Alternative Contracting Methods for Pavement Preservation Projects

Abstract

Pavement maintenance and preservation are important techniques for ensuring longevity of the nation’s asphalt pavement roadway network. The low-bid, design-bid-build contracts that have been used to deliver individual pavement preservation projects can be costly and time-consuming to the owner/agency relative to the project construction costs. Alternative contracting methods (ACMs) that have been used on larger and complex highway projects can and are currently being used for asphalt pavement preservation project delivery. ACMs can accelerate project delivery and consolidate scope, while providing flexible delivery scheduling. Flexibility can reduce overhead in the project development and field management, thus shortening pavement preservation delivery times and reducing cost due to increased volume of work. An important consideration for using an ACM is the evaluation criteria to be used in the selection of prospective contract. This document includes an overview of some agencies’ experience with using ACMs for pavement preservation projects and provides suggestions for moving forward with the use of ACMs for pavement preservation contracts. This document also presents an overview of the more traditional and ACMs, as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has an ongoing Accelerated Implementation and Deployment of Pavement Technologies Program, which includes the deployment of innovative technologies to improve pavement performance and reduce agency risk. This report was prepared under Development and Deployment of Innovative Asphalt Pavement Technologies Cooperative Agreement with the University of Nevada, Reno