Rational Method to a Determine Design Cost Contingency for Consultant Designed Highway Construction Projects
The purpose of this paper is to propose a rational method for determining a design cost contingency. The contingency in design is to account for risks such as scope creep and lost design effort throughout the process. In design of transportation projects, the required function of a project is usually well-defined but the amount of time needed to complete the design is difficult to quantify. The proposed method to calculate design contingency can be used by an agency to augment its current method to estimate consultant design fees. This paper details a method for creating a design cost estimate accuracy index from historical budgeted and actual design fee data. The index can be used on future projects to determine an appropriate design contingency. The paper demonstrates the validity of the proposed method by example comparing the data from 26 actual projects from 9 different agencies with published design fee curves from the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Institute of Professional Engineering New Zealand, using linear regression. Since coefficients of determination (R² values) exceeded 0.95, the paper concludes that the use of the design contingency will enhance the accuracy of design fee estimates.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AFH10 Construction Management. Alternate title: Rational Method to Determine Design Cost Contingency for Consultant-Designed Highway Construction Projects.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Hunter, Kate D
- Gransberg, Douglas D
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC
- Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
- Date: 2014
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 15p
- Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Consultants; Cost estimating; Costs; Highway design
- Uncontrolled Terms: Cost contingencies
- Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Design; Economics; Highways; I10: Economics and Administration; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01516017
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 14-3967
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Feb 26 2014 12:40PM