Designing in maintenance

When you’re in the midst of designing a new project it’s easy to forget there will eventually come a day when you complete your path.  But, no matter how distant it might seem now, one day your path will be full of happy, contented users!  And with a combination of time and users comes the need to maintain the path so that it stays in as good a condition as the day it was built.

Maintenance of a path is something that tends to get ignored until it needs to be done.  But by thinking about it when you’re designing your path you may be able to make it an easier job.  Things to consider include what different path surfaces need in terms of maintenance – something that’s more expensive to build now might turn out to be cheaper in the long run as it’ll need less maintenance.  There are features that you can include in any constructed path that will help to reduce the amount of maintenance needed, especially where erosion by water might be an issue (i.e. in Scotland!).  Building these in at the design stage will save you from having to try and maintain a flooded path in the future.  The Lowland Paths Guide contains more advice on how to factor in maintenance whilst you’re designing a path.

You might also want to think about developing a maintenance schedule for the path as part of your design work, and follow this up with regular inspections to make sure that things aren’t changing more quickly than you expect.  This is part of your "duty of care" to users to make sure that the path is safe for use – see the section on legal constraints for further information on this.