Intelligent transport system (ITS) assets play a significant role in modern road network operations. As with any type of asset, ITS assets experience failures that result in them operating in a degraded mode or being completely unavailable. Unscheduled maintenance of ITS assets is both expensive and detrimental to the efficient and safe operation of the road network. It is desired to reduce failures and their impacts and to optimise funds for the management of ITS assets. Reliability-centred maintenance (RCM) is the application of engineering principles to manage the consequences of failure. The RCM process has proved its worth in defence, airline and mining industries for improving the reliability and cost-effectiveness of maintenance activities. RCM has the potential to improve asset performance by emphasizing a proactive and predictive approach to asset management. RCM not only improves value-for-money due to improving performance but it also helps in getting more done with limited resources by assigning criticality to faults with a risk management process. RCM also helps to understand how an asset fails and guides the management of the useful life of the asset, including re-deign or re specification of the asset. This project was commissioned by Austroads to develop an RCM maintenance strategy and road map. It covered the identification of the key success factors, confirmation of the benefits and acceptability of RCM within jurisdictions including their contractors and suppliers, design of an RCM process template, and drafting of a road map for moving from the current practice to RCM. A review of literature, consultations and workshops were conducted during the project. Jurisdiction experts and maintenance contractors agree that the adoption of RCM would optimise limited maintenance budgets and improve ITS asset performance. It is therefore recommended that jurisdictions adopt RCM in the management of their ITS assets. There are, however, gaps that limit the full and effective application of RCM. These include: • Organisational and contractual models need to be aligned to enable RCM application. • Datasets on asset performance need to be modified for analytics and benchmarking. • Research is required to quantify ITS asset functional failure consequences and network performance targets. • Avenues for cross-jurisdictional knowledge sharing need to be actively managed and sustained so that jurisdictions are able to learn and adopt RCM best practices. It is expected that jurisdictions will begin to implement RCM for ITS assets by 2018. (Author/publisher)
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