All public authorities that are responsible for managing a road network face an annual challenge: ensuring safe, reliable roads for users during the winter. This is a vital priority that contributes directly to economic development by sustaining the mobility of people and goods on the road network. In recent years, the Ministere des Transports du Quebec (MTQ) has taken a number of steps to improve performance, particularly by applying ISO standards in its operating units and by prioritizing the development and introduction of technological advances in order to continuously improve itsefficiency in the area of winter maintenance. Measuring the performance of the "Snow removal and de-icing" product and service that is provided to users with a current operating budget of $180 million is one of the new concerns of senior officials at the MTQ. Furthermore, in an effort to send aclear message to all Department managers concerning the priority assignedto this concern, a specific targeted result is included among the 33 targets that were established in its 2005-2008 strategic plan. In light of this, over the past four years, the MTQ has been engaged in an extensive process of developing and introducing a performance indicator for winter maintenance. This means measuring the "Extent of compliance with winter maintenance requirements", which is a performance indicator that was compiled forall of the nearly 400 private contractors who maintain segments of Québec's road network for the MTQ. As a result, an instrument for measuring winter maintenance performance was developed and introduced at all operating units within the territory. This is an innovative, results-based managementapproach that is designed to measure actual performance, improve the service that we provide to users through the ensuing analysis, and foster the implementation of an improvement process. The experience of the past four years has enabled us to fine-tune the winter maintenance performance measurement system and to develop additional tools for ensuring data reliability. For the covering abstract see ITRD E143097.
Samenvatting