BACKGROUND: Quality assurance specifications that specify end product quality have often been used by transportation agencies as a means for assuring construction quality of highway pavements. However, agencies are increasingly incorporating performance-related specifications (PRS) in construction contracts to specify quality in terms of parameters related to desired long-term performance. These PRS also provide a means to account for the value lost or gained by the variances of these parameters from the specified target values. Although such PRS have been used for the construction of pavements, their use for pavement preservation treatments has been limited.  

There are no widely accepted guidelines for PRS for pavement preservation treatments that correlate key engineering properties to treatment quality and long-term performance. Research is needed to develop guidelines to facilitate developing PRS for pavement preservation treatments that provide a direct relationship of key material and construction characteristics to performance. These guidelines will help highway agencies develop and incorporate PRS in preservation treatment contracts. In this manner, agencies would be able to specify an optimum level of quality that represents the best balance of costs and performance, and establish quality-related pay adjustment factors if desired.

Recent work completed under NCHRP Project 10-82 provided further review of some of the issues related to the PRS for pavement preservation treatments.  However, additional research is needed to address these and other issues associated with PRS and to develop guidelines for use in preparing rational PRS for pavement preservation treatments.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this research was to develop guidelines for use in preparing PRS for pavement preservation treatments. The research dealt with preservation treatments for all pavement types, and defined preservation treatments are treatments applied to preserve an existing roadway, slow future deterioration, and maintain and improve its functional condition (without substantially increasing structural capacity).  

STATUS: Research is complete; the final report has been published as NCHRP Research Report 857, Performance Related Specifications for Pavement Preservation Treatments.