Upcoming Best Practice Guide

Sometime during the 1^st quarter of FY27, a Best Practices Guide (BPG) for implementation will become available to all users. Many examples from State DOTs will be included. BPG topics will cover:

• Implementation Road Maps– creating phased schedules in accordance with agency readiness for PMED implementation
• Performance Model Selection – selecting appropriate PMED performance prediction models for design use and setting their respective threshold limits
• Design Change Impact Analysis – quantifying PMED structural design shifts vs legacy methods
• Consensus Agreements with Paving Industries – creating transparent and mutually agreeable PMED policies for pavement design risk-sharing with contractors
• Optimizing Traffic Data Libraries– grouping truck traffic data by representative regional and functional categories
• Hybrid Designs– supplementing PMED designs with DOT legacy design procedures
• Documentation – revising existing DOT pavement design guidance
• Design Catalogues for Estimating– developing rapid PMED design thickness look-ups for preliminary stages of project development
• Experimental Matrices – creating an experimental test matrix for PMED model verification and calibration
• Field Data Collection for Verification and Calibration – sourcing materials and performance data from test sections
• PMS-to-PMED Data Translation– configuring PMS performance data to match PMED model prediction units
• Improvement Sensitivity to Local Calibration – determining model prediction improvement after optimization of calibration coefficients
• Work-Around Solutions – setting up and running pavement designs in PMED that are outside the normal analysis realm
• Training Materials– training tools and sources for PMED users