Maintenance Life-Cycle Cost Analysis Findings and Recommendations

Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) determines the overall cost of a project. Traditionally, construction and maintenance decisions consider short-term costs, not long-term financial impacts. LCCA considers acquisition costs, ongoing expenses, and disposal costs. When LCCA is applied to an individual asset, that asset can perform at an acceptable level of service, while potentially decreasing overall maintenance costs and worker exposure. When applied across an entire maintenance budget, the savings can be substantial. The goals of this project were to help Caltrans lower the budget needed to maintain its roadway system and to reduce worker exposure. This project produced three reporting tools, which allow users to estimate expenditures and labor hours needed to maintain each asset. Caltrans uses these tools to determine past maintenance expenditures on a per-asset basis and thereby estimate future costs. The tools compare expenditure and labor-hour information among districts, counties, and route classifications. While engineering judgment remains necessary, unusually high or low values can indicate problems that should be explored. Based on the authors' recommendations, Caltrans will be able to measure the annual expense of each type of asset within each asset group by assigning a unique number to each item within the inventory and associating each expense to the assets being maintained. This will allow Caltrans to make maintenance decisions based on a life cycle cost. Once decision makers use life cycle costs to make decisions, Caltrans should be able to achieve a greater overall level of service (LOS) with the same maintenance budget.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHD10 Maintenance and Operations Management.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Zilay, Rob
  • Fisher, Jonathan
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 10p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Budgeting; Highway maintenance; Level of service; Life cycle costing
• Identifier Terms: California Department of Transportation
• Geographic Terms: California
• Subject Areas: Finance; Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; I10: Economics and Administration; I60: Maintenance;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01516238
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-5079
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 28 2014 12:32PM