The concept of Pavement Management Systems (PMS) has gained significant momentum in the last few decades. The advances made in PMS in the last few decades have allowed highway agencies to plan their future spending and select their capital improvement programs based on the analysis performed by their PMS to set priorities for improvements. One issue that has had a negative impact on the accuracy of the capital improvement programs determined by PMS is dependence on only functional pavement performance measures, in terms of the International Roughness Index (IRI) and Surface Distress Indices (SDI). Progress has been made in this regard by many highway agencies through the consideration of a structural performance measure in their PMS, which should ultimately lead to better priority analysis results and capital investment programs. Another challenge facing PMS predictions, priority analysis, and capital programming is the gap between what was designed and what was actually constructed. Despite the fact that long-term pavement performance is highly dependent on the quality of construction, construction quality has rarely been addressed in PMS. Pavement performance prediction, and hence the accuracy of the priority analysis and capital investment programs generated from PMS, would greatly improve if construction quality were considered. This paper shows the impact that construction quality can have on pavement performance and hence the accuracy of predicted performance used in PMS analyses. It also outlines an approach that could be used to integrate a construction quality measure into PMS, including the priority analysis and capital investment programs.
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