Best Practices for Harmonizing Road Construction Specifications and Standards: A Manitoba Assessment

This paper presents best practice guidelines and strategies for harmonizing provincial and municipal highway construction standards and specifications in Manitoba. Developing common construction standards with stakeholders of diverging goals can be challenging, but beneficial. The adoption of a consistent set of standards and specifications in a jurisdiction could minimize redundancy, identify critical requirements that need to be retained to maintain performance, cut construction and compliance costs, simplify the process of meeting requirements, and reduce complexity for those that are tasked with testing and standard compliance. Therefore in this study, a survey questionnaire was developed and sent to the provincial and municipal highway agencies, contractors, aggregate producers, and testing labs in Manitoba. The purpose of the survey questionnaire was to obtain input on harmonizing provincial and municipal specifications and standards for asphalt, concrete, granular base and rip-rap, and grading roadway projects. The survey questions focused on identifying key issues of harmonization including barriers to change, benefits, trade-offs, common goals, potential risks, cost-effectiveness, and quality control and quality assurance delivery mechanisms. The results of the survey recommendations for harmonizing standards and specifications are presented. The recommendations can be used by highway agencies to quickly implement the best practices, thereby realizing the benefits of harmonizing standards and specifications in their jurisdictions.