Chapter 7: Construction inventory

This chapter deals with the assembly of the information required for a comprehensive understanding of what comprises the layered system of a pavement structure. An accurate knowledge of this is required for the management of pavement assets and/or to make a meaningful assessment of the strength and likely service life of the pavement. A detailed understanding of pavement construction is an essential component of investigation and evaluation. Without this information it is difficult to design maintenance solutions and/or have confidence in the asset management process.

One of the challenges faced by pavement engineers is that there is an inevitable (statistical) variation in construction thicknesses as no control process is infallible. For example, with the construction of the UK motorway network from about the early 1950s onward, where there were greenfield sites and, presumably, good site control, it was reasonable to assume that layer thicknesses would be extremely uniform. In practice, this was not the case, and in these circumstances the inherent variation in the construction of older road pavements may be seen to present real problems for engineers assessing the strength and serviceable life of evolved pavement structures.