Author Description

State Transportation Agencies (STAs) use quality control/quality assurance (QC/QA) specifications to guide the testing and inspection of road pavement construction. Although failed materials of pavement rarely occur in practice, it is critical to have a sound decision framework to assist in making data-driven, informed decisions regarding failed materials because such decisions have profound impacts on the long-term performance of the pavement and the operation and maintenance costs of the responsible highway agencies.A performance-related specification (PRS) is a quality acceptance (QA) specification that specifies the acceptable levels of key acceptance quality characteristics (AQCs) that are directly related to fundamental engineering properties, which in turn, determine the long-term performance of the constructed end products. Two PRS tools, PaveSpec for Portland Cement Concrete Pavement (PCCP) and Quality Related Specification Software (QRSS) for QC/QA Hot Mixed Asphalt (HMA) pavement with dense grade mixes, were investigated in this study to develop decision frameworks for PCCP and HMA pavement to assist the decision-making regarding failed materials at INDOT. A large number of simulations of various scenarios in the context of INDOT pavement construction were conducted to fully develop and implement the decision framework.