County highway departments in Indiana follow guidelines approved by the state board of accounts, mainly for highway resource accounting and not for maintenance activity costing. The existing daily work report form was modified to help maintenance activity costing with more precise reporting of road location, equipment, and material use and also for storage on a microcomputer data base. The highway extension and research project for Indiana counties and cities (HERPICC) at Purdue University tested the recommended procedures in a pilot project with White County Highway Department in Indiana. A user-friendly program was developed using the R-base 5000 data base software for maintenance activity accounting; this program has been recommended for use by county highway and city street departments in Indiana. In addition, organisational requirements such as maintenance staff training, requirements for road inventory and road section demarcation, and special considerations for unpaved road maintenance activities such as dragging, grading, spot regraveling, and the required reports are described.
Abstract