Performance of seven highway construction contracting methods analyzed by project size

Abstract

The conventional Design-Bid-Build (DBB) construction contracting method has had various drawbacks exposed in highway construction practice, including lack of communication, inefficient design, antagonizing relationships, and increased disputes. To mitigate the negative aspects of DBB, several alternative contracting methods and alternative project delivery systems have been devised and introduced to the industry over the past 30 years. Five such innovations were tested by a research team from the University of Florida under the sponsorship of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). To perform a realistic assessment, this study categorized FDOT projects built between 2006 and 2015 into groups according to current contract amounts. Both absolute and relative metrics were defined and employed. For comparison purposes, a collective analysis on all gathered data was performed. Additionally, the influence of outliers on the results was examined. The results showed that analyses based on individual cost categories are more convincing because large projects tend to impose stronger influence on the analyses. In addition, outliers must be identified and screened to reach realistic and reliable conclusions. With regard to the actual performance of the contracting methods, each performs differently within different cost categories.

Keywords

alternative contracting methods / time / cost / performance evaluation

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RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2018 The Author(s) 2018. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)