A maintenance management case study approach has been developed for the international road federation executive conferences on road management, for senior professional engineers, and for administrators of highway agencies. A case is structured and presented as a continuing exercise that affords the conference delegates the opportunityto simulate planning, programming, budgeting, and scheduling of maintenance activities for a hypothetical network, through the practical application of real data. Delegates, working in regional groups, develop their cases, beginning with the definition of unique sets ofenvironments that describe traffic flow, climate, roadway cross section, technology, and economic and financial characteristics. Presented with a roadway condition survey, each group then develops a first-year maintenance plan, program, and budget, imbedded in a 5-year projection designed to minimize the total cost of maintenance and vehicle operation. In the process, delegates deepen their understandingof the language and principles of road management and, at the end of the exercise, present and defend their budget requests before a simulated budget committee. Experience to date has shown that appropriately designed case studies can be effective instruments of technology transfer and training. By setting the maintenance management situation in environments defined by the delegates themselves and by providing a medium for the exchange of views and approaches to maintenance management problem-solving through group work, unique case studies can be developed that mirror reality closely and give delegates afeeling of confidence in an enhanced ability to effect meaningful change in their regions' maintenance management procedures. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1291, Fifth international conference on low-volume roads, may 19-23, 1991, raleigh, north carolina, volume 1.
Abstract