Road maintenance, condition survey course ends in Ho
Week-long maintenance seminar and road condition survey refresher course for 60 maintenance managers, road area managers and planning engineers of the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) has ended in Ho.
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The programme, which ended last Saturday, was on the theme: Data-driven decision-making for road maintenance and improvement process.
The objective was to augment the capacity of engineers of the GHA with the requisite skills for effective planning and data collection.
The topics included: Traffic data collection, effective routine maintenance activities implementation, bridge defect inventory, standard reporting on maintenance projects and data update.
The Volta Regional Minister, Dr Archibald Yao Letsa, who opened the seminar, said it was appropriate in its timing as it would equip the participants with the knowledge and tools necessary to make informed decisions to shape the future of road maintenance and improvement.
“Let us work together to pave the way for safer, more efficient and sustainable transportation infrastructure,” he told the participants.
Dr Letsa said effective road maintenance was crucial for safety, economic growth and quality of life.
However, with increasing demands and limited resources, there was the need to adopt innovative approaches to optimise decision-making processes in the road sector, he said.
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Expensive
The Deputy Chief Executive (Maintenance) of the GHA, Lawrence L.L. Lamptey said poorly built and poorly maintained roads were expensive and inconvenient to the taxpayer.
He said roads were arteries that drove economic growth, connected communities and facilitated the movement of goods and services.
Hence, it required meticulous planning, continuous monitoring and a proactive approach to addressing emerging challenges in road construction and maintenance.
Mr Lamptey pointed out that 95 per cent of the movement of people and goods was by road, and that buttressed the importance of roads in the national economy.
He said the advent of advanced technologies and data analysis had revolutionised approaches to road maintenance.
For instance, they provided the tools to collect, analyse and interpret vast amounts of data for deeper insight into road conditions and make informed decisions, Mr Lamptey explained.
He said the shift towards data-driven decision-making was not merely a trend but a necessity in the pursuit of excellence.
The acting Volta Regional Director of Highways, Faustina Oppong Yeboah pointed out that road infrastructure, like any other structure, deteriorated after continuous usage.
Therefore, it was crucial to have reliable and real-time data for the right decisions, employment of appropriate resources and interventions to remedy its rapid decline.
