Abstract
The South African road network is considered amongst the longest networks globally. The network is made up of municipal, provincial and national roads that are either gravel or surfaced. Municipal and provincial roads make up the greater portion of the road network, and the state of these roads is considered to be at risk of failure or unfit for purpose. Maintenance of road assets in municipalities has not been a priority; the approach has been operate-till-failure, and municipalities lack data on road assets in their jurisdiction. This has led to municipal road assets deteriorating at an exponential rate and resulting in maintenance backlogs.
The purpose of this research was to determine if the application of road asset management principles to plan maintenance efficiently by allocating resources and collecting asset data periodically can be adopted by municipalities to improve the state of roads and address maintenance backlogs.
Two research questions were derived from the problem statement. To answer these questions, the literature on industry best practice was reviewed and a quantitative research method was adopted as a primary source to collect data. A research questionnaire was developed using data from the reviewed literature and was administered to 50 industry patrons. The questionnaire sought to determine the activities that are carried out as part of maintenance planning and the data required to conduct efficient road maintenance.
The data analysis revealed that road inventory, creation of deterioration models, alignment of organisational strategy with maintenance requirements, development of policy and strategy, collection, storage, updating and sharing of asset data and communicating road asset management system service targets are the activities that are considered crucial for road asset maintenance planning. The second research question was based on the data required for effective maintenance. Data analysis, utilities along the road asset and the route type are crucial; the other data types yielded inconclusive results. These activities were used to develop the guideline on asset management for road entities. The inconclusive results contradict the reviewed literature on industry best practice, further investigation into these results should be conducted.