Treatment Exclusion rule is defined to prevent multiple assignments of a single treatment (or lighter ones) being assigned continuously to a segment in a short period of time after the first assignment. Two parameters are defined to control this process: the allowable period of time which is the Exclusion Years and heaviness of each treatment which is the Exclusion Priority.

Exclusion Years

Exclusion years define the minimum number of years after a treatment is performed before another treatment with a lower treatment exclusion priority value can be assigned to this pavement management section.

Exclusion Priority

Treatment exclusion priority is the priority of this treatment in regard to “excluding” other treatments. When the selected treatment is applied, then all other treatments with equal or higher treatment exclusion priority values will not be applied for the number of years given in the Exclusion Years column. This should not be confused with the Selection Priority described in the previous section. Unlike Selection Priority, different treatments can have a same Exclusion Priority value.

For example, if a treatment Asphalt Overlay is configured with an Exclusion Priority of 30 and an Exclusion Year of 5. After a management section is applied with Asphalt Overlay, no treatments with an Exclusion Priority equal or higher than 30 will be applied on this section in the next 5 years. However, a treatment with a higher Exclusion Priority value (ex: 10) can still be applied within the next 5 years. It should be noted, Do Nothing, which is configured to have a 0 Exclusion Priority, can be applied whenever it is needed.