Abstract
The road infrastructure development, maintenance, and management are vital for the movement of goods and people between places. Lack of road development leads to traffic congestion in existing roads and roads overuse. While lack of road maintenance leads to road deterioration which can cut short the life span of the road, it also makes the road to be unsafe to use by motorist. Therefore, without roads infrastructure, the mobility is compromised, and this can lead to slow economic growth of the country. This study intends to investigate and emphasise the importance of road in-frastructure and maintenance of road infrastructure.
The data related to road infrastructure maintenance is gathered through Company X and analysed using Microsoft Excel to determine if road maintenance is adequate in the study area. The adequacy of road maintenance is measured by how Company X performs against the Service Level Agree-ment (SLA) and the number of defects on the roads. Furthermore, where data is enough, world best practice in road infrastructure maintenance are compared to Company X maintenance to determine the adequacy of maintenance by Company X.
The road infrastructure maintenance by Company X is found to be not adequate on most Key Per-formance Indicators (KPI) against the SLA. This is the case as most KPI are maintained or repaired well after the SLA targets. In 2020 and 2021 January to June maintenance performance of Company X against SLA are at record lows in five years, 24 and 35 incidents related to road defects were reported and Company X paid R3 857 606 and R4 086 536 respectively, for liabilities related to lack of maintenance. The research findings further indicate that maintenance is crucial with regards to road infrastructure. It is recommended by the study that, to improve the quality and safety of the road’s, road agencies like Company X must ensure swift response to emerging road defects, focus more on preventative maintenance and new technology integration into road infrastructure management systems to avoid liability costs and to keep road users safe.
Keywords
Road’s infrastructure, maintenance, KPI, best practice, new technologies, SLA, and road defects.