AASHTO Journal - AASHTO Plans to Expand NTPEP Data Availability

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials is planning to expand the availability of the data generated by its National Transportation Product Evaluation Program or NTPEP.

[Above image by AASHTO]

NTPEP combines the professional and physical resources of AASHTO’s member departments to evaluate materials, products, and devices of common interest for use in highway and bridge construction.

The program’s primary goals are to provide cost-effective evaluations and manufacturing audits for the state DOTs by eliminating duplication of testing and auditing by the states and duplication of effort by the manufacturers that provide products for evaluation.

The NTPEP database is the online repository of information and audit reports for all products evaluated through NTPEP as well as manufacturing audits completed by NTPEP.

AASHTO is planning to open up its NTPEP database to non-AASHTO government agencies and associate AASHTO members, such as municipal toll operators and local government officials – allowing users outside AASHTO state agency members to tap into data for 26 different product categories to help them maintain Approved Products List (APL) or Qualified Producer List (QPL) status.

Opening up NTPEP’s database in this manner would also ensure the use of higher quality of products in road and bridge products at the city, county, and municipality level, explained Katheryn Malusky, program director for NTPEP.

“Having associate AASHTO members and non-AASHTO members access the data on the NTPEP DataMine website would increase their accessibility when working on public-private projects,” she added.

“It would also allow AASHTO members to communicate with their colleagues outside their agency to gain awareness of how products are performing in the field prior to using them,” Malusky said

She noted that other benefits of expanding access to NTPEP’s database includes increasing the marketability of products as the scope of product data usage broadens across new agencies.

“This in turn provides additional resources for selection of materials and alternative supply chains,” Malusky said.

For more information about NTPEP, click here.