Schedule and Condition Responsive Maintenance Strategies for Optimum Utilization of Maintenance Budget

–The maintenance of pavements and particularly for flexible pavement is an essential requirement for the efficiency of highway network. For better serviceability, flexible pavements require more maintenance as compared to maintenance required for rigid pavements. But developing counties like India does not have sufficient budget or funds to satisfy the requirements. The maintenance & rehabilitation (M&R) Strategy should be selected on the basis of optimum utilization of maintenance funds. The magnitude of the work involved in maintenance is very large as the multilane network is increasing at manifolds. The funds available are not enough to meet the requirements. As per MORT&H (Ministry of Road Transport & Highways) 2004, approximately 50% budget is generally approved in place of required budget. So, in developing countries like India, where the budget is limited, an optimum strategy should be selected on the basis of scheduled or condition responsive maintenance strategies. The objective of this paper is to analyze the data of identified flexible pavement sections to compare the schedule and condition responsive maintenance strategies. The scheduled M&R strategy has been selected as per the current maintenance norms provided by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways in year 2001. whereas the condition responsive M&R strategy has been selected as per the serviceability levels up to which the respective pavement section is to be maintained. The study is to show the optimum utilization of maintenance funds on the basis of comparison. The effect of International Roughness Index (IRI) was taken for this comparative study. For this study a National Highway section from Ghaziabad – Hapur (NH-24) was taken.