Resumen
The conditions of road structures, play a considerable role in relation to the duration of its operational suitability. In this way maintenance money is smart money because maintaining roads is not optional. It protects not only the asset investment, but keeps travelling safe for road users. The use of technology to assess the fatigue properties and the integrity of the load-bearing capacity is of vital importance. The evaluation of these critical parameters is used as a basis for the development of a method to determine the remaining useful life, to estimate the scope and intervals of maintenance by specific management software, and finally to improve quality and the resulting long operational suitability. The subsequent lower number of necessary road works will generate financial savings and in general optimization of available resources. These objectives will be met by employing automated measuring systems to replace manual methods. An automated measurement system is less resource and time consuming and provides a greater quantity of useful data while considerably reducing traffic interference. The ANAS Quality Evaluation Management System (QEMS) is an innovative tool that enables the collection, the analysis and the evaluation of all the information related to road pavement, both for new construction projects and maintenance of existing roads. Beside this, the system issues on-time quality reports which include information about the progress and the quality of the activities, and information about the performances of the Key Suppliers (KS). Based on this, the QEMS aims to allow monitoring the specific quality performance of each and all activities carried by the KS. In addition, it can be used by each KS, who is allowed accessing solely its own results. This interactive tool is proposed as a support to enhance the quality of road construction by providing a synthetic and on-time analysis of performances to put in place fast and optimized solutions the first time. In the QEMS, each project is divided into several audit areas each characterized by a unique pavement structure. Then, in each Audit Area, the activities of each KS (e.g., laying, compaction), are audited acquiring selected information (laboratory test data, on site audit, management quality audit), defined as parameters, which represent the evaluation criteria to assess quality and whose results, converted in normalized scores, represent the Quality Indicators (QIs). Within the same audit area all the activities are organized into a hierarchical structure, called Activity Tree, where their quality depends on the quality and the weight factors of activities and parameters at lower levels. This paper describes the concepts behind the QEMS, which is the result of an ANAS significant Project. It includes the system configuration adapted to road work construction. However, the QEMS shows flexibility that enables its application to other civil engineering construction activities such as building, bridges and ports in general. Implementing the most cutting-edge technologies allows not just the construction of world-class roads, but also the optimization of the maintaining costs.