Improving the Rehabilitation Timing and Selection in a Pavement Life Cycle Cost Analysis

Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) is an economic procedure used to compare competing pavement designs, over a defined analysis period, considering all significant costs expressed in equivalent present value dollars. Currently, most agencies apply a standard, policy set, rehabilitation schedule to all pavements based on “historical” performance. However, this can mean that the assumed performance used in the analysis will not be representative for the design due to the fact that historical data is often based on old pavement designs; designs with different features; or is from “non-like roadways” (e.g. using high volume road data for low volume road applications). This paper will look at two process that can be used to develop a project specific rehabilitation schedule for any given pavement design in order to have a more a realistic LCCA. These processes answer the following questions: 1. When are rehabilitation activities required (eg timing)? 2. What rehabilitation activities are done (eg selection)? The timing aspect will be addressed using the American Association of Highway and Transportation Officials Pavement-ME Design Procedure, which predicts performance for different pavement designs. The selection of activities will be addressed using a decision tree analysis to look at multiple rehabilitation activities. These two processes allow the analyst to develop more robust and reliable LCCA’s in order to better determine the cost effectiveness of competing designs and to make better decisions about the final pavement selection.