Ensuring Efficient Incentive and Disincentive Values for Highway Construction Projects: A Systematic Approach Balancing Road User, Agency and Contractor Acceleration Costs and Savings

United States State Highway Agencies (SHAs) use Incentive/Disincentives (I/D) to minimize negative impacts of construction on the traveling public through construction acceleration. Current I/D practices have the following short-comings: not standardized, over- or under-compensate contractors, lack of auditability result in disincentives that leave SHAs vulnerable to contractor claims and litigation and are based on agency costs/savings rather than contractor acceleration. Presented within this paper is an eleven-step I/D valuation process. The processes incorporate a US-nationwide RUC and agency cost calculation program, CA4PRS and a time-cost tradeoff I/D process. The incentive calculation used is the summation of the contractor acceleration and a reasonable contractor bonus (based on shared agency savings) with an optional reduction of contractor’s own saving from schedule compression (acceleration). The process has a capability to be used both within the US and internationally with minor modifications, relies on historical costs, is simple and is auditable and repeatable. As such, it is a practical tool for optimizing I/D amounts and bridges the gap in existing literature both by its industry applicability, integrating the solution into existing SHA practices and its foundation of contractor acceleration costs.