During its lifetime, a road goes through a number of different stages; pre-study,

inquiry of the road, work plan, documenting stage, building stage and operating

stage. The operating stage is the one that takes the longest time and costs the

most. Those have a tendency of becoming unnecessarily high because the project

engineers don’t always take the management and maintenance prerequisites into

conditions.

To decrease the management and maintenance costs, the Swedish Road

Administration SouthEast has been in need of a work procedure that makes the

roaddesign engineers take the management and maintenance of the road into

consideration. This shall be achieved by a checklist where the most common

designs that lead to increased management- and maintenance costs are compiled

and listed.

Through interviews with project leaders in management, the most common

problems have been identified, analyzed and summarized under the headlines

winter-road, vegetation, road equipment and road designs.

To elucidate the problem from several points of view, interviews were

implemented with project leaders in investment and roaddesign engineers. During

these interviews opinions emerged about the way the checklist should be designed

and used.

The checklist was designed with the analyzed points, which emerged after the

interview with a project leader in management, in regard. Taken into

consideration were the opinions of the project leaders in investment and

roaddesign engineers.

This resulted in a checklist consisting of two parts. Part 1 consists of aspects that

should be taken into consideration in the beginning of the road-planning and Part

2 of aspects that should be considered in the finishing phase of it.

Then, the checklist was tested on an existing road build plan by means of having

its roaddesign engineer filling out the checklist and make comments to the

answers. The checklist got good response.

The management and maintenance costs are not always taken into consideration.

Mainly because other aspects, such as safety, aesthetics and the opinions of the

roads users and other parties, are prioritized.

Furthermore the communication between the project leaders in management and

in maintenance is poor due to lack of time, and as a result similar mistakes are

made over and over again.

The checklist gives the project leaders in investment and the roaddesign engineers

help to put management and maintenance costs in focus. The checklist is also a

support for the project engineers by giving them the means to comment on their

choices and thereby remember why they chose a certain design.