Pavement Preventive Maintenance Concepts and Techniques

Many pavement owner/agencies are now focusing on maintaining the overall value of their roadway assets and are striving to make better-informed decisions on how they allocate funding to minimize the deterioration of their assets. This new form of management referred to as Asset Management has clearly identified the benefits of strong pavement preventive maintenance programs compared to the commonly used worst-first repair approach. A strong pavement preventive maintenance program offers an opportunity to help close the gap between pavement maintenance needs and optimal pavement condition to better serve the traveling public. An effective pavement preventive maintenance program encompasses a full range of techniques with the goal of enhancing pavement performance in a cost-effective and efficient manner. A framework of mix-of-fix strategies, which includes a balance between pavement preventive maintenance work along with pavement rehabilitation and reconstruction, can assist a road agency to maintain an overall acceptable pavement condition while meeting the needs of the traveling public. This concept, as simple as it seems, has not been fully accepted by roadway agencies, who continue to react to problems after they occur rather than to prevent them from occurring in the first place. This paper describes the concepts of pavement preservation and outlines several typically pavement preservation techniques.