effective for rise of customer
satisfaction.
In 2008 fiscal year, cases from the past document and
the Internet, etc. in improving the road maintenance efficiency were
collected, and the benchmarking as the technique that was able to be
introduced into the maintenance field in our country were analyzed. The
main result is as follows;
1)Not only Best Practices with the
quantitative effect and results but also reference cases were divided into
the system, information, the material, and the equipment, and the outline
was placed in the PWRI homepage.
2)It was clarified that
customer-driven benchmarking was effective as the management tool. On the
other hand, the continuance of the top management was a key in execution
through the cooperation with other organizations for two or more
years.
The research to improve the responsive maintenance efficiency of
the road without limiting the object to the rural light traffic road is
continued.
Copyright (C) 2008 Public Works Research Institute