What is Pavement Management?

Pavement Deterioration Graph

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Pavement Management is a set of tools and philosophies designed to manage the maintenance activities of Asphalt Concrete and Portland Concrete Pavements.   A Pavement Management System consists of a module to keep track of existing and historical pavement condition data and a decision making process to help choose the most cost-effective maintenance strategies and which roads to treat when.  Conventional wisdom of most public works and road department agencies has been to treat roads in a “worst-first” philosophy.  Under this “worst-first” policy, roads are allowed to deteriorate to a nearly failed condition before any rehabilitation (such as Overlays or Reconstructions), are applied.  This can also be called the “don’t fix if it aint broke” mentality.    
Pavement Management Systems are designed with a more cost-effective, “Best-first” approach.  The reasoning behind this philosophy, is that it is better to treat roads with lower-cost, preventative maintenance treatments, such as Slurry Seals, Chip Seals, and Crack Seals, and extend their life cycle, before the road condition deteriorates to a state where it requires more costly rehabilitation and reconstruction treatments.  Generally, paved roads spend about three-quarters of their life-cycle in fair to excellent condition, where the road shows little sign of deterioration and has a high service level.  After this time, the road condition begins to deteriorate at a rapid rate and, if not maintained properly, soon reach a condition where it will require costly overlays and reconstructions.  If treated with a surface seal and other preventative measures, the road condition will remain at a good level for a longer period of time.

A Pavement Management System can help improve the decision making process within an organization by supplying:

  • Recommendations for more cost-effective treatments on a network level

  • Budget cost estimates to maintain a serviceable pavement condition on a network-wide level

  • A way to analyze effects of varied funding levels and show the results of insufficient funding.

  • Quantifiable data and projections to justify increased budget funding requests.

  • A means to track pavement performance over time.

    How Capitol Asset & Pavement Services Can Help Your Agency


    A majority of your local streets and roads have already been constructed and is being slowly worn out by thousands of cars & trucks that use them each day. Each local street agency must put back into them as much as is being taken out each day. In order to do this effectively, these street agencies must establish long-term pavement preservation programs. 
    A good street network system is a critical component for the health of any local jurisdiction. Most citizens here in the western part of the United States think of a road as something that will last forever, and should be provided automatically by the city or county. Most citizens also have the mindset that these roads should last forever and are free. 
    Even though the average pavement design life is only about 20 years, many of our pavements here in the western US are lasting significantly shorter lives. Environmental factors play a role in these reduced lives due to the excessive amounts of moisture, but the single biggest factor is the failure to perform regular cost-effective preventative maintenance. And when many pavement preservation techniques are used, they are not applied until serious damage has been done. 
    Capitol Asset & Pavement Services Inc, realizes that reduced budgets, political pressure and citizen complaints often drive local street agencies to resort to the “worst – first” methodology, which has proven to be the least cost-effective avenue of preserving a good street network. We must ask ourselves, why use the very limited funds we have to maintain the good roads while bad roads continue to deteriorate? Emergency repairs, crisis management, short-term fixes, whatever we call them are typically superficial and do not address the actual under-lying problems. If using your limited funds properly as they were intended on a pavement preservation program, many street agencies emergency repairs could and will be avoided. The old saying of “Pay me now or Pay me later” definitely holds true. Playing the game of diverting preventative maintenance dollars to other programs is nothing more than starting the vicious cycle to a descending spiral of emergency repairs as the standard.
    If you have found your local street agency practicing this, recovery is possible. Here at Capitol Asset & Pavement Services Inc, we can assist in effectively changing this behavior. By proper use of a pavement management system and by adopting a preservation model that proactively corrects minor road deficiencies early, your asphalt pavement lives can be substantially extended at a relatively low cost. 
    Many local street agencies here in the Northwest have been slow to embrace the concepts of a fully functional pavement management system. At Capitol Asset & Pavement Services Inc, we can introduce to your agency many of the new technologies and methods that are being used successfully by other local jurisdictions who embrace the pavement management concepts. Of course to properly use a pavement management system, correct data is essential to credibility and that is what we do at Capitol Asset & Pavement Services Inc. This data not only reflects current conditions but will also refer to past and future conditions of streets as well. This data will inform us of certain variables that will help to predict the consequences of today’s decisions and their impacts on future budgets. .