Quality assurance and specifications are two topics vital to pavement design, construction and performance. Quality assurance, loosely defined as the actions undertaken to ensure a product will perform satisfactorily in service, is a part of many activities including planning, design, plans and specifications, contracts, construction and maintenance. Specifications are used by a buyer to communicate product requirements to a seller or potential seller. In pavement construction, they delineate what is to be built and how it is to be paid for.
This module first discusses the basic components of quality assurance:
Specifications are then covered in a general sense, while the last section examines statistical acceptance specifications in some detail.