Performance Measures in Snow and Ice Control Operations

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 889: Performance Measures in Snow and Ice Control Operations presents approaches for monitoring the performance of snow and ice control activities by public agencies and proposes a core set of performance measures that can be customized and used by agencies to meet their snow and ice control objectives.

The report includes a guide document to facilitate implementation of these performance measures, and explores the capabilities required by public agencies to adequately monitor these measures and use relevant information to support decision-making processes and report on the effectiveness of snow and ice control operations.

The project that produced the report also produced a macro-based Microsoft Excel (2013) spreadsheet tool that outputs a customized report providing insight into which performance measures an agency can potentially assess, given its current capabilities.  A guide to use the tool is included in the report.

Monitoring the performance of snow and ice control operations has become an increasingly important task for highway agencies and contractors because of stakeholder expectations. Different performance measures have been used both in the United States and abroad but with varying degrees of success; there is no widely accepted measure applicable to the different roadway classifications, storm characteristics, or traffic conditions.

Key components in implementing performance measures are the identification of means for collecting and quantifying relevant information and the methods for establishing level-of-service targets. By collecting this information, highway agencies and contractors can monitor the level of performance and make appropriate adjustments to effectively manage resources for snow and ice control operations.