Investigation of highway maintenance management and its performance at Kuala Lumpur-Karak highway

Abstract

Highway Maintenance involved maintaining the road structure and facilities to be in good functional condition at all time by the highway operator in order to ensure safe and comfort of the road users while travelling on the highway. Highway operators seem to face problems in setting up the performance indicators and in identifying the effective measurement method to be used which serve to confirm that their commitment in carrying out the maintenance and operations of highways are being done according to standard and public satisfaction It is very important that the highway operator and relevant authority department has a systematic and effective performance monitoring system to observe and control the maintenance work quality carried out by the highway operator. The aim of the research is to study the current practice of highway maintenance management and its performance at Kuala Lumpur. Karak highway. This research looks into a case study involving Kuala Lumpur – Karak highway under Alloy Maintenance Engineering concession that responsible for the highway maintenance and operations. The study approach is focusing on content analysis extracted from the reports produced in the highway monitoring maintenance system known as Highway Asset Quality System (HAQS) and interviews session with the key personnel that are involved directly in the highway maintenance for Kuala – Lumpur Karak Highway. The data used for this study was based on the reports recorded in year 2014 where the system was fully implemented. The findings results showed in the content analysis that road furniture is the highest numbers of NCR compared to other maintenance categories issued by Malaysian Highway Authority to the responsible highway operator recorded during the first year of HAQS enforcement. Findings obtained from the interview session held with respective personnel has shown current problems on the highway maintenance works involving delays in work update, lack of site commitment, inefficient maintenance program and system used for monitoring and uncontrollable factors that affected the performance of highway maintenance works. Further to the above, it will be a great opportunities to further investigate on the findings of the highway maintenance work performance.