INITIATIVES IN REMOVING BARRIERS TO PAVEMENT MANAGEMENT

The term began to be used by pavement researchers and engineers in the late 1960s and early 1970s to describe the entire range of activities associated with providing pavements to the public. Today the term management system implies a comprehensive, coordinated set of activities associated with the planning, programming, design, construction, maintenance, evaluation, and research of pavements. Before the Third International Conference on Managing Pavements, conferences in 1985 and 1987 presented information on potential barriers to implementation of pavement management systems (PMSs). Some of these barriers continue to affect pavement management today. With the development of new technology, some technological barriers have been eliminated, and other barriers have evolved. New areas of concern in pavement management today include standardization, uniformity of pavement management data, data collection and reporting, metrication, the interrelationships between the pavement management effort and the planning function, methods to continue trends in pavement management with ever-changing equipment for collecting data, and the electronic format for information transfer. Also of concern is that the definitions of pavement quality and performance vary from agency to agency. There is a tremendous challenge to remove barriers and meet the challenges of the 21st century. This can be accomplished through continuing research in developing engineering solutions to technical problems. The training and education programs necessary for pavement engineers to better understand the science of pavement management need to be developed.