About the Project

In 2012, federal highway legislation commonly known as the “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act,” or MAP-21, was enacted to provide funding for transportation programs and establish a performance-based Federal highway program. The legislation included a requirement for States to develop “a risk-based asset management plan for the National Highway System to improve or preserve the condition of the assets and the performance of the system.” The Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) set out to develop a transportation asset management plan (TAMP) that both meets the MAP-21 requirements and establishes a framework for developing future plans. To accomplish this goal, the Nevada DOT selected us to develop a long-term, risk-based TAMP.

Our work included:

• Evaluating the data availability and maturity for twenty-five different transportation assets managed by the Nevada DOT.

• Conducting interviews with agency personnel and analyzed the resulting data with respect to its contribution to developing the TAMP.

• Developing a rating process to consider factors such as the availability of inventory information, the existence of performance targets, the availability of deterioration rates, and the sophistication of financial analysis tool.  The ratings were used to assign an overall level of maturity to each asset type.

• Establishing a prioritization process to develop recommendations for which assets to include in the initial TAMP.

• Developing a TAMP that includes pavement, bridge, and ITS assets.

The TAMP was designed to summarize inventory and condition information, to establish performance targets to be met, and to develop investment strategies that demonstrate a data-driven, cost-effective approach to maintaining and preserving transportation assets for 10 years. In addition, the steps involved in developing the TAMP were documented so they will serve as a resource for future updates to the TAMP.