Development and Application of Performance Index for Comparative Assessment of Public Capital Projects

Abstract

Studies have estimated that infrastructure investment in the US will fall short by USD 13–20 trillion over the next decade due to growing urbanization. Public entities should seek to maximize the use of their available funds by increasing efficiency, supporting collaborative environments, and promoting value over initial low cost. This comprehensive study provides public entities with factual evidence of the performance of their projects under various delivery methods and bidding systems, as well as guidance toward practical implementations to increase their projects’ success using a unique data-driven mathematical model, the Project Performance Index (PPI), introduced in this paper. This index is a multivariate performance assessment metric that incorporates schedule, communication, change management, and spending metrics and is validated using confirmatory factor analysis. The results concluded that design–build (DB) projects outperformed each of hybrid single prime (HSP) and multiple prime (MP) projects (by 39% on average), construction manager at risk (CMAR) outperformed each of HSP and MP (by 32% on average), and also HSP outperformed MP (by 7.8% on average). Additionally, the study found that a 40%–45% enhancement in performance can be achieved by employing alternative delivery methods like DB and CMAR.