01338291

Component

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) produced a price index for highway construction for many decades. However, the traditional method of collecting and reporting this data has been questioned and found wanting. The data used to produce the “Price Trends for Federal-aid Highway Construction” is no longer being collected. The last available cost index data from the prior methodology is the fourth quarter of 2006. The FHWA developed a new approach to generate an improved cost index. The new methodology is called the National Highway Construction Cost Index (NHCCI). The NHCCI is intended as a price index that can be used both to track pure price-changes associated with highway construction costs and to convert current-dollar expenditures on highway construction to real- or constant-dollar expenditures. The FHWA uses the Bid-Tabs database from Oman Systems, Inc. (OSI) for the pay item database. This data captures the State web-posting of bids submitted on highway construction contracts. As new data becomes available from the States, OSI processes the data and updates are provided to FHWA quarterly. The wealth of Bid-Tabs data allows FHWA to derive a reliable indicator of highway construction costs. States will be able to gauge changes in their costs against the national picture. The authors approach also eliminates pay-items that may be defined too broadly to hold price-determining characteristics constant or have statistical properties that imply variable price determining characteristics.

The DVD lists the title of this paper as: Description of Federal Highway Administration’s National Highway Construction Cost Index.

01329018

11-0218

English

14p

2011

Transportation Research Board 90th Annual Meeting

DVD

Illustrations (1) ; Tables (1)

Cost estimating; Cost indexes; Data collection; Economic impacts; Expenditures; Management and organization; Real time information; Road construction

National Highway Construction Cost Index; U.S. Federal Highway Administration

Construction costs; Price index

Construction; Economics; Highways; I10: Economics and Administration

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2011 Paper #11-0218

TRIS, TRB

Feb 17 2011 5:21PM