Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/565622
September 2015 | EquipmentWorld.com 58 PMS and asset management The nexus between PMSs and asset management programs can be com- plex and involve multiple software programs running on a single, or multiple platforms. For example, Fort Collins, Colorado's system of integrated asset management is helping that city control costs and program maintenance by combining its varied infrastructure inventories into a single platform. The result will be an integrated pavement, bridge and utility man- agement tool that – among many other things – will overlay sewer condition, water line condition, pavement condition and bridge condition to permit city manage- ment to program maintenance and capital projects, and help determine where to spend city funds. "The great value of the system is that it gives us a clear understand- ing of the condition of the entire network, be it bridges, pavements, or eventually, utilities," said Rick Richter, director of infrastructure services, City of Fort Collins. The city selected the dTIMS infra- structure asset management sys- tem from Deighton Associates and migrated eight years of pavement condition data into the new system. "It was really important not to lose that history because it gave us a real benefit in setting up our baseline," Richter said. "When we first started in 1989 we had no his- tory, but by 1997 we had a good idea of how the pavements had performed over the previous eight years, and we could sit down and develop the baseline, the deterio- ration curves, and treatments and triggers. We then moved into the development of the full-function program." The program gave Fort Collins some new capabilities in forecasting pavement maintenance and preser- vation activities. "We had a greater ability to de- termine the process used to predict deterioration of roadways," Richter said. "Being able to enter our data so the curves and predictions were accurate was a big benefit." Another benefit: the ability to forecast bud- gets and perform cost benefit analy- ses of different pavement treat- ments. "We could see what would be needed to maintain a condition, versus what would happen under a constrained budget, and produce both scenarios in graphs and charts. It was a huge leap for us," he says. Pavement preservation and LOS Maintenance of a high pavement condition LOS is intimately bound to best-practice pavement preser- vation. Pavement preservation is an important tool used to extend public agency resources to increase the useful life of roads at a signifi- cant cost savings over the life of the road. Research shows spending $1 to preserve a road in good condi- tion precludes spending $6 to $10 to reconstruct it later, after it's too road science | continued To order, call (800) 430-4540 or visit www.equipmentworld.com/roady-order-form Email: roady@equipmentworld.com Roady_EW_halfpage_EW0415.indd 1 3/25/15 8:52 AM