Original Scope: A perpetual challenge facing state transportation agency planners formulating the state’s transportation capital program is developing a reliable project development budget for each candidate project. While years of experience and analytical tools inform estimation of projects’ construction costs, current practices for estimating costs of internal staff salaries and external consultant services for pre-construction activities such as scope development, environmental documentation, site investigation and analyses, preliminary engineering and plan development, public engagement, and project management tend to be much more susceptible to uncertainty and therefore much less reliable. The uncertainties and unreliability of estimates can have substantial impact of an agency’s ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders and decision-makers, as well as to ensure that budgets can be met and capital program’s formulated to yield the greatest benefit for available resources.
This scan team will examine how project development budgets are set for activities occurring during a project’s development phase, such as the NEPA clearance process, surveys, preliminary traffic studies, preliminary engineering analyses and design, preliminary plan preparation, associated project management, site investigations, and the right-of-way acquisition process. Projects funded by government programs as well as innovative funding strategies (e.g., PPP, Design-build, DBOM) will be examined.
Implementation and Impact
In July 2024, TRB hosted a webinar based on the outcomes of this scan entitled, Successful Approaches to Setting Project Development Budgets. The content of this webinar documented improved processes for setting and maintaining project development budgets through improvements in estimation, risk management, and tracking of project development costs. The webinar demonstrated how agencies can establish and manage budgets for program delivery using methods and tools implemented by other states featuring a project estimating tool used by Nevada DOT.
Scan chair, Scott Pedersen, provided perspectives on the scan outcomes:
Scan Members
- Scott Pedersen, Minnesota DOT, AASHTO Chair
- Stephen Bodge, Maine DOT
- Albert V. Shelby, III, Georgia DOT
- Jason Garza, Michigan DOT
- Carmen Swanwick, Utah DOT
- Dean Moon, Washington State DOT
- Wendy Longley, FWHA
- Nicole Coronado, Texas DOT
- Dennis Slimmer, Subject Matter Expert
Ready Results Brief
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