environmentally optimised design

Environmentally Optimised Design (EOD) is a philosophy focused on creating the most efficient design-set for a given road, which can range from upgrading the whole road to doing spot improvements.

EOD can be thought of through the following two simple ideas:

• You only need to fix the bits which prevent year-round access (areas which are impassable in the wet season)
• You should use locally sourced materials and tailor your designs to the engineering problems at each location

The idea is to make the provision of year-round access as economical as possible.

Often, the majority of a road can be accessible, but just one short section of impassable road renders the route in-accessible to many. This section should be given a robust pavement solution, leaving the remainder which is not causing a problem. In this way money is spent only where it is necessary.

This is a shift away from two common approaches:

• Re-gravelling because it is cheap, but unlikely to solve the long-term access problems during rainy seasons
• Paving the whole road, which fixes the problem but is expensive and unnecessary