Repair/Treatment Alternatives

Repair/treatment alternatives can be configured within the SAM IS platform. Open the Repair/Treatment Alternatives screen by clicking on Alternatives on the Analyze panel.

To edit the values of an existing repair/treatment alternative, select one or more repair/treatment alternatives and choose Edit.

Additionally, individual records can be updated directly in the table.

Repair Distress Category

The ‘Repair Distress Category’ is used to fine-tune Repair Alternatives in terms of which distress types will be repaired by the stated repair alternative.

When a pavement survey is performed, and specific distresses are entered for a pavement segment, one of the data attributes entered for each distress is a distress type (e.g. "Alligator Cracking", "Scaling", "Potholes and non-utility" patching).  Note that some of these distress types are specific to one or more pavement types.

A Repair Distress Category allows a number of distress types to be grouped together so that those distresses and distress values will be cleared (that is, 'repaired') when a repair is entered using a Repair Alternative that is assigned a specific Repair Distress Category.  Just as important is the concept that any existing distress types on the segment that are not associated with the Repair Distress Category will not be cleared from the Pavement Segment. These distress types would then persist and be used to influence the pavement segment’s calculated PCI after the repair is applied.

As an example: a Repair Distress Category of "Clear Surface Cracks" could be defined.  Distress types such as "Alligator Cracking", "Transverse & Longitudinal Cracking", and "Block Cracking" would be likely candidates to assign to this category.  Thus, a repair alternative could be defined for repairing cracks, including its associated estimated costs and other attributes, and subsequently assign the Repair Distress Category of "Clear Surface Cracks".

When a repair using this Repair Alternative is entered for a pavement segment and designated as "Complete", the system will apply the repair to the segment by generating a new "By Repair" survey entry that contains all of the relevant distress types removed.  So, if the segment only has distress types cleared by the Distress Category (in this case, the various types of cracking), the new survey will have no distresses, the segment will have no distresses,  and the segment's new PCI will be accordingly calculated to reflect that there are no distresses.

But if the segment continues to have existing distress types that are not any of the distress types cleared by the Distress Category, those distresses will be carried over to the new survey, and the segment's PCI will be calculated to reflect that there are existing distresses for that segment.

It is important to note the behavior of SAM IS in the instance when a repair entered as completed on a pavement segment that has no previous survey; or the previous survey has no distresses.  In either of these cases, the repair distress category is not factored in at all, since there would be are no existing distresses to either clear or carry over.

In these situations, the following process will be applied: if the existing PCI for the latest survey (and thus the segment) is 100, it will be kept as 100 for the new survey created.  If the existing PCI is not 100, then the PCI for the new survey, and thus for the segment, will be set to value in the repair alternatives' "After Index" value.  The "After Index" represents the PCI the user estimates the pavement segment will be at, after the repair is applied, absent any other factors.