For more than 50 years, the highway industry has emphasized new construction. Research efforts have supported this activity by concentrating on improving pavement structure design, materials and construction processes. To date, hundreds of millions of dollars have been devoted to these research efforts. As a result, maintenance and preservation studies were often inadvertently overlooked in the quest for improved performance.

Today there is an urgent need to adapt our existing roadways to carry ever increasing traffic volumes safely and efficiently without incurring the massive expenditures required to expand and rebuild our facilities. This need is forcing a major change in focus toward pavement preservation in addition to new construction and major rehabilitation. Pavement Preservation is part of the development of an emphasis on asset management in the highway industry. Research is playing a key role in this change. The NCPP is ready to:

• Facilitate applied research projects.
• Oversee pool-funded studies.
• Participate as a principle investigator in research studies.