The winter maintenance assessment tool is a web-based tool that can be used to assist public and private winter maintenance organizations in determining where opportunities exist to improve practices, make reductions in salt use, and track progress. 

To participate, users fill out responses to roughly 180 best management practices (BMP's). Not all BMP's may be applicable to your organization, and there is no wrong answer when filling out the forms. The benefit that comes from the tool being thorough is that it is permanently saved once it's filled out. A form can be allocated to a certain time period, allowing current practices to be easily compared to a past season once the data is entered. 

When an assessment has been completed, a summarizing report can be generated. The report serves to identify areas for future improvement, and makes it easier for manager to communicate winter maintenance operations to residents, clients, or elected officials. 

Help with getting started can be found here, while the main assessment tool page is found here. VLAWMO encourages Cities and contractors to attend a Smart Salting Level 2 workshop to get trained in the use of this resource. 

Features of the Winter Maintenance Assessment tool (WMAt)

Learn strategies for improvement as you go:

Create charts and tables to organize practices and assess your progress:

Outline future goals:

Submit comments and review strategies from other users around the State:

Get predictions for salt use and budgeting:

Savings depend on how assessment is filled out - the following is a hypothetical example