Best Practices and Performance Assessment for Preventative Maintenance Treatments for Virginia Pavements

Preventive maintenance has the potential to improve network condition by retarding future pavement deterioration. This report outlines guidelines for implementing a preventive maintenance policy for bituminous pavements. Preventive maintenance treatments currently being used in Virginia include chip seal, slurry seal, microsurfacing, and thin hot mix asphalt overlays. Historical pavement condition data were obtained from the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Pavement Management System for these treatments, and treatment performance models were developed. A district-level treatment selection tool was developed to facilitate the district-level decision-making process. A prioritized list of pavement sections was generated, maximizing the cost-effectiveness of the selected treatments subject to budgetary constraints set by the Central Office. As a pilot implementation, the treatment selection tool was then run for each pavement classification in each district. The results of this pilot suggest that this selection tool has the potential to be a practical decision support tool.