Many Departments of Transportation (DOTs) in the USA, some provinces in Canada, some states in Australia, and several countries in Europe still retain a large percentage of their own workforce to perform various routine maintenance type activities. This is considered as the "In-House Maintenance Model" or known as the "Traditional Model", in which either a portion of public sector or the entire organization carries out the routine maintenance services and activities. Those using this model are District Department of Transportation (DDOT), Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA), Minnesota Department of Transportation (MNDOT), North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), Florida Department of Transportation (DOT), Estonia, and VicRoads in Victoria, Australia. Most of these organizations have some or even substantial, in-house workforce for carrying out various routine maintenance services.
It is important to note that some countries retain a portion of their own work force to perform routine maintenance activities, while at the same time out-source certain activities via competitive public procurement. For example, Estonia outsources about 63% of routine maintenance, while Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) outsources approximately 80%, Maryland SHA out-sources a large portion of routine maintenance, and VicRoads in Australia outsources about 50%. These are discussed further in the subsequent models.
The countries that outsource all or essentially all the maintenance activities and retain no in-house workforce are listed as follows:
• Western Australia
• Finland
• Alberta, Canada
• The Netherlands
• British Columbia, Canada
• New Zealand
• Ontario, Canada
• Norway
• England
It should be pointed out that Sweden outsources essentially all the routine maintenance activities via publicly tendered contracts, but the "Vagverket Produktion" is still a business unit inside the Swedish Road Administration and full transparency has not been achieved.
At times the road authorities have procured maintenance services through other local public authorities, but this is becoming very uncommon (this can be termed as Public-Public-Partnerships). History has also revealed that this in-house model has been the common form for most, if not all countries, in which routine maintenance has been carried by internal workers. Even some periodic maintenance activities, such as resurfacing, small bridge work, and small work packages were previously done by the public authorities own workforce. However, outsourcing of routine maintenance activities seems to be a trend.