ABSTRACT
The global recession and escalating costs have led to an institutional change in the New Zealand road sector’s procurement methods. This is resulting in a significant adjustment to the way we procure asset management and maintenance services for road infrastructure. We are implementing these changes right now.
For most of our State Highway (national roads) sector, the most important of these changes involves the way we re-let our network maintenance contracts. Key elements of our new procurement model are the primary supplier being responsible for delivering the contract’s asset management and maintenance activities and the introduction of a new incentivised payment methodology.
To ensure the new approach is sustainable, our service providers’ Maintenance Management Plans (MMPs) have to document the basis for their investment decisions and the methodologies they will use to manage road assets. This paper’s focus is particularly on the MMP.
Within this context, the paper discusses the institutional changes taking place in New Zealand and our expectations of the new model’s ability to achieve the efficiency gains we are seeking. In particular, we will look at the MMP’s purpose and objectives, and expected coverage. We will also explain how the MMP framework was developed, what it contains and the benefits it is bringing to New Zealand’s road sector from both the client’s and contractor’s perspectives.
Asset managers, who want to explore opportunities to improve efficiency or are looking for new methodologies to integrate asset management planning and delivery processes, may gain a significant insight from our approach.
