Paving the Way – Managing and Maintaining Critical Highway Department Assets
Highway infrastructure is not limited to pavement and bridges. It also includes other physical components, or assets, such as drainage structures, traffic signals, signs, sidewalks, curbs and guardrails. However, a transportation system is more than the sum of its parts.
Do you have the information, tools, and data needed to achieve your vision, improve transportation system performance, and meet the public’s needs?
Transportation agencies have the responsibility and the challenging task to maintain, preserve and improve infrastructure assets for current and future constituents. While maintaining existing assets is the overriding concern for transportation agencies, most are also dealing with funding issues. Because assets such as pavements and bridges have long useful lives, a sound asset management practice will necessitate the development of long-term asset management strategies.
Maintaining infrastructure also takes a lot of resources – manpower, equipment, fuel, supplies – and it all cost money. Implementing and sustaining the performance and condition of assets requires long term financial plans that are aligned with long-term asset management strategies.
Highways, roads and bridges are some of the most expensive and largest assets to maintain, and failures or emergencies can create immediate and far-reaching consequences. Keeping track of “how many of this, or did we run out of that” is important and can affect your readiness for the next failure, emergency or routine maintenance project. You need an accurate way to know what your labor costs are, as well as the cost of your inventory of supplies or parts, and the current value of your fixed assets.
A long-term asset management strategy will:
- Track system condition, needs, and performance.
- Clearly identify costs for maintaining and preserving existing assets.
- Clearly identify public expectations and desires.
- Directly compare needs to available funding, including operating and maintenance costs.
- Define asset conditions so that decisions can be made on how best to manage and maintain assets.
- Determine when to undertake action on an asset such as preservation, rehabilitation, reconstruction, capacity enhancement, or replacement.
For each component within the transportation system’s infrastructure, data is collected about its location, condition, and history. This detailed information guides us in managing the asset’s current and future performance and in investing your resources wisely. Justifying your budget for all these things can be daunting and have negative consequences on our operations if you underestimate what you need.
WebDPW can make this a whole lot easier through the integrated aspects of inventory monitoring, asset management, work order, service requests, and the daily log. Report your manhour costs, depleted inventory totals, current value of assets, etc. so, you can be sure that you have the right budget every time.
Contact us for a free DEMO, email us at sales@WebDPW.com or call us at 603-823-5578.