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

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 the bridge component or element.

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 listed 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.

Example: If a Deck Overlay treatment is configured with an Exclusion Priority of 30 and an Exclusion Year of 5 then after the treatment is applied, no treatments with an Exclusion Priority equal or higher than 30 will be applied on the deck component 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.