These problems are costly, in terms of money, time and efficiency. But there is a way to find and fix every single one of them and this post will explore that solution.
The forest road network is the largest investment any forest products company makes. Not just because of the cost incurred with building and maintaining the network, but all of the costs incurred using that network, and the strategic decisions made because of the network.
Problems with a road network rarely show up as road problems. They show up as increased trucking cost, lower productivity, and higher emissions. They chew away at your bottom line, often undetected.
There is the cost of building a road network and the cost of using a road network
Even when road decisions are made based on long term harvest plans and market locations, they are inherently biased by one critical factor:
Your existing road network.
The decision of where to route a truck, or where to connect a spur road is made on the assumption that the network serves the organization in an optimal way. That’s a big assumption.
It is unlikely that your road network was built from the ground up to meet the needs of your spatial harvest plan for the next 10, 20 or 50 years. The best decisions for today, are usually not the best decisions long term.
Here’s a common example:
Bridges are the most expensive parts of a forest road network. They are often built at the lowest cost location to reduce span length. The cheapest bridge to build is not always the cheapest bridge to use.
Imagine that a bridge crossing is located to minimize the cost of the bridge. A permanent steel girder bridge could cost between $150k – $300k to install. The best location may reduce that cost by half or more.
Now imagine that over the next ten years there’s five million cubic meters of wood moving over that bridge, and its location means adding an extra 10 minutes to the drive time of that route.
Let’s say you have a conservative trucking cost per cubic meter per minute of $0.12. That bridge is costing you an extra 6 million dollars over the next ten years in added trucking cost, based on a location that might have shaved $50k off the construction cost.
A bridge is built once, but could be used every day for decades.
How many bridges do you have in your road network? How many were built with the next ten years of hauling patterns in mind?
These issues extend to more than bridges. Any aspect of the design of your road network could lead to similar problems with costs that are just as high.
So what is the solution to all of this? Starting over.
Strategic Road Evaluation
I offer a service that provides insight into all of these problems. I’m a forester and consultant who’s worked on roading analysis for governments, industry, and landowners for the past 10 years.
A strategic road evaluation answers the question: “What road network would we build if we were starting from scratch?”
…and took into consideration wood flows, optimal routing and long term access requirements.
A strategic road evaluation answers this question across your entire land base, using data you likely already have available. The only thing required from you is to provide that data, I do the rest.
Starting with data that affect the cost and location of roads, such as digital elevation models, watercourse and wetland layers and trucking rates, a new road network is generated that reaches all areas of the spatial harvest plan and connects these areas to markets. Building this network is done in a way that minimizes the cost (both of using it, and building it) This is the projected road network, which represents the theoretical best network based on the spatial harvest plan.
This projected road network is then compared to the existing road network to identify major differences. These differences represent inefficiencies of the existing network and opportunities for improvement.
The goal of this exercise is not to rebuild the entire road network (that’s unlikely to be feasible or beneficial), but rather to use the generated road network as a point of comparison. This comparison can identify potential capital projects like:
Relocating a bridge to facilitate more efficient trucking
Upgrading a branch road because its projected to have higher usage
Re-routing roads away from poor terrain or wet areas to reduce long term maintenance burden
You will end up with either a list of potential capital improvements (including the return on investment for each) Or an assurance that your existing road network is adequately meeting the needs of the organization. Either way it’s a win.
The complexity and level of detail can be tailored to your organization’s needs, and the available data. If you lack major data elements, there is still plenty of value to be gained from this type of analysis. As part of the service we will work through any gaps in your data and find the best way to fill them.
Different versions of the analysis can be run with different assumptions as well. The final product can either be a report detailing potential opportunities, or a rich dataset that can be useful in other applications. This can be a one-off evaluation or an ongoing program that gets periodic updates.
If you’re interested in learning more about improving your road network and seeing a major return on investment, please send me a message using the form below. Even a single change in your network is worth several times the cost of this service so don’t delay.
