Shooting for the Stars: Unsealed Roads Service Levels

Abstract

Gympie Regional Council (GRC) manages, maintains and operates an extensive asset portfolio with limited financial resources. To ensure the service delivery is sustainable and effective GRC needs to ensure services are provided in a fit for purpose manner, prioritising capital and operational investments in a considered and consistent manner. To achieve this Council identified the need to review its asset management approach. Council’s adopted approach seeks to define star rating (criticality) and associated levels of service for all asset classes. The star rating, based on a set of agreed principles and developed as assessment criteria for each asset class, identifies the criticality of assets at an appropriate level based on available asset data and outlines an approach where investments can be prioritised objectively and consistently. The approach adopted across Council defines the levels of service in terms of a 5-star rating system, similar in principle to that used for classifying hotels. This strategy achieves a consistent language, that is more easily understood and relatable to the community allowing Council to have meaningful conversations regarding service levels without the traditional complexity that often losses the audience. Applying this framework, 5-star rated assets are assets that are very important to the community and have a high profile, high usage, or have a high-risk rating if they fail. The commensurate expectation of the community is that a 5-star asset is always presented in top condition and can support a high level of service. A 5-star asset requires a high frequency of inspections and a proactive level of maintenance to ensure the asset remains at a 5-star rating. At the other end of the spectrum, 1-star assets which are not very critical or important to the community would receive less frequent inspections, receive minimal investment to reduce whole of life expenditure. Over the past 12 months, using this data, Council has been in the process of developing a new strategic asset management approach for unsealed and sealed road network renewals and maintenance, aligning this with the star rating approach. Council has developed a Roads and Drainage Asset Maintenance Management Plan to assist articulating and measuring its common levels of service for maintenance practices. This paper will present how Council has developed, implemented and monitors: • Common levels of service (blending technical and community outcomes). • Defined levels of service utilising a star rating approach across all transport assets, informing maintenance and renewal priorities. • Introducing asset condition inspection and monitoring to guide maintenance and renewal requirements (i.e. measuring pavement roughness on unsealed roads). • Budget scenario planning for maintenance grading expenditure; • Establishing grading maintenance service targets for unsealed roads based on the star rating approach; and. • Implementation of REFLECT to standardise work order capture, monitor intervention levels and response times; and inform the development of the Roads and Drainage Asset Maintenance Management Plan. Additionally, this framework has supported a high-level and iterative asset management planning approach across the organisation that is focused on providing services that are affordable and meet community needs.