Staff recommends that City Council award a Consultant Services contract for W.O. 25-09 City Pavement Condition Survey and Assessment to Applied Research Associates, Inc. in the amount of $148,000.

Council is asked to consider authorizing and executing the Consultant Agreement for services with Applied Research Associates, Inc., to complete pavement condition surveying and assessment of the City's 569 centerline miles of paved streets under W.O. 25-09 City Pavement Condition Survey and Assessment. The pavement condition surveying measures and classifies pavement distress, which becomes a data set that is entered into the City's PAVER program to calculate a pavement condition index (PCI), on a scale of 0-100, with 0 being the worst condition and 100 being the best condition. Along with several other factors, the PCI value is used to prioritize streets for maintenance and preservation work.  Historically, City staff (mostly seasonal employees) performed these surveys manually by sampling segments of a road and were only able to survey approximately 20% of the road network a year. Currently, only 24% of our roadway network has been surveyed within the last 3 years. Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult to staff, train, stay consistent, and perform enough pavement condition survey to be relevant for prioritizing PAVER maintenance and preservation projects.  The majority of municipalities the size of Billings (including other Montana cities) are utilizing automated pavement condition surveys for pavement preservation management.

This project will use automated pavement condition surveying equipment to survey 100% of the road network, the full length of each road, to bring the PAVER data up to date. It is intended to perform these automated pavement condition surveys approximately every 3 years to keep PAVER data up to date, which will help predict maintenance and preservation needs and costs. In addition to the pavement condition survey work, the project will perform an audit of our program and make recommendations to improve and become more efficient.  The benefit of auditing and improving the City program will identify those areas that can be maintained in a preservation mode (chip seal) rather than pavement repair mode (costly overlay or reconstruction).  For example, performing a chip seal is 3 times less costly than a pavement overlay.  The goal of the PAVER program is to move toward a pavement preservation condition rather than a costly reactive pavement replacement condition, and therefore reduce maintenance costs.  This data-driven approach is part of the asset management program and will better inform the CIP process for pavement management.

City staff requested proposals publicly advertised in the Yellowstone County newspaper and on the City website on July 26, August 2, 9, 16, 23, 2024 through the Request for Proposal Process.  Applied Research Associates, Inc., was selected based on City staff review of eight project proposals submitted by firms that have experience in pavement condition survey and assessment work. The other firms considered for the work were Roadway Asset Services, IMS, Transmap Corporation, Silent Falcon, MDS Technologies, Inc., Timmons Group, and NCEC. The selection was based on Firm Experience, Project Team and Subconsultants, Project Understanding, and Approach.  Staff also reviewed project cost.

City Council may:

• Approve a contract for services with Applied Research Associates, Inc. in the amount of $148,000; or,
• Not approve a Contract for services with Applied Research Associates, Inc. If the contract is not approved, the City will continue to use out of date pavement condition data predicting maintenance and preservation projects.

This project was budgeted in FY25 using Gas Tax Funds. There are adequate funds to award this contract.