Maintenance Scheduling Model for Road Networks Considering Payment Modes

To ensure that the maintenance contractor obtains the maximum present value of revenue, the road network maintenance scheduling problem was explored under different payment modes of the client. First, three payment modes, i.e., time-based payment mode, progress-based payment mode and maintenance-cost-based payment mode were defined. Second, a mixed integer nonlinear programming model for maintenance scheduling was built with the goal of maximizing the present value of the contractor ’s revenue, and a tabu search algorithm was used to solve the model. Finally, the proposed model and algorithm were validated by a case study. Research results show that three different payment modes have large differences in terms of the road segments assigned to each maintenance crew and the maintenance sequence of each road segment. When the contractor’s advanced capital reaches a certain level, the continual rise of advance-fund capability may not be able to result in a better maintenance scheduling solution and cannot produce more present value of revenue. The relationship between the client’s payment ratio and the present value of revenue is close to monotonically increasingwhereas there is a negative exponential relationship between the discount rate and the present value of revenue. Increasing the number of maintenance crews can have more present value of revenue, but its marginal benefits are gradually reduced. Only when the contractor’s advance-fund capability and the number of maintenance crews increase synchronously, can more present value of revenue be obtained.