The Finnish National Road Administration (Finnra) is responsible for 77,900 km of public roads in Finland. The public road network includes main roads (13,300 km), regional roads (37,000 km) and also local gravel roads (27,600 km). Winter conditions prevail in the Finnish road network for almost half a year. The 40-100 cm snow cover coats the landscape for 4 to 6 months. On the narrow coastal strip by the Baltic Sea the winter is shorter and the snow melts several times during the winter. During the wintertime Finnra is responsible for assuring a smooth traffic flow on all public roads, every day, round the clock; ensuring and enhancing traffic safety; and minimising harmful effects on the environment. In recent years Finnra's state agency organisation side has developed a concept for contracting out all maintenance work, including winter maintenance. Initially the concept was tested and implemented inside the Finnra organisation, where both client and producer organisations were separated from each other but were still under the same managing board and director general. The producer side of Finnra constituted the other contracting party and was responsible for carrying out all maintenance work in accordance with the contract documents. The second step in developing the concept was to test and implement it on the Finnish civil engineering market. The Finnra agency organisation arranged an invitation for bids on a pilot basis of selected regional areas of the public road network. Private companies, as well as the producer side of Finnra, competed for these pilot contracts. The contractors were chosen on an invitation to bid basis. A new statute on the restructuring of Finnra has been approved by the Finnish Parliament in 2001. At the beginning of 2001 Finnra was divided into two different organisations, namely (a) the client organisation, i.e. the Finnish Road Administration, which is a state agency organisation, and (b) the production organisation, i.e. Finnish Road Enterprise, which is a state owned enterprise. Making use of its previous experiences, in 2001 Finnra introduced a maintenance scheme based on open and unrestricted competition which would progressively be expanded. During the four-year transition phase all maintenance work on Finnish public roads will be gradually opened up to unrestricted competition. Following this phase the new state owned enterprise and private contractors will operate in an openly competitive situation in the field of civil engineering.