Highway filter drains: precursors for maintenance management

This paper conceptualises and presents a number of asset management building blocks required to establish holistic management for highway filter drains in the UK roads network. This is accomplished by evaluating current maintenance and management thinking and by identifying how existing strategies are lacking and potentially unsustainable. A condition assessment regime is hence described, tied to a measure of filter drain level of service (drainability) and an asset-specific ageing/renewal model that adopts six discreet condition bands is proposed. For this model to hold true, the Markov process is assumed to represent cumulative damage in a network. Drawing from relevant asset management concepts, a decision support tool to inform and optimise managerial decisions in respect to maintenance planning and resources allocation is also described.