Preservation (also known as preventive maintenance) and rehabilitation projects start from the planning stage, referred to as the 4-year Pavement Management Plan. Districts plan these projects including timing, locations, treatment types, cost, etc., based on a series of factors such as pavement distresses, ride quality, skid resistance, age and other factors during the 4-year pavement management plan season. These projects are logged into two database systems, TxDOTCONNECT and Maintenance Management System (MMS). Then they are imported into a pavement management system, Pavement Analyst (PA), for evaluation from the network-level perspective. PA can forecast pavement condition, perform advanced analysis to answer what-if scenarios, and recommend optimized pavement work plans for preventive maintenance and rehabilitation to maximize the condition of the network based on constrained funding.

Projects in PA's final 4-year pavement management plan list classified as preventive maintenance would be eligible for federal-aid preservation funding with no pavement design or design exceptions required. Projects not on that optimized project list would be a routine maintenance project not eligible for federal-aid funding. 3R/4R projects are eligible for federal-aid funding but require a pavement design to show that the pavement structure is adequate for at least 10 years of future traffic, and all design exceptions would need to be addressed or formally approved.