Part 1: Management: Maintenance Quality Management and Environmental Stewardship: Best Practices in Information Management and Decision Support

Abstract

Some of the most extensive information management and decision support systems at state departments of transportation (DOTs) are used in maintenance for condition tracking, work planning, budget estimation, and quality assurance. DOTs are confronted with the challenge of managing these and emerging environmental information and decision support needs in integrated systems that incorporate transportation and environmental assets and quality and the activities, materials, labor, budget, and tools needed to assess and manage them. Systems integration remains an elusive goal. Although a few states are pursuing integrated asset management systems, recent leaps forward have been frequently limited to integration of management systems within a single functional area, e.g., integration of Pontis for bridge management with Virtis to bridge load rating. In that decentralized context, this paper presents several leading examples or best practices in asset and maintenance quality management in various areas of maintenance where environmental aspects that are difficult to quantify have begun to be incorporated.