System dynamics modeling for road contracting

Many transportation agencies have discovered that traditional highway contract administration procedures and project delivery methods do not meet current demands. In response, they are turning to alternative contracting procedures to keep up with the reconstruction and growth needed. Four trends are perceived in road management. First, with respect to project delivery, more and more projects are contracted for the whole life cycle of the road. Second, contractors are given increasingly more freedom or design space, as the indicators used for monitoring their work become less operational and more performance based. The third trend, concerning project financing in which private investors are playing an increasingly higher role and governments follow a dual track strategy; managing a portfolio of directly and indirectly financed projects; dependent on the project characteristics. Fourth, contracts are granted for longer term. These innovative forms of contracting are expected to yield more flexibility in the road sector; more innovation, higher performance and consequently lower costs while keeping up service levels on public values such as mobility, safety and the environment. It is here that the possible complementarities and tensions between the (technical) aspects of flexibility and those regarding public values become most visible. By using a combination of institutional economics theory (mainly principal-agent) and engineering design theory (mainly functional requirements engineering), our aim is to build a systems dynamics model that can capture the institutional context and is able to indicate what contracting practices are likely to occur and which ones are likely to succeed in view of the meeting the public values and demands. Several international case studies will be used to build and validate our model. The analysis realized making use a first conceptual simplified version of this model will be presented in the paper (A). For the covering abstract of the conference see ITRD E212343.

• Authors:
  • ALTAMIRANO, M
  • HERDER, P
• Publication Date: 2006

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: 9p
• Serial:
  • TRA - TRANSPORT RESEARCH ARENA EUROPE 2006: GOETEBORG, SWEDEN, JUNE 12TH-15TH 2006: GREENER, SAFER AND SMARTER ROAD TRANSPORT FOR EUROPE. PROCEEDINGS
  • Publisher: Swedish Road Administration

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Conferences; Contracts; Financing; Highways; Life cycle analysis; Performance; Planning; Public private partnerships; Road construction; Tenders; Time duration
• Uncontrolled Terms: Long term
• ITRD Terms: 8525: Conference; 2184: Emergency; 1683: Explosion (tyre); 1624: Fire; 9108: Improvement; 9149: Prevention; 8557: Research project; 1665: Safety; 3374: Tunnel
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Highways; Marine Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; I10: Economics and Administration;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01102653
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI)
• Files: ITRD
• Created Date: Jun 16 2008 8:13AM