MEASURING THE PERFORMANCE OF NOVA SCOTIA’S HIGHWAY MAINTENANCE PROGRAM

The Province uses three different, yet related, methods of measuring the effectiveness of Highway Maintenance activities. The primary tool is the Department’s Highway Maintenance Standards that includes field audits to monitor compliance with the standards. In addition NSTPW conducts two annual surveys, a Road Condition Survey and Customer Satisfaction Survey, both covering the Provincial Highway System. The Highway Maintenance Standards (HMS) consist of specifications for each maintenance activity including what constitutes a deficiency and how long NSTPW forces have to repair the deficiency. A working group of four field managers and a head office staffer, to coordinate the process, formulated the maintenance standards in-house. The HMS contain “response tables” associated with each type of maintenance deficiency which stipulate how much time can elapse prior to repair, based on the class of roadway that has the deficiency. With these standards in place the Department developed an audit procedure to measure compliance with the standards. This involves selecting four operational areas and doing monthly field audits of a representative sample (25-30%) of the roads in each operational area. The Road Condition Survey (RCS) is performed by nine crews who conduct detailed inspections of randomly selected 200 meter sections of roadway. This covers four different classes of roads, high volume arterial, trunks & routes, local paved roads and local gravel roads. The RCS takes place each Spring and approximately 1,700 sections are selected randomly using a statistically valid sampling procedure. Deficiencies in road surface, drainage, line painting, etc are recorded and tabulated and reports are produced assigning letter “grades” to different roadway types in different areas. The annual Customer Satisfaction Survey is contracted out to a market research firm that conducts a telephone survey to monitor and assess satisfaction levels of Nova Scotians regarding Provincial highways. The 2002 survey was the fifth year the survey was done for the Department. This allows the Department to compare results with those of previous years in order to track which services are improving and which are not.

Author

RICHARD, P

Session title

PERFORMANCE MEASURES FOR ROAD MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES

Organizers

Maintenance & Construction Standing Committee

Year

2003

Format

Paper

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