Transportation agencies are under increasing pressure to improve mobility while maintaining existing facilities with limited resources. In response to this pressure, agencies have begun experimenting with ways to accelerate construction and minimize disruption while improving mobility, safety, and long-term performance. To help advance such initiatives, Congress established the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) in 2006 to pursue research in four focus areas: safety, reliability, renewal, and capacity. The renewal area looks at improving the aging and increasingly congested transportation infrastructure through design and construction methods that will accelerate construction, cause minimal disruption to road users and the community, and produce long-lasting facilities. Recognizing that traditional method specifications can act as a barrier to the innovation often needed to achieve these objectives, SHRP 2 Project R07 was tasked with developing performance specifications that could be used to motivate and empower the contracting industry to provide creative solutions to save time, minimize disruption, and enhance durability. As an outgrowth of the SHRP 2 R07 research effort, the following guidance document has been prepared to assist specifiers with the development and drafting of performance specifications. The guide presents a flexible framework that specifiers may use to assess whether performance specifying represents a viable option for a particular project or project element, and if so, how performance specifications may then be developed and used to achieve project-specific goals and satisfy user needs. The guidance is intended to be accessible to both experienced and novice members of a project team, as well as adaptable to any project element and delivery method. To demonstrate how this conceptual framework could be applied to different project elements and delivery approaches, a series of guide performance specifications were also developed under Project R07. Given the difficulty in anticipating every rapid renewal need, the guide specifications are limited to the following application areas that demonstrated either the greatest need or potential for performance specifying: * Asphalt pavement; * Concrete pavement; * Concrete bridge deck; * Earthworks construction and other geotechnical features; and * Work zone traffic management. While it is perhaps most instructive to review these guide specifications in the context of the best practices identified in this overall manual, each could also serve as a standalone reference or template for developing a project-specific performance specification for the particular topic area addressed therein. SHRP 2 Renewal Project RO7 also produced Implementation Guidelines: Volume I: Strategies for Implementing Performance Specifications: A Guide for Executives and Project Managers (http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/169108.aspx) that is designed to provide a broad overview of the benefits and challenges associated with implementing performance specifications; and Performance Specifications for Rapid Highway Renewal (http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/169107.aspx) that describes suggested performance specifications for different application areas and delivery methods that users may tailor to address rapid highway renewal project-specific goals and conditions. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting