Effective Management of Transportation and Pavement Assets

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Recognize the components and hierarchy of transportation asset management to support logical and cost-effective organizational decision-making, transportation asset inventory and condition tracking
• Use performance and deterioration models to forecast future asset conditions and maintenance requirements
• Prioritize maintenance and rehabilitation actions based on condition, risk, and available resources
• Develop defensible, cost‑effective investment strategies and budget plans for transportation assets
• Evaluate the impact of funding scenarios on long‑term asset performance and service levels

Description

As a professional responsible for planning, maintaining, or investing in transportation infrastructure, you are often required to make long‑term decisions with incomplete data, constrained budgets, and increasing performance expectations. Growing roadway networks, heavier traffic volumes, and aging pavements intensify the pressure to allocate limited resources effectively while maintaining safety and service quality.

Transportation asset management provides a structured, data‑driven approach to addressing these challenges. Rather than reacting to deterioration, asset management enables you to assess current conditions, anticipate future performance, and evaluate trade‑offs between maintenance actions, costs, and risk. These practices are especially critical in municipal and local contexts, where financial constraints and competing priorities demand justified, transparent decision‑making.

This course introduces the principles and practical application of modern transportation and pavement asset management. You will develop the skills needed to evaluate asset condition, forecast performance, and establish maintenance and investment strategies that support long‑term infrastructure sustainability. The emphasis is on applied methods and decision frameworks that you can use directly in your professional practice to improve asset performance and optimize resource use.

Who This Course Is For

This course is designed for:

• Engineers and technicians involved in pavement design, evaluation, or asset management
• Transportation asset owners, network managers, and administrators
• Professionals working with municipal, regional, or provincial transportation infrastructure
• Airport owners and maintenance staff responsible for pavement systems
• Consultants providing pavement condition assessment or asset management services
• Professionals involved in selecting or procuring pavement testing and evaluation equipment

This course covers

• History of road design and construction in Canada
• Principles of Transportation Asset Management
• Field data collection technology/methods
• Methods and equipment to measure pavement surface condition (manual, semi-automated, automated)
• Pavement surface distress identification
• Assessment of pavement surface roughness
• Structural capacity evaluation (deflection testing, ground penetrating radar)
• Risk management
• Life-cycle planning
• Life-cycle cost analysis
• Fostering the culture of transportation asset management
• Training needs
• Pavement management
• Pavement distress data collection
• Performance model development
• Pavement preservation to improve asset performance
• Management of sidewalks and recreational trails
• Impact of design and construction features on pavement performance