Road Pavement Failure and Exploratory Analysis of Requirements for Effective Management of Highway Maintenance Projects

Feedback information from investigating causes of Road Pavement Failure (RPF) will provide guidelines for requirements definition and management system for effective delivery of Highway Maintenance Projects (HMP) in Imo State Nigeria. This paper investigates the causes of RPF and explores the requirements needed for effective delivery of HMP to enhance sustainable thoroughfare assets. Expository field surveys with cluster sampling were adopted in the study. A sample size of five dilapidated highways with 78 target respondents and 6 factors in each of the 3 cluster groups of requirements formed the basis for primary data generation. The instrument of data collection and measurement was questionnaire designed in Likert five points scale. The methods of data analysis were the Relative severity index, Kendall’s coefficient of concordance and Pearson correlation analysis. The results and findings from the analysis found that poor side drainage system, poor quality of construction design and materials are the severest causes of RPF. The coefficient of concordance W from three raters indicate significant agreement of the three cluster groups of technical, financial and institutional requirements with,W= 70.60%, 62.40% and 61.50% respectively. Similarly, the result of correlation analysis shows that technical and financial requirements correlate significantly with effectiveness of HMP delivery with coefficients of 69.20% and 52.40% respectively. However, institutional requirement through important, did not correlate very strongly in this study. The results suggest that RPF analysis mitigates complexities of figuring out HMP requirements definitions and management system and hence, ensures meeting up with the acceptance criteria, change control and user’s satisfaction.