Guideline for the assessment of pavements using concrete components – Principles for the assessment of visual characteristics

The wide range of concrete products prefabricated at the factory offered for the surfacing of traffic areas as well as the demands on respective block pavements and slab pavements have increased enormously in the last decades. Associated with this, both the number of complaints and objections and the number of court disputes have increased constantly; a large number of them is related to the exterior, visually noticeable appearance of the products used for this purpose and / or the entire paved area. An assessment whether an actual visual characteristic of the pavement or the products corresponds to the agreed visual characteristic is however difficult in many cases, because in the majority of cases different influences with different weighting have to be taken into account which however can neither be standardized nor measured. Currently relevant product standards and codes of practice are often only of moderate help in assessing the visual characteristic of the respective concrete component because they do not consider the structure made of the same, or they do not regard the special features of the prefabricated concrete products in the required manner. For this reason, an interdisciplinary working group composed of experts with their main focuses on road construction, landscape construction and gardening as well as representatives of the building materials industry and the construction sector together worked out a guideline that shall close this gap. The guideline for an assessment of pavements using concrete products is not only distinguished by the fact that it describes a large part of the potential causes for the visual irregularities of paving blocks and slabs made of concrete as well as the corresponding pavements for the first time, but also as it takes into account the various professional and practical knowledge of the participants and their organizations in a balanced way.