Pavement Management System Development for the P3 Concession of the South Fraser Perimeter Road

In recent years provincial and federal transportation agencies across Canada have turned to the Public-Private-Partnership (P3) procurement model to fund and deliver roadway corridor improvement projects. The P3 environment poses several differences to the more traditional Design-Bid-Build or Design Build project model. One of these changes is a fundamental shift towards a performance-based design approach. Another difference occurs following the completion of construction, where an asset must be operated for a fixed period to meet a prescribed set of performance requirements in each year of a pre-determined Concession Period. In many cases the Asset Preservation Performance Measures (APPMs) are more complex than typical highway agency performance thresholds. As a result, the development of Pavement Management Systems (PMS) for these projects is driven by achieving performance compliance at the lowest practicable cost. This approach varies from a traditional PMS where annual budgets are typically fixed, and the PMS program is adjusted to suit.

This paper presents an overview of a detailed pavement analysis and development of a PMS for the Concession of the 37 km South Fraser Perimeter Road (SFPR), located in the Greater Vancouver Area of British Columbia. Innovation in analysis tools and methodologies are presented, with focus on the development of performance prediction models necessary to establish the initial framework for a working PMS Database for the SFPR. This paper highlights a distribution-based roadway condition model, founded on the performance requirements presented in the project technical requirements.

In addition, this paper illustrates the development of a multi-strategy Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) design approach, and outlines the framework used to develop the optimal Operation, Maintenance, and Rehabilitation (OM&R) program for the SFPR pavement infrastructure elements. This framework follows the general philosophy of providing the lowest present value cost OM&R program while maintaining compliance with the applicable project performance requirements.