Status of socio-technical designs incorporation for road rehabilitation project

Abstract

The growing transport needs within the country continuously demand the necessity of maintenance of the road network in a satisfactory level. Therefore, several development projects are always carried out within the country and the government has also given priority to the development of infrastructure. Evidence at hand shows that launched and completed road projects have developed certain difficulties to the communities on either side of the road, road end users and to the society. The facts revealed that designs of the road construction industry are always focused into technical aspects rather than considering its socio perspectives. It is necessary to carry out a survey to find out the extent to which the factors would have influenced. Arising out of the literature review of this research, thirteen (13) socio factors that affect the end users of the projects have been selected to study under this research. The collecting of data on thirteen numbers of socio factors, was carried out under two methods namely Road condition survey and Questionnaire survey for ten numbers of the selected sample roads. Under this research, analysis of the collected data reveal that past completed projects have not considered the socio aspects at any stage of the project such as planning, designing, and implementing stage. According to the analysis of data of sample projects they can be catogarised into good, fair and poor condition. Out of these ten projects nine projects are in poor condition and one is in fair condition. Therefore, the objective of this research is to establish an improvement method by the participation of road actors such as infrastructure owners, experts in road construction industry, designers and road users. Based on the literature review and analysis of data, the method for improvement of socio aspects has been deduced to be considered within the initial stage of the project by participating road actors.