Maintenance practices depend upon whether the physical works are done in-house (by public organizations) or are outsourced due to road reform, re organizations, or other reasons. A majority of the countries in this study have no internal workforce and require outsourcing of the maintenance activities. During the earlier years of procurement of maintenance activities and during the first transition to outsourcing, the services were purchased yearly or via multi-year agreements, using separate contracts for each activity, and usually with a labor rate or unit price. Next, performance-based routine maintenance contracts began with 3 year contracts with service levels for quality standards and were typically unit price or hybrid contracts. The next progression was to longer and more lump type contracts.
Subsequently, there were more integrated contracts (periodic and routine maintenance), for a longer duration, basically lump sum contracts, using performance criteria or Levels of Service (LOS), and using more of a partnering concept. Table 12 in the Maintenance section of this report shows a summary of the different maintenance practice used by the countries in this study.
Figure 23 shows the international development of maintenance practices and it shows the development trend in today's maintenance practices. In short the results from this study continue to verify this trend of development and continue to be a valid strategy that many countries continue to follow. British Columbia, Canada has somewhat pushed the development as compared to the similar study, and their routine maintenance contracts are of 10 year duration.
The one new main development is the inclusion of the "Alliance Model" or what is termed E-MAC in England. This is a recent development and appears that this is a potential replacement of the Performance Specified Maintenance Contracts (PSMC) or called Performance Based Maintenance Contracts (PBMC). Also, a significant observation is that the results from the PSMC type model have not been as expected. The "Alliance Model" is being investigated as a potential replacement model for the PSMC type models.
The following is a summary of the development of maintenance contracting:
• Opening the market to maintenance has been key issue and a deliberate process of development should be considered before advancing straight towards the advanced models
• Outsourcing of performance-based routine maintenance has demonstrated successful results
• Longer-term agreements - about 7-10 years
• Lump Sum or Hybrid type contracts (Combination of Lump Sum and Unit Price)
• Partnering and trust are still relevant (both Client & Sub-Contractors)
• Using quality-based contractor selection criteria
• Most innovations have been equipment related, ICT, and Project Management
• Alliance model appears to have good potential
Realistically, there are many aspects and details involved when considering a change to these more innovative methods, and it can be considered as a paradigm change. Change is difficult (especially for public organizations), but is necessary to keep pace in today's society and the desire to progress into best practices that produce better services at a fair investment.