Procurement of Road Maintenance: Between knowledge loss and efficiency gains

Abstract

Outsourcing of road maintenance activities to private contractors has become a typical practice across many
National Road Agencies (NRA). Although the involvement of the private sector offers efficiency gains, the
procurement of road maintenance requires from NRAs the development of a different set of skills and
competences and may come with the risk of losing other knowledge that cannot be easily replaced. Thus,
understanding the consequences of choosing an appropriate procurement strategy is essential for NRAs to be
competent and informed clients. The procurement practices of nine NRAs are investigated to show which
maintenance procurement strategies NRAs adopt, how the context can influence the procurement trajectories of
NRAs, what the effects are of these strategies on maintenance outcomes, and which skills and competences are
needed to follow certain strategies. The paper also discusses the lessons learnt of the investigated NRAs in terms
of level of outsourcing and contractual integration of maintenance activities.

Original document

The different versions of the original document can be found in:

• https://zenodo.org/record/1485785 under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

• http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1485784,

https://zenodo.org/record/1485785 under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

• https://zenodo.org/record/1485785,

http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1485785 under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

• [ ]

DOIS: 10.5281/zenodo.1485784 10.5281/zenodo.1485785