4.1.1.2 Decision Making Context

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Decision Making Context

Life cycle management is driven by the need for owners to provide consistent service to those that use the transportation system with the resources available. Infrastructure decision making can take place at several levels within an organization, and in each case, considers different but often interrelated factors. These are illustrated in table 4.1.

Table 4.1 - TAM Decision-Making Contexts
Key Questions and Connections to Other Chapters

StrategicTacticalOperational
Key DecisionsSetting goals and objectives.Capital investment prioritization and scoping and Integration of maintenance and renewal strategiesDelivery of the capital program, routine maintenance, and highway-operations activities.
Decision Makers
  • Senior Leadership
  • Commission / Board
  • Legislature
  • External Partners
Directors and managers who are asset stewards.District and field mangers, supervisors, and staff.
Key Questions
  • What should our transportation system look like in the future?
  • How do we cater to the mobility needs of the future?
  • What should our focus and priority on infrastructure investment be?
  • With whom does decision making authority lie?
  • How much money do we require to maintain our network?
  • Where and how should we allocate investment to maximize value for money?
  • What level of performance is accept- able for users for our transportation system, and what condition should we be targeting to support those service levels?
  • What criteria should be used to determine benefits for cross asset or cross program optimization?
  • How should we deploy our resources (e.g. budget, staff, equipment, data) to ensure assets perform as expected and deliver reliable service?
  • Do we have effective programming, contract-development, and work management processes to deliver needed work on time with available resources?
  • How do we measure the impact of maintenance interventions on asset performance?
Other FactorsDecisions and outcomes of these strategic questions help focus investment. They add value to overall performance of the transportation system by setting priorities, values, and help prioritization of investment at lower levels. Creating new assets and disposing of existing ones are strongly influenced by decisions and priorities defined at this level.
Chapter 2 discusses these considerations in more detail, and the level of service section in this chapter discusses linking these strategic priorities
to decision-making at lower levels. Performance and target setting in Chapter 6 also discusses this linkage and how targets can be set to achieve these strategic goals. 		This Chapter focuses on these questions and on the analysis that informs their corresponding answers and decisions. Life cycle management and analysis focuses on the existing transportation system and evaluates how:
  • How the asset is expected to deteriorate over time.
  • How the asset may fail prematurely.
  • How demands on the system are anticipated to change in the future.
  • What kind of interventions, investments could be selected.
Asset Enhancement / Asset Acquisition / Creation of new infrastructure is also informed by LCCA, particularly through ensuring the entire life cycle cost associated with a new asset is considered during its planning. This sometimes requires a change in corporate culture and is discussed in Chapter 3. Chapter 5 discusses how resource allocation is accomplished to balance investment needs to achieve.		Delivering a program work, ranging from maintenance activities to capital improvements, requires a coordinated management of a large workforce. It requires processes that minimize input of resources to get the output required for desired system performance. Work management systems, efficiency
and improvement techniques and performance management focus on improving decisions at this level. These concepts are discussed in Chapter 5, 6 and 7.

Figure 4.3 Analysis of KYTC Future Costs Under Two Strategies



Source: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Transportation Asset Management Plan, 2018.