Latvian Experience of Assigning, Implementation and Assessment of Road Winter Maintenance.

In order to improve the quality of road maintenance and to increase its effectiveness in Year 1997 Latvian Road Administration was reorganized by dividing it into two parts - Administration, that fulfils management functions, orders the maintenance and construction works and does supervision ofthese works and maintenance in companies, which deal with the road routine maintenance, including the works in winter time. In Year 1998 there was the closed competition for the rights to perform the state roads routine maintenance works, as well as those in winter. In the result of which therewere made agreements between the Road administration and four public companies for the period of 5 years. In the bidding year 2002 the documents were bought by private companies as well as the public companies. The tenderhanded in were only from public companies, the existence of which depended on the gained rights to perform this job. Unlike the private companies, those accepted the tender documentation without taking into account that works somewhere else could be more advantageous. The Road Administration has to decide how to make these works more attractive to the private companies, which is the way to increase competition. How to improve the quality of the performed jobs and the measurement of quality should also be considered. For the covering abstract see ITRD E143097.