Relationship between Project Performance and Contract Procurement Factors for Design-Bid-Build Texas Highway Projects

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

3-29-2018

Publication Title

Construction Research Congress 2018, ASCE

First page number:

10

Abstract

Some examples of factors leading to cost and schedule overruns in a project are design changes; material, labor, and equipment shortages; location restrictions; and unpredictable weather conditions. Proper planning and control of a project could minimize these factors but will not be able to eliminate them. Some factors related to project procurement – e.g., types of delivery method, numbers of bidders, and contract types – have been found to have a relationship with the cost and schedule growth of a project during the construction phase. Therefore, it is necessary to determine whether project procurement factors could be used to predict the construction cost and schedule growth of the project. This study collected data from about 129 completed highway projects from the Texas Department of Transportation. Multiple linear regressions were performed to develop regression equations for cost and schedule growth based on six procurement factors, which were the number of bidders, the percentage difference between the award and estimated cost, liquidated damage rate per day, contractor residency, funding types, and project locations. Out of data for 129 projects, 100 were used to develop multiple linear regression equations and 29 were used to validate the regression models. The multiple linear regression showed that cost growth significantly decreased when out-of-state contractors got involved in the projects. However, schedule growth increased when the number of bidders and the difference between the award cost and engineers’ estimate increased. Using these linear regression equations, the validation of these models showed that for most of the projects, values were predicted within +/- 20% of the actual values. The findings of this research are based on Texas highway projects, so it cannot be generalized to other states.

Keywords

Procurement factors, project performance, cost growth, schedule growth

Language

eng

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