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Summary of the Webinar

The webinar aimed to put into context the work being done by working group 1 within the committee where goals have been established prior to the next world road congress to be held in Prague in 2023.

Our Chair, Gerardo Flintsch made an introduction about the asset management Technical Committee. We are divided in three working groups. The first of them is I have the honor of leading and this WG has the title and focus on the innovative approaches in the management of road assets.

Each working group has a series of assigned tasks and certain deadlines for their execution. Regarding our working group, we already saw from the first moment the need to divide the work and ourselves into sub-groups to concentrate responsibility and thus achieve the proposed goals.

In this way, we divided into three subgroups, choosing a sub-group leader in each one of them and integrating the delegates by experience and interest in the field.

Thus, the first subgroup, led by Antonio Muruais, is responsible for evaluating the best practices to implement ISO 55001 in the management of road assets. Miguel Valdés, our Chilean colleague, leads the subgroup focused on life cycle and risk management of road assets and Stephane Aubert is the leader of the subgroup dedicated to BIM and digitization in road asset management.

Additionally, a transversal team was formed with Tim Massart and Hélène Klich to provide documentary support to all of them.

I would like to congratulate all the members of working group 1 of technical committee 3.3. They are collaborating in a very active way. In an age when sharing knowledge is common, where experiences such as great recipes are not kept with zeal, it is very gratifying to see how these types of events are prepared with enthusiasm, trying to bring the best of each one.

To prepare this Webinar, no less than 10 meetings have been held between the members of the different sub-groups, progressing little by little in the content and adjusting the times to show the essence and progress in our work in only 15 minutes.

Conclusion

As general conclusions of the papers presented, it is worth highlighting:

1. About the implementation of ISO55001 in the management of road assets, there are few administrations and concessionaires that have this quality mark and with a limited extension. It is very important to generate knowledge in this field and share experiences. In this sense, the working group is in the process of publishing a guide to good practices based on interviews.
2. Very interesting cases have been presented regarding risk management in certain environments and how both risk and the life cycle of road assets are managed. A general outline needs to be established to serve as a basis for other highway agencies to identify models that can be applied in their context.
3. Everyone talks about digitizing BIM in the construction process, but we have seen that the main challenge of applying both is to coordinate the method from its origin so that it can be used in all its stages. Very good designs can be made, and a very successful construction process can be carried out by applying BIM methodology and, however, leaving a model that cannot be applied in road maintenance and operation. It is necessary to insist on coordinating the planning, design, and construction teams so that they prepare a valid model for the longest stage in the life of an infrastructure.

We trust that our work will be very useful for highway agencies that need to have a state of the art to apply their decisions in best practices and identify which ones may be logical for their environment.