Maintenance Backlog Research Articles

The Effect of Restricted Budgets for Road Maintenance

In connection with the world wide economic pressure severe reductions of the states’ budgets take place. Drastic savings are forced from all sectors of the public households and thus from the road sector as well. Therefore the responsible road operators and administrations really need good arguments for discussions with the politicians to make sure that enough money is available for the road maintenance sector, even in competition with other sectors like e.g. social matters. A basic study funded within the ERANET Road project was finished in 2009. This study was attributed to a Europe wide survey of the definition and the use of maintenance backlog of the road asset in a representative sample of European road administrations. Following this study a comprehensive investigation on the effects of restricted budgets for maintenance (strengthening, rehabilitation, replacement) on the condition of the pavements of state road network in Austria was conducted using available PMS-data. The results of the study are showing the increase of sections with a condition backlog until 2020 if only the actual budget is available the need of additional money the keep the actual (often not satisfying) condition until 2020 and to fulfill even lower trigger values of backlog the reduction of the value of the pavement asset until 2020 if only the actual budget is available. It is expected that this study could support the road administrations in their efforts for sufficient financial means to fulfill their tasks in sustainable way.

Stormwater Strategies: Cities Prepare Aging Infrastructure for Climate Change

If it weren’t for the cement pipe segments nearly nine feet in diameter, oversize yellow backhoes, towering piles of sand, and yawning trenches scattering the streets, the section of Toronto near the junction of Connaught and Fargo avenues would look like an ordinary residential neighborhood. In spring 2011 this area of comfortable-looking contemporary houses surrounded by tidy landscaping was a construction zone as its storm sewers, most fewer than 20 years old, were ripped up and replaced with much larger pipes. The purpose of all the disruption? To prevent the flooding of basements and garages that has plagued these homes during unexpectedly heavy rains in recent years. The area is just one of 32 across Toronto slated for storm sewer upgrades with a stringent new design standard. Whereas the old pipes were meant to capture the volume of water rushing off roofs, driveways, and streets during the kind of storm that would occur on average every 2–5 years, the new ones are tailored to so-called 100-year storms.1 These used to have a probability of occurring just once every century but now seem to be more frequent, according to Michael D’Andrea, director of water infrastructure management for the City of Toronto. “That’s an extreme design standard, no matter how you look at it,” D’Andrea says, and shoehorning the necessary infrastructure into a densely developed city like Toronto is technically challenging and expensive—especially considering that the old pipes were still well within their useful life spans. “We’re rebuilding systems in an area of the city that, all things being equal, we shouldn’t have had to worry about for several decades to come,” he says. Memphis, Tennessee, 13 June 2011: A state Department of Transportation employee works to unclog a drain on the Madison Avenue ramp onto I-240, where the flow of traffic stopped due to high water covering the road. Heavy rain and wind had pounded Memphis ... But extreme weather calls for extreme plans. City officials deemed the new standard necessary after two huge soakers, one in May 2000 and an even bigger one in August 2005, lit up the city’s switchboards with thousands of complaints of flooding and raw sewage backing up into basements. In fact, no fewer than eight so-called extreme weather events, with rainfall exceeding that of 25-year storms,2 have hit Toronto in the quarter-century since 1986. The 2005 downpour, which unleashed 6 inches of rain in about 3 hours, not only ruined basements but also damaged cars, broke water mains, washed away sections of road, flooded a wastewater treatment plant, and destroyed a sanitary sewer line, sending raw sewage into a creek.3 The Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, a Toronto-based insurance-industry research institute, described it as the most expensive natural disaster ever to befall Ontario and the second most expensive in Canada, with damages exceeding Can$500 million. “There’s no denying that in this particular area we’re seeing these extreme storms more frequently than we have in the past,” D’Andrea says. “It’s basically a call into action.” Climate change is already affecting water utilities, according to a 2009 report from the National Association of Clean Water Agencies and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, industry advocacy groups based in Washington, DC.4 A seemingly contradictory witches’ brew of more frequent and extreme storms, drought, and sea-level rise is beginning to stress some cities’ water infrastructure. Although managers typically think first of the effects on drinking water supplies, many are realizing that their wastewater systems (the focus of this article) also will be keenly affected, with profound potential consequences for public health. In many places, these systems are already under strain from population growth, development, underfunding, and maintenance backlogs.5 At a time when North American cities are just beginning to assess what altered long-term weather patterns may bring, a handful, such as Toronto, have already committed to upgrading their wastewater systems with climate change in mind.

Structures of maintenance organisations in Malaysian universities

The size of university maintenance organisation depends on the size of the university and the procurement strategy the university uses for the maintenance services. The absence of a well-structured maintenance organisation leads to poor service delivery, unnecessary increases in maintenance costs and increases in maintenance backlogs. However, there are many complaints in the media and research literature concerning the performance of university buildings in Malaysia. This paper aims to investigate and describe the maintenance organisations of universities in Malaysia. The survey questionnaire conducted indicates that most universities in Malaysia outsource their maintenance services. However, there is a need for organisational changes in maintenance service delivery in order to shift towards value added initiatives. The paper concludes with the recommendation that those occupying top management roles in the maintenance organisation who do not possess knowledge of maintenance should return to university to obtain degrees in maintenance or related disciplines.

Appraisal of the building maintenance management practices of Malaysian universities

This article presents the results of a questionnaire survey conducted on the background information of an ongoing research. The article describes the characteristics, size and strategies of university maintenance departments. Questionnaires were administered on 50 university maintenance organizations. With a 66 per cent response rate, the findings suggest that though the expenditure on maintenance is inadequate, poor management of the resource and maintenance services are also contributing greatly to the poor service delivery, the spate of maintenance backlogs and poor user satisfaction. On the basis of the outcomes of the questionnaire survey and a literature review, a schematic value maintenance management model is proposed for university maintenance organization. The maintenance department should be regarded as a business unit. The significant impact it has on the university institution can be illustrated by reviewing it in terms of characteristics. It should be strengthened by including it as one of the university strategic business units. This will also make it more attractive and competitive. The department should not be seen as an engineering-led unit, but as a business-led unit so that it can be creative, innovative and competitive.

The National Parks: America's Best Idea. Dir. by Ken Burns. Prod. by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan. Florentine Films and WETA, 2009. 12 hrs. (http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/)

Individuals who wish to propose films for review in the Journal should communicate with Thomas Doherty, American Studies Department, Brandeis University, 415 South St., Waltham, MA 02454-9110; doherty@brandeis.edu. The national parks have long needed, to quote the religious Bob Dylan, “a shot of love.” In the face of shrinking budgets, deteriorating facilities, and a serious maintenance backlog, the National Park Service, which will celebrate its centennial in 2016, has struggled to protect and interpret the nation's natural and cultural treasures. So I was heartened to hear, several years ago, that Ken Burns and his people were putting together a major film on the parks and their history. Burns has made a career of producing documentaries on iconic American subjects, among them baseball, jazz, the West, and, of course, the Civil War. The National Parks: America's Best Idea, his six-episode series that debuted in the Fall of 2009 on pbs, follows in that tradition, celebrating the national parks as a common American inheritance. And the adulatory attention that the Burns series has showered on the parks seems to have redounded to their benefit, as visitation, stagnant for much of the last decade, is up. Thanks in part to Ken Burns, the American passion for our national parks seems born again. As a fan of the parks and someone committed to their public preservation, that makes me glad.

Quantitative Analysis of Criteria in University Building Maintenance in Malaysia

University buildings are a significant part of university assets and considerable resources are committed to their design, construction and maintenance. The core of maintenance management is to optimize productivity and user satisfaction with optimum resources. An important segment in the maintenance management system is the analysis of criteria that influence building maintenance. Therefore, this paper aims to identify quantify, rank and discuss the criteria that influence maintenance costs, maintenance backlogs, productivity and user satisfaction in Malaysian university buildings. The paper reviews the related literature and presents the outcomes of a questionnaire survey. Questionnaires were administered on 50 university maintenance organizations. Thirty-one criteria were addressed to the university maintenance organizations to evaluate the degree to which each of the criteria influences building maintenance management. With a 66% response rate, it was concluded that the consideration of the criteria is critical to the university building maintenance management system. The quality of components and materials, budget constraints and the age of the building were found to be the most influential criteria but information on user performance satisfaction, problems associated with in-house workforce and shortage of materials and components were the least influential criteria. The paper also outlined that maintenance management is a strategic function in university administration.

Simultaneous control of maintenance and production rates of a manufacturing system with defective products

In the past three decades, studies of simultaneous maintenance and production planning have been focusing on age-dependent machine failure and inventory. This paper presents the interaction between defective products and optimal control of production rate, lead time and inventory. Our aim is to minimize the expected discounted overall cost due to maintenance activities, inventory holding and backlogs. Through Condition-Based Maintenance, we monitor in a real time the manufacturing system's health by describing N operational states. We consider two maintenance states of a machine controlled by two decision variables: production and maintenance rates. The optimal policy is characterized by the dynamic programming solution to a piecewise deterministic optimal control problem. A numerical illustration and a sensitive analysis are developed with a set of parameters calibrated on an existing manufacturing system.

Value –Based Maintenance Management Model for University Buildings in Malaysia-A Critical Review

The essence of building maintenance is to increase the service life of a building by delaying deterioration, decay and failure. Building maintenance must therefore be considered as a strategic process if the value of a building is to be sustained. Building maintenance management is a complex and multi-faceted thought process that involves planning, directing, controlling and organizing maintenance services for the sustenance of the value of a building. It entails making intricate decisions under complex algorithms, uncertainty and risks within organizational resources. The purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative maintenance management model for university buildings in Malaysia. The proposed model reflects current thinking on building maintenance management. A number of studies have investigated the maintenance management of university buildings in Malaysia; however, all the studies have observed maintenance management procedures that are corrective and condition based. Nonetheless, this is contributing to the spate of maintenance backlogs and the lack of value delivery to the stakeholders. Although the research specifically focused on university buildings, many public and private sector organizations face similar maintenance management problems. Therefore this research has broader applications. The outcome of this research is to come up with a prototype maintenance management model that can facilitate university institutions to carry out buildings maintenance management services that meet the expectations and perceptions of the stakeholders.

Accidents: A discrepancy between indicators and facts!

Despite, the overwhelming amount of currently available safety management systems (and accompanying tools) accidents with hazardous substances still occur every now and then in the process industries. In this paper a large number of recently occurred accidents in the process industries are analysed showing that reoccurring disruptions during daily operation were present in the causal path of these accidents. The reoccurring disruptions can be seen as pre-warning signals. Their existence forms a gap with the common proactive safety indicators. This gap exists of information, already present and available in daily operation, of which it is UNKNOWN (to the local assessor) that it may lead to unsafe situations/accidents, e.g. maintenance backlogs, quality reports, etc. It is argued that these reoccurring events should be considered to be included in the safety indicators after assessment by an extended body of knowledge, because these events seem to become increasingly important regarding the prevention of accidents that still occur nowadays.

Hidden benefits of public private partnerships: the case of water pressure management in Sebokeng

Many water distribution systems in South Africa are deteriorating due to many years of neglect resulting in a serious maintenance backlog. Recent government legislation has introduced free basic water to all South Africans up to a limit of 6 Kl/month per property which in turn causes certain confusion regarding payment among many residents. These key issues and others have led to serious problems with service delivery specifically in the low income areas where the maintenance has been neglected for more than 30 years in some cases. The potential for support from the Private Sector has beenhighlighted at the highest levels within government as a possible solution to addressing the existing backlogs despite the fact that there are relatively few successful projects to support this view.This paper presents the results after 30 months of operation of a small scale public private partnership in one of the largest low income areas in South Africa where the Sebokeng/Evaton Pressure Management Project was commissioned in July 2005. The savings both in terms of volume of water saved as well as financial savings to the municipality are impressive and exceed all initial expectations. The most interestinga1spect of the project, however, is not the savings achieved from the installation, but the numerous other additional benefits that have materialised which were not originally anticipated when the project was commissioned. Such benefits, include the identification of many network problems that had been undetected for more than 9 years as well the sudden interest in helping the residents by several government and semi-government organisations. These organisations were unable or unwilling to provide any support to the area prior to the successful Public Private Partnership. The project represents a significant advancement in Public-Private Partnerships (PPP’s)and clearly demonstrates that small scale Public Private Partnerships can be viable despite the general view that this type of project is confined to large scale initiatives due to the effort and expense in developing the PPP type of contract. The paper provides details of the processes involved in setting up and implementing such a project and highlights that the model used by the Project Team to address leakage in Sebokeng and Evaton can be adapted for use in other areas and other applications to improve service delivery throughout South Africa as well as elsewhere in the world where conditionspermit. The paper presents the results from the project after the first 30 months of operation and summarises some of the many additional benefits that have arisen from the project.

Simultaneous control of production, preventive and corrective maintenance rates of a failure-prone manufacturing system

This paper deals with the control of corrective and preventive maintenance rates in the production planning of a manufacturing system with machines subject to random failures and repairs. The introduction of preventive and corrective maintenance will increase the availability of the production system which guarantees the improvement of the system's productivity if the production planning is well done. The objective of this study is to minimize a discounted overall cost consisting of maintenance cost, inventory holding and backlog cost. The decision variables are the production, the machine preventive and repair rates which influence the inventory levels and the system capacity respectively. In the proposed model, the failure rate of a machine depends on its age; hence, the corrective and preventive maintenance policies are machine-age dependent. A computational algorithm, based on numerical methods, is used for solving the optimal control problem. Finally, a numerical example and a sensitive analysis are presented to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed approach. The structure of the optimal control policy is presented and extensions to more complex manufacturing systems are discussed.

Portsmouth's pioneering highways management contract, UK

Since 1998, Portsmouth City Council (PCC) has been acutely aware that the condition of its highway stock was in decline through lack of investment. Acknowledging that the highway is a universal service used by all residents and visitors, and is key to the future prosperity of the city, PCC looked to identify a better way of delivering a highway maintenance service. Ahead of its time, PCC developed an asset management approach to highways maintenance by defining service standards and levels, and developing an innovative road and footway condition index. An evaluation of options was undertaken prior to selecting the private finance initiative (PFI) route as the mechanism to address the identified maintenance backlog and for funding the long-term future of highway management in the city. The Department for Transport has described this pathfinder project as ‘a pioneering and innovative way of procuring better road maintenance’. After a lengthy procurement process this pathfinder project was granted £121m of PFI credits, and the contract was signed on 30 July 2004. A short six-month mobilisation period followed, with full-service commencement on 31 January 2005. The contract is proving to be an outstanding success, acknowledged by positive comments from both residents and the local media. It has seen a step-change in not only the volume of maintenance work undertaken in the city but also in the profile of the service corporately, nationally and internationally.

Long-term maintenance strategies for highway bridges

The need for cost-effective maintenance strategies for highway bridges is becoming increasingly important as these structures age and the demands for funding expand. Shortfalls in the annual budget to complete all the identified work also requires that rational procedures be formulated regarding when maintenance work on different structures within a stock should take place. Two main types of maintenance are considered: steady state and essential. The concept of an optimal maintenance programme is introduced. In most cases this is the ideal situation since it minimises long-term costs and disruption to users of the structures. In practice, optimal maintenance strategies may not be affordable when first introduced if there is a backlog of work resulting in a need to prioritise parts of the work. Prioritisation is discussed in terms of quantifying the consequences of deferring maintenance work, and ranking the bridges in the stock by their value of cost: benefit ratio of deferring the work. The use of a long-term plan to eliminate maintenance backlogs that arise from long-term underfunding is explained and the ‘long-term plan formula’ is introduced. A flow chart is provided to prioritise the maintenance on bridges included in a long-term plan.

The Benefits of Naturalist-Led Interpretive Programs: Implications for User Fees

The 1996 Recreation Fee Demonstration program allowed some federal resource management agencies to keep a portion of user fees generated on-site, instead of returning all revenue to the general treasury. Funded primarily through entrance, activity, parking, and interpretive fees, this legislation has been successful in reducing the maintenance backlog for participating agencies. However, it is unclear what effect user fees might have on visitors attending interpretive programs and the benefits that agencies might be receive from implementing this policy. A field experiment was conducted to measure the outcomes of a naturalist-led, fee-based canoeing program offered by the San Bernardino National Forest Association in southern California. Two hundred twenty-seven canoeists at Big Bear Lake answered questions about their trips during the summer of 1999. Results indicated that the naturalist not only increased visitors’ appreciation of the resource, but also enhanced their perceptions of U.S. Forest Service fee policies.

Romania's Railways under Transition: Reorganisation Rehabilitation and Regional Development

The paper attempts a review of the Romanian Railwaysduring transition. The first half of the paper considers the fall intraffic and the resulting financial problems which have made itdifficult to maintain the system and continue with any development.The organisation has been restructured so that separatefreight and passenger companies can now concentrate on specificbusiness and compete on the market while the infrastructurecompany is catching up on the maintenance backlog andis proceeding slowly with further electrification. The secondsection concentrates on the European project for high-speedtransport corridors and especially the interest of Romania'srailways in Corridors Four and Nine. Although there have beendelays over several years in starting the complex work of upgrading,contracts for the first phase of Corridor Four (Bucharest-Ctimpina) have now been signed, a new passenger coachrunning 200 km/his in service and locomotive upgrades are underway.The significance of all this for regional developmentlies in the fact that remarkably little of the 1989 network hasbeen closed and the system has remained basically intact tocope with the upswing in the economy that has taken placefrom 2000 onwards. The high-speed corridors, which include anumber of variants, comprise suffteient axes to afford directlinks with the economic macro regions while additional projectsare on hand to improve cohesion on the eastern frontier wherethe most serious development challenges exist.

The political economy of post-transition transportation policy in Hungary

This paper reviews transportation system trends in Hungary since the transition in 1989. It documents the continuation of rapid increases in private motor vehicle ownership and use despite a major economic downturn. Sharp increases in new highway investments are contrasted with a growing backlog of unmet maintenance and rehabilitation needs in the road, rail and public transit sectors. It then reviews recent political struggles over these policies, and the effectiveness of these policies in promoting employment, regional development, and a sustainable environment. It suggests that the dynamics of the post-industrial economy may have reduced the importance of highway sector investments relative to investments into human capital.

ASSESSMENT OF LOCAL AUTHORITY NETWORK MAINTENANCE INVESTMENT REQUIREMENT.,

This report gives the results of the first year of an exercise to use the National Road Maintenance Condition Survey to assess the national highways maintenance backlog in monetary terms. The standard chosen was the warning levels recommended in the Local Authorities Associations' Code of Good Practice for Highway Maintenance ('the code'). The principal output of this exercise is a single cost - that of bringing the whole network back to the condition of the 'warning levels' in the code. This single cost is not the annual expenditure increase required to achieve those levels. The annual rate of deterioration, at current levels of expenditure, and the period over which the improvement is to take place would have to be known for this to be assessed. No prioritization is implied by this analysis for the most effective targeting of maintenance investment. (A)

A linear programming model to manage the maintenance backlog

One of the keys to a successful maintenance program in a large manufacturing industry is the ability to complete repairs in a timely fashion. A poor maintenance program impacts productivity, costs, customer satisfaction, and worker esteem. Since a substantial portion of maintenance labor-hours are assigned to non-routine work orders, it is important to process these orders promptly and effectively. A linear programming model has been developed to cost-effectively allocate labor crews to different prioritized work orders. The linear programming model gives consideration to different craft areas, such as electrical, mason, and so on, as well as to the prioritization of work orders. Also, the use of overtime work and the assignment of a special allocable projects crew is considered. The model formulation is continually updated and rerun as new work orders enter the system, old orders are completed, and the time horizon changes for the pending work orders. An example of the model is presented as applied to an aluminum smelting plant, where the model is being run successfully on a weekly basis.

Reusability in software maintenance: A Japan—USA comparison

AbstractJapan benefits from a level of software reuse in software maintenance more than ten times the level in the USA. We report in this paper on our investigation during 1992 and 1993 into the management factors associated with that difference. The four main parts of this paper are the motivation for applying software reusability, maintenance management in the USA, maintenance management in Japan, and USA versus Japan. Our investigation included on‐site visits in Japan and the USA, interviews with experts in Japan and the USA, and a review of the relevant Japanese and American literature (one of us speaks and reads Japanese fluently).Organizations in Japan applying software reuse report reduced maintenance backlogs, better satisfaction of customer (user) requests, and improved maintenance productivity. In Japan, about a third of organizations apply software reuse, and the reuse level typically is in the 50% to 75% range, we observe. In the USA, less than 2% of organizations apply software reuse in software maintenance, and the reuse level those organizations achieve typically is below 35%. The approach to software reuse in Japan is more business‐oriented, with an emphasis on team work‐methods and quality improvement. The approach in the USA is more technically oriented, with an emphasis on tools and operating practices. The approach in Japan reflects a tradition of building and maintaining in terms of assemblies and subassemblies to help control product quality over a long term. The approach in the USA reflects managements' pressure for a short‐term payoff, and the relatively easy availability of personnel skills when needed. In both Japan and the USA, personnel factors are a major concern for information systems management in determining the extent of software reuse in software maintenance. Underlying all software maintenance reuse differences between Japan and the USA are structural and cultural differences which shape the extent and manner of applying software reusability in software maintenance.

A strategy for identifying ‘excellent’ systems analysts

One of the key issues confronting information systems (IS) executives relates to the effectiveness and efficiency of their staff in actually implementing their organization's IS strategies. As a result of this and in the light of the current development and maintenance backlog problem and a desire to increase systems analyst productivity, a research project was initiated to identify the qualities of ‘excellent’ systems analysts. The project included 53 research participants from two companies representing five groups of individuals, or audiences, who interact with systems analysts. The data were gathered using Kelly's RepGrid technique and represent audience perceptions of what constitutes an ‘excellent’ systems analyst. Overall, the more important aspects that emerged from the data include communicate, attitude, knowledge, investigate, and experience. The detailed definitions of these aspects, as determined from the research data, varied among the audiences and reflected audience objectives. For instance, user audiences emphasized content-related aspects, such as knowledge. Alternatively, systems analysts and their supervisors differentiated on process-related aspects, such as investigate. Each audience has its own interpretation of the relative importance of what constitutes an ‘excellent’ systems analyst. Based on these research findings, the companies involved in the research project have revised their approach to hiring and training systems analysts.