This Interim Technical Bulletin recommends procedures for conducting Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) of pavements, provides detailed procedures to determine work zone user costs, and introduces a probabilistic approach to account for the uncertainty associated with LCCA inputs.

This synthesis will be of interest to pavement designers, maintenance engineers, and other concerned with selection of pavement designs and pavement rehabilitation alternatives. Information is presented on how life-cycle can be used to select the alternative that is least expensive over time.

Life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is an engineering economic analysis tool useful in comparing the relative merit of competing pavement design alternatives. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation shares their experience with LCCA.

This engineering bulletin presents the concepts of Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) for the purpose of comparing equivalent competing pavement design alternatives on an economic basis. All of the factors that should be considered in an economic analysis are explained, and guidance is given on the selection of values for LCCA-sensitive factors. Examples of three different analyses are given: highway, county road, and city street. Advanced LCCA techniques are discussed, including the impacts of pavement type selection on roadway network. Finally, life cycle cost and pavement performance studies are summarized, showing the benefits of concrete's low life cycle cost and other economic benefits.

Accompanying CD-ROM contains software, Guidance manual, User manual, and appendixes to report.

Abstract: Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) is performed by transportation agencies in the design phase of transportation projects in order to be able to implement more economical strategies, to support decision processes in pavement type selection (flexible or rigid) and also to assess the relative costs of different rehabilitation options within each type of pavement. However, most of the input parameters are inherently uncertain. In order to implement the LCCA process in a reliable and trustworthy manner, this uncertainty must be addressed. This thesis summarizes a through research that aims at improving the existing LCCA approach for South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) by developing a better understanding of the parameters used in the analysis. In order to achieve this, a comprehensive literature review was first conducted to collect information from various academic and industrial sources. After that, two surveys were conducted to survey the state-of-the-practice of LCCA across the 50 U.S. Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and Canada. The questionnaires were designed to gauge the level of LCCA activity in different states as well as to solicit information on specific approaches that each state is taking for pavement type selection. The responses obtained from the web surveys were analyzed to observe the trends regarding the various input parameters that feed into the LCCA process. The results were combined with the additional resources in order to analyze the challenges to implementing the LCCA approach. The survey results showed LCCA is used widely among transportation agencies. However, the extent of the analysis varies widely and is presented here.

Design related project level pavement management - Economic evaluation of alternative pavement design strategies - Reliability / - Pavement design procedures for new construction or reconstruction : Design requirements - Highway pavement structural design - Low-volume road design / - Pavement design procedures for rehabilitation of existing pavements : Rehabilitation concepts - Guides for field data collection - Rehabilitation methods other than overlay - Rehabilitation methods with overlays / - Mechanistic-empirical design procedures.