New Construction Cost Indices to Improve Highway Management

Abstract

Construction cost indices support planners, engineers, and policymakers in improving the management of highways. This study details the creation, analysis, and application of four new quarterly highway construction cost indices disaggregated by material (i.e., asphalt concrete and portland cement concrete) and activity (i.e., general construction and maintenance and rehabilitation). The contributions of this research are twofold: distilling for managers differences in cost growth trends across various highway activities and materials and demonstrating the impact of these findings on their highway budgeting decisions. The results from the time-series analysis demonstrate that asphalt concrete (AC) and portland cement concrete (PCC) highway construction have exhibited distinctive annual cost growth trends of 3.5% and 2.1%, respectively. Conversely, annual maintenance and rehabilitation cost growth is similar between AC and PCC pavements, with historical rate increases of 2.6% and 2.7%, respectively. To demonstrate the value of these insights, the resulting forecast models are used to project future public highway expenditures in the US. The case findings show that projected expenditures are $6–$8 billion lower when relying on these disaggregate indices compared with the state of the art. These findings highlight that this study’s cost indices and its resulting insights can be leveraged by practitioners to improve the management and capital planning of highways.