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Best practice
Austroads recognises that there are opportunities to improve the practice of asset management. Some of the main steps towards best practice are:
- a more detailed understanding of the needs and expectations of road users, and the ability to correlate user aspirations with road and bridge construction and maintenance standards
- the study of road user costs, and the development of tools to develop cost effective construction and maintenance standards that take road user costs into account
- developing deterioration models for a range of pavement types for different scenarios such as changes in traffic volumes, increases in axle limits, a range of climatic conditions, etc.
- collecting and recording quality affordable road and bridge inventory and condition data
- the development and use of tools to confidently predict the remaining service life of the major components of a road asset, particularly road pavements and bridges
- the ability to demonstrate future actions and budgets required to maintain the road network to a standard that will provide a satisfactory level of service to road users
- conducting internal and external performance measurement and benchmarking.
Best practice procedures for asset management planning are illustrated in the following graphical documents:
There is considerable detail on best practice in road network asset management planning in the 2002 Austroads publication 'Road Network Asset Management: International Benchmarking Study', AP-R204/02.
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