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:

• A Conceptual Framework for the Asset Management Process
  (this is Figure 1 in the 2002 Austroads publication 'Integrated Asset Management Guidelines for Road Networks', AP-R202/02)
  
  
• A Conceptual Framework for Pavement Management Systems (PMS)

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.