What is highways asset management?

There is no specific definition for asset management - it means different things to different people.

In the highways context - where the asset is the highway itself - the aim is to provide a structured approach to roads maintenance to enable highway authorities to operate, maintain and restore their ‘highway assets' to meet key performance requirements.

In essence, highways asset management aims to direct ever scarce resources where and when they are most needed for the long-term benefit of the roads network and its users.

It is a means of applying the right fix, at the right time and in the right place.

What's all the fuss?

Looking after the highways network is a national priority given its fundamental role in the economy. To fulfil this potential, it needs to be adequately maintained.

Highway authorities in England are now required by the Department for Transport (DfT) to demonstrate they are making the best use of highway assets through Asset Management Plans.

A Transport Asset Management Plan (TAMP) is a tool that allows detailed information on the assets held by the authority to be provided at all corporate levels.

This would then enable the value for money of local highway maintenance to be measured more effectively against other local transport spending, and eventually assist in crucial strategy and planning decisions.

Why consider the asset management approach?

With scarce resources to allocate to highways and transport, as well as other national priorities like healthcare and education, there needs to be a structured approach that looks at all transport issues collectively with a long term view.

The asset management approach allows highway authorities to consider what the alternative options are, set performance targets and assess the results. In this way, they are able to support their funding requests with hard facts.

This allows further improvement of the service to be targeted and the timing of maintenance to be planned such that further deterioration is minimised.

Facts and stats   

 

Shortfall in local roads' structural maintenance budget amounts to £1.85 billion in England and Wales in 2006. This is equivalent to an average shortfall of £14.3M per authority in England (excluding London), £6.8M in Wales and £1.8M in London (Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM ) Survey, 2006). The shortfall has more than doubled per authority in England compared to 2004 figures but dropped slightly in Wales.

Frequency of surfacing of local roads within England and Wales is greater than 50 years (10-20 years recommended depending on road type). Source: ALARM, 2006.

Percentage of the carriageway maintenance budget spent on reactive maintenance as opposed to planned maintenance is approximately 30% in England (excluding London) and Wales, while in London is about 42%. Source: ALARM, 2006.

Percentage of budget used on reactive maintenance amounted to 24% in England (excluding London), 37% in Wales and 31% in London Source: ALARM, 2006.

What is involved in asset management?

Asset management is a strategic tool that uses information to look at the whole road network rather than individual schemes. It is about collecting physical inventory and managing current conditions based on strategic goals and sound investments.

There are three main processes to an asset management exercise:

Assess the current condition of the asset.

Establish what level of service to achieve from each road. This will depend on road type and its level of use.

Devise an optimised plan to achieve objectives and maximise the asset value, using the most cost-effective method possible.

Engineers are more or less familiar with the first item. Current asset condition is assessed using various types of condition surveys. Some are manual surveys undertaken by inspectors while others are done automatically by a machine.

One of the key points in asset management is that just because the asset is in bad condition does not justify prioritising its maintenance in the works schedule.

In asset management, there is a shift in thinking to a more strategic approach that targets the long-term condition of the overall network. This entails looking at different investment strategies in order to maintain the overall network asset in good condition.

In this way, it is necessary to anticipate the future condition of the asset and to have an investment plan that delivers the forecasted condition reflecting the agreed standards.

In such planning, roads managers will need to know what the current conditions are and how they will change if there is no change in the current maintenance practices, or if certain levels of maintenance were utilised.

How much is the asset worth?

Any investment on an item of value, like a road asset, demands engineers know precisely how valuable the asset is before any financial commitment be made.

In the case of a highways asset, since there are different ways of assessing how much the asset is worth, it is important to assess the network value in a consistent way.

To obtain the true current value of the asset, money spent yearly to keep the highway at a steady condition must be taken into account in the valuation.

Authorities must also determine how much it would cost to replace the current asset. This includes the price of rebuilding it though the value of the land that it sits on does not form part of the valuation process.

Similarly, and as part of the highway valuation, the replacement cost of other features, such as bridges and street lighting, must also be obtained and included.

 

An important area is to know how much authorities have spent historically on the asset through the years.

This is not a straightforward process. If authorities historically suffer from a lack of information or under-investment in the repair and maintenance of their assets, using such data becomes difficult.

What are service levels?

An important aspect is to know what standard the asset should be maintained to in order to satisfy the demands of the various stakeholders and customers. These are termed service levels.

The concept of such performance indicators is much clearer and more familiar on other public sector activities, such as in the reduction in crime, for instance.

Various service levels can be defined for highway assets such as minimum/core, fair, good and excellent service levels. They can be grouped as legal requirements, stakeholder expectations, authority's own objectives or best practice guidelines.

Defining these levels creates some form of accountability of the asset operator or maintainer (such as the highway authority) in the delivery of certain measurable goals.

For example, the minimum/core levels of service on a piece of road may be to keep it in a safe condition. This will include any reactive maintenance, safety inspections that respond to reporting defects within 24 hours, for instance.

Fair service levels may relate to carrying out routine maintenance and some planned works that reduce the dependence on reactive maintenance.

Good service levels might relate to investments in structural maintenance that leads to improvements in conditions. This is a proactive process that improves serviceability and reduces road deterioration.

An excellent service level may relate to eliminating any backlog in maintenance.

It is important for each asset management plan to distinguish between different service levels and to spell out what levels of service each highway authority wishes to attain.

This allows improvement plans to be set in place and a target date to be proposed if the authority wishes to target the excellent level. This also provides some degree of transparency to the public in the services an authority provides to users.

Future maintenance programme

The idea of life cycle planning has been introduced to the highways asset management process to help direct maintenance. Life cycle plans are designed to show what activities are necessary during different stages of an asset's life.

Maintenance activities are broken down to three strands: routine maintenance, planned maintenance and improvement activities.

Routine maintenance: daily works activities to ensure the asset is operating. It is analogous to the servicing of a car rather than undertaking any mechanical repairs.

Planned maintenance: programmed maintenance designed to bring the asset condition back to the original designed condition.

Improvement activities: aimed at increasing the life of the asset.

In a collective sense, life cycle planning is designed to show the importance of interaction between these various maintenance strands. Any investment in routine maintenance can affect the future renewal required, for example. Also, the original construction of the road can affect future maintenance requirements.

Therefore, the financial implications of not undertaking routine maintenance can affect the requirements for the planned maintenance and also the improvement activities for a piece of road during the life cycle.

If there is a backlog of work this needs to be taken into account. This needs to be an integral part of life cycle planning as the backlog for a desired level of service for a piece of road can grow or shrink depending on annual investment and how fast the asset is deteriorating.

Improvement actions

As part of an active asset management process, each asset operator needs to review their current business processes or working cultures to identify improvement actions.

The following is a list of suggested improvement activities a highway authority may consider to move towards an active asset management process for roads.

Check that a full inventory of the asset has been undertaken and that condition data is complete.

Review service levels and ensure stakeholders are consulted. Agree within the authority on the level of service to be delivered for the agreed period (say next five years) and develop local/national performance indicators to assess outcome.

Review forward works programme following the asset management principle against the worst-first treatment.

Review budget needs to deliver the forward programme.

Use historic funding levels to determine if there is a maintenance backlog.

Review the business practice and perhaps alter maintenance strategies to see if some short-term solutions may alleviate some of the backlog. Beyond safety concerns, this will be a step in getting the balance between what maintenance works are carried out that satisfies the performance of the asset in the long-term.

Which roads to maintain first?

This is a tricky area but goes right to the heart of highways asset management.

Maintenance management systems allow the highway authority to use the condition information to show which roads are in need of maintenance and when to do the treatments and by how much. This information is normally updated through a routine programme of condition surveys. It typically means the worst roads will get fixed first.

In asset management terms, this process may not be entirely valid if some roads are not within a high priority plan for investment purposes within the overall strategy for the network.

Asset management allows the entire network needs and priorities to be considered and then cascaded down to the affected areas. In this way, it is, however, necessary to use preventative fixes to maintain the asset in a safe condition such that user safety is not compromised.

If it is found that by repeated short life repairs a maximum useful life can be gained from a road, then the asset management approach allows it to continue to a point where the deteriorated asset is no longer maintainable and needs reconstruction.

What is backlog?

Most highway authorities who produce asset management plans refer to maintenance backlog figures, although these figures are often extremely difficult to calculate.

It may be easier to explain backlog in terms of service level that an authority provides.

The difference in the cost of providing the existing service level and that for a proposed service level is the backlog of maintenance. It could also be defined in terms of the perceived asset life. If a piece of road that has a design life of 40 years goes beyond its service life and is not dealt with in the anticipated budget year, then the renewal cost will be the backlog.

Know your network well

The concept of asset management is becoming increasingly common, and boils down to the optimal allocation of resources for the management of the highways network.

A key to success is to know the network well and to weigh up all alternatives.

It is important to be aware of the efficiency in managing and operating the network and what options will be effective. This can be different on various parts of a network.

For example, in the local authority market, road maintenance managers need to be aware of the needs of different route categories and knowing from experience how and at what rate each road category, or even a specific route, is deteriorating. 

This is where condition data is critical. Once it is established what the expectations are from a piece of road, condition data can help to find out if the current maintenance practice is going to deliver the performance expected during its planned life cycle.

For this, the idea of Performance Gaps has been introduced which simply means whether the highway asset is failing to meet the demands of its construction, or if there are gaps between the actual condition and the target condition - for example, if a road can no longer be maintained efficiently as it has gone beyond its design life and requires some form of reconstruction. If adequate funding is not available for this, then there will be performance gaps in that piece of road.