Investigations of good practice in road assessment: HEROAD

To manage the road network road managers and operators have to consider existing policies such as the requirement to keep the network in good condition, and to deliver this condition at minimum whole life cost. However, the condition should also meet the expectations of stakeholders. The management process has to optimise the total costs for society, whilst minimizing the effects of given condition levels on safety, reliability, environmental impact, economics and sustainability. This principle and its overall goals are equal for all road managers around Europe. Heroad will investigate the process (the combination of individual components, levels of assessment and the inclusion of a life cycle perspective) to incorporate also new challenges in the asset management. This includes Look at data collection, assessment and reporting regimes Considering new challenges (climate change, traffic configuration, new materials, LCC and the focus on road users expectations) Identify and assess the key technical components of these regimes and then determine whether they are best practice or not Identifying and describe indicators at different assessment levels (for road operators complicated technical parameters are okay, for decision makers and public more understandable indicators that could be built from combination of technical parameters are needed) Then pick out the key good parts and provide advice to the customer on how they could use them. This paper will describe the outcome of the complete Heroad work.