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Many road authorities considered contracting out road maintenance to the private sector based on performance measures as an alternative and better solution than traditional methods of contracting. It highlights issues of interest to road authorities in the context of saving maintenance costs and managing contracting times effectively. This method is named as performance based maintenance by contracting (PBMC) and has substantial success records in minimizing infrastructure maintenance costs in many developed and developing countries over the last two decades. It has received the attention of researchers and practitioners. However, the literature on PBMC is reasonably high although the concept of PBMC is relatively new. The purpose of this paper is to carry out a comprehensive state of the art review of the literature that has been conducted in the recent years.

A total of 62 published report and journal articles related to performance based maintenance by contracting for road network system has been analysed and reviewed in this paper.

This paper analyses the literature on PBMC and presents examples of developed and developing countries that have been successfully maintaining their road network systems using PBMC as their preferred method of contracting.

The potential of reducing maintenance costs, increasing the quality of works and reducing the chance of corruption in the long run in developing countries are the challenging issues for PBMC, which needs more attention. This paper can be used as a base or platform for future research in the area of PBMC such as developing optimal policies and cost models.

This paper would be useful for the research on PBMC. It would be beneficial for the engineers or professionals in improving the performance of road maintenance and management.

A large number of roads have been constructed in the rural areas of India to connect habitations with the nearest major roads. With time, the pavements of these roads have deteriorated and they need some kind of maintenance, although they all do not need maintenance at the same time, as they have all not deteriorated to the same level. Hence, they have to be prioritized for maintenance.

In order to present a scientific methodology for prioritizing pavement maintenance, the factors affecting prioritization and the relative importance of each were identified through an expert survey. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to scientifically establish weight (importance) of each factor based on its relative importance over other factors. The proposed methodology was validated through a case study of 203 low volume rural roads in the state of Himachal Pradesh in India. Ranking of these roads in order of their priority for maintenance was presented as the final result.

The results show that pavement distresses, traffic volume, type of connectivity and the socioeconomic facilities located along a road are the four major factors to be considered in determining the priority of a road for maintenance.

The methodology provides a comprehensive, scientific and socially responsible pavement maintenance prioritization method which will automatically select roads for maintenance without any bias.

Timely maintenance of roads will also save budgetary expenditure of restoration/reconstruction, leading to enhancement of road service life. The government will not only save money but also provide timely benefit to the needy population.

Road transportation is the primary mode of inland transportation in rural areas. Timely maintenance of the pavements will be of great help to the socioeconomic development of rural areas.

The proposed methodology lays special emphasis on rural roads which are small in length, but large in number. Instead of random, a scientific method for selection of roads for maintenance will be of great help to the public works department for better management of rural road network.

Effective maintenance of rural roads is an essential aspect of public infrastructure delivery. However, governments failed to upkeep the built infrastructure. Accordingly, this study addresses this pressing issue by identifying attributes, skills and resources for asset maintenance. To do this, collaborative governance, a recent plausible alternative in the public policy literature, is used.

The literature review proffered 29 strategies for operationalising collaborative governance principles. A questionnaire survey with the public sector representatives comprising top-level, mid-level and lower-level engineers was used to test the applicability of these strategies in rural infrastructure maintenance of India. The rated responses concerning strategies were subjected to exploratory factor analysis to determine the underlying structure for reducing the dimensions to make them practically operational.

The exploratory factor analysis showed that six dimensions play an essential role in initiating and promoting collaboration. This parsimonious framework suggests building a common collaborative framework, communicating vision and fostering communities, leadership, increasing the industry's capacity, transparency of power and responsibilities, and technical and financial resources. Thus, governments’ initiatives to build collaboration is most prominent in initiating and sustaining a successful collaboration.

The practical strategies reinforced through this study can formalise self-initiated regimes or independently convened regimes to a federally directed regime well within the scope of the national programmes. Thus, findings primarily have considerable implications to emerging countries where reducing the unit costs to save the public exchequer from wastage and preventing assets from becoming dilapidate are essential.

Public sector practitioners often lack the essential skills and innovative thinking and thus offered new knowledge would transform the traditional practices in infrastructure maintenance. Theoretically, the present research advances the understanding of structures and processes for collaborative governance theory to non-contractual infrastructure asset management literature.

An important feature in managing road infrastructures is the growing use of performance-based contracts (PBCs) in the delivery of maintenance. The expectations are high. But there are also risks connected to PBC. The main question for road agencies is: how to achieve as much as possible of the expected advantages while limiting the possible disadvantages? The purpose of this paper is to answer that question and explore how PBC of maintenance can be improved.

Based on theoretical constructs this paper investigates the strategies of the English Highways Agency and the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat, when outsourcing the maintenance of their existing road infrastructures and the effects of their strategies.

The paper finds that road agencies should focus on the process of interaction of the main actors involved, rather than the performance measurement systems (PMS) itself. The agencies should adjust their governance to the degree of uncertainty. PBC requires an informed and knowledgeable principal.

The in-depth study is limited to two road agencies. More systematic research is needed in linking theoretical constructs with empirical evidence from more road agencies. The method applied in this paper can be used for further research.

The lessons drawn from the case studies offer potential benefits to other road authorities that use or consider PBC as their method of delivery of maintenance.

Where only few empirical studies have investigated in detail the actual achievements of PBC in road maintenance, this empirical research aims to fill that gap.

The purpose of this paper is to present a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method, by combining the AHP, ELECTRE II, ELECTRE III, ELECTRE IV and Copeland techniques for road maintenance prioritization, in which the roads are evaluated and ranked based on various criteria. The proposed method is applied to four streets in Tehran, as a case study.

First, a set of criteria for road maintenance was determined and their weights were obtained using the AHP method. Four streets in Tehran, Iran were considered as alternatives and prioritized using the ELECTRE II, ELECTRE III and ELECTRE IV methods. Finally, the results of employing the three methods were integrated using the Copeland method and a final result was obtained.

The findings of the study suggested that “road safety” is the most important criterion in maintenance and “traffic volume” and “pavement quality index (PCI)” have the second and third rank in importance. Moreover, “The width of the street” is the least important criterion in road maintenance. Additionally, the streets' final ranking was obtained using the proposed method.

The proposed method helps managers effectively assign their limited budget and resources to roads with higher maintenance priority and as the result, increase the roads efficiency.

In this research, eight main criteria were collected using previous researches and experts' opinions. Also, a new combination of different MCDM techniques is proposed in this research.

The purpose of this paper is to present a study of reliability-centred maintenance (RCM), which is conducted on the key sub-assets of a newly constructed road junction infrastructure in Nigeria.

The classical RCM methodology, a type of RCM, which has a top down, zero-based approach for maintenance analysis, is implemented in this study.

The implementation of the classical RCM is successful in its application of various PM policies assigned to the assets and it shows that its application in the highway industry could reduce excessive maintenance backlog and frequent reactive maintenance by effective optimisation of its preventive maintenance (PM) intervals.

Road junctions are originators of more than 70 per cent of road traffic congestion and account for high accident rate. The traditional methods of reliability assurance used in the highway industry such as reactive maintenance and routine maintenance are often inadequate to meet the round the clock usage demands of these assets, thus the consideration for the application of a systematic RCM process for maintaining the system function by selecting and applying effective PM tasks.

It uses an approach that critically develops and analyses thoroughly preventive and continuous maintenance strategy in a new circumstance with environment of uncertainty and limited operating data. The case-based reasoning cycle has been applied in the RCM approach with real-time data obtained from a UK-based network maintenance management system for highway infrastructures.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the extent of, rationales for and outcomes of contracting out in the local road and park sectors in Norway. For understanding the use of contracting out in local governments, it highlights the relevance of the capability perspective in organisational literature as an alternative to the standard efficiency perspective.

The paper draws on four expert interviews and survey data gathered from park and road managers in Norwegian municipalities in 2015.

The study suggests that Norwegian municipalities primarily contract out park and road maintenance services when they do not have the capability to perform these services themselves. Cost concerns are also highlighted but of less importance. Moreover, lack of competition renders the use of contracting out as a potentially costly and less satisfying arrangement for organising service delivery.

While the scope is limited to one country, Norway, future research may benefit from the theoretical perspectives, which have been used.

Policy guidelines should support a flexible use of various arrangements for service provision.

The dominating view among proponents of marketisation in the public sector suggests that contracting out to private contractors is undertaken to enhance economic efficiency compared to keeping service production in-house. This study suggests that this is not always the case – even in “most likely” sectors such as park and road maintenance.

Transport infrastructure in most countries is owned and maintained either by public authorities, private organisations, or individuals. However, in Sweden, about 50 per cent of the road network is owned and maintained by civic road associations. By using the analytic notion of commoning, this chapter seeks to explore how road maintenance is organised and in what ways civic participation is contributing to infrastructure maintenance. Through interviews with representatives of civic road associations in Vellinge municipality and municipal representatives, we conclude that property owners are being commoned, that is, they are obliged to be a member of the civic road association in the neighbourhood where they own property. This means that property owners are given the opportunity to collectively decide on matters of road infrastructure, including maintenance and investments. Each civic road association is also acting as an organisational collective, demanding or pressuring the municipality and its politicians to reform subsidies and the organisation of ownership of roads and responsibility for their maintenance. As a single property owner, this is difficult, but as an organisational collective, in a civic road association, they have a voice. As a citizen, local municipal election offers opportunities to push for change, but at these institutionalised moments of democracy, road infrastructure issues compete with other issues. Election campaigns rarely target road maintenance, although Vellinge seems to be an exception here. Nevertheless, as citizenship is built around the provision of universal and evenly distributed infrastructure, crumbling infrastructure in different parts of the municipality tends to raise concerns over equal access and opportunities – and also differentiated citizenships.

Public‐private partnerships (PPPs) are being frequently used today to private sector investment in road projects. Most of the road PPP projects are either for new roads or for those that involve significant expansion of existing capacity. There are limited instances of PPPs for renovating and maintenance of existing roads. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the applicability of using PPPs for road renovation and maintenance projects.

This paper uses a case‐study approach since it is an appropriate strategy to investigate a phenomenon within its real life context. The East Coast Road project was chosen for the study because it was the first project in India to use PPP for road renovation and maintenance, and being the first project of its kind, the case was of general public interest.

The paper indicates that risk levels in Rehabilitate, Improve, Maintain, Operate and Transfer (RIMOT) projects are lower than Greenfield BOT projects. Even in areas like renovation and maintenance, PPP structures can bring many advantages over traditional procurement.

This paper has the limitations attributable to single case studies. There is a need to extend this paper to include more such case studies to evaluate their relevance for infrastructure development, particularly in emerging countries.

PPP structures can be useful for renovating and maintaining the existing roads. Modalities such as the RIMOT framework can have greater potential than the conventional BOT structures. Private investments in infrastructure can also be through a corporate finance structure.

This paper describes and analyzes the experience of India's first PPP for renovation and maintenance. The findings of this paper would have value for policy makers who are interested in attracting private sector finance and expertise in infrastructure and more specifically in roads.