In July 2004, Rodney District Council (RDC) introduced two outcome based, performance measured road maintenance contracts. Professional services are an included item in the physical works schedule. Two years on, the contracts continue to evolve and this paper discusses the developments to date. Merging professional services personnel with field staff is an ongoing process. Field staff are struggling with increasing reporting requirements brought about by the introduction of a 10 year forward works program, stricter controls on government subsidies and more demanding customers. Professional engineers are required to focus more on understanding the basic maintenance needs of rural roads and to better balance risk, limited budgets and safety initiatives. Annual traffic volume increases of 6 per cent places road maintenance methodologies and budgets under pressure. Increasingly, unsealed roads with more than 250 vpd are unable to be funded for seal extension so other solutions have had to be found. Developments in GPS, GIS and mobile phone technology is radically changing the way road asset data is collected. However, validating road asset data remains a critical element in understanding how the road asset is deteriorating. The new contracts introduced 13 key result schedules. Some have been effective whilst several required modification. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. 0612AR242E.
Samenvatting