The Finnish Transport Agency together with the Lappi and Keski-Suomi Centres for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment, Lapland and Roadscanners Oy from Finland has started a new PEHKO 2015-2025 project with the emphasis on testing new methods that could improve the efficiency and productivity of the management of paved roads. The project will commence in 2015 in selected maintenance contract areas in Lapland and Central Finland. The ambitious goal of this 10 year R&D pilot project will be to cut down the annual paving costs in the areas by 40-50% from the current level.
The basic idea of the PEHKO project will be to improve the practices and policies of paved road maintenance and management, and the technologies developed and tested in the ROADEX projects will have a great role. The aim of the project will be to enhance the productivity of funding investments and improve the condition of the paved road network, or at least keep it at current levels with less resources. This goal will be achieved by focusing on three targets:
1) Improving the daily drainage maintenance standards for paved roads. This will lead to increased pavement lifetimes and lower annual paving costs.
2) Applying new NDT (non-destructive testing) road survey technologies in the diagnostics of paved roads allowing the engineers involved to focus their rehabilitation measures exactly on the problem sections and address the roots of the problems rather than just treating the symptoms.
3) Changing maintenance policies from reactive to proactive maintenance. This will mean that maintenance crews will fix the potential problem sections before serious pavement damages appear.