RA-4
After reviewing chapter 7 from the attached text book and after reading journal article(attached) write three pages and
Your paper should contain the following headings:
Introduction
Summary of the article
Relevant points made by the author
Critique of the article
Application of the concepts in the article
Total assignment should be no more than three pages and minimum two pages.
Assessing Scope and Managing Risk in the Highway Project
Development Process
Tiendung Le, S.M.ASCE1; Carlos H. Caldas, A.M.ASCE2; G. Edward Gibson Jr., P.E., F.ASCE3; and
Michael Thole4
Abstract: The project development process is a critical component of highway projects. Decisions made during this phase have a
significant impact on the final project outcomes. This paper describes a research project that studied this process and subsequently
developed a method to help the highway project team improve the project development process. This method does so by proactively
identifying risk sources based on the analysis of the project scope. This method uses a comprehensive list of scope elements with
descriptions and a mechanism to evaluate quantitatively the scope elements level of definition. Assessing the level of definition of each
scope element and of the project as a whole allows the project team to determine the potential level of risk to which the project is exposed.
The project team can then develop risk mitigation plans to respond to the potential high risk elements. The proposed method was tested
on real completed and ongoing projects undertaken by experienced professionals. The method was well received by the subject matter
experts, and a number of benefits were observed, including the use as an integrated checklist, a mechanism for monitoring the project
development progress, as well as a means for improving communication and promoting alignment within the project team.
DOI: 10.1061/ASCECO.1943-7862.0000052
CE Database subject headings: Construction management; Planning, Highway and road construction; Risk management.
Introduction
The project development process PDP is strategically important
for highway projects. It aims to assure that the right project is
selected and adequately planned for the subsequent project
phases. The PDP requires careful and detailed coordination
among all elements involved in the project who are involved in
such tasks as planning and programming; design; environmental
assessment; right-of-way acquisition; utility adjustments; plans,
specifications, and estimates development; construction; and
maintenance.
Because project scope definition and risk management are
critical components of the PDP, a method that can help facilitate
and improve the definition of project scope elements is desirable.
Improving project definition is a proactive approach to risk man-
agement because it allows for addressing risks at their sources.
Such a method needs to include the broad range of issues across
disciplines while emphasizing the interactions among them. It
should provide sufficient details about the scope elements while
maintaining the big picture of the entire PDP.
The advance planning risk analysis APRA tool and method
were developed to help the owners project team overseeing
highway projects to manage proactively risk during the PDP by
directly identifying risk sources. The method includes a compre-
hensive list of elements that the project team needs to address
during the PDP. The term element is used interchangeably with
APRA element, risk element, and scope element in this paper.
The early planning elements, if not proactively and properly ad-
dressed early in the project, are potential sources of risk.
This paper reports on the entire process of developing and
testing the APRA. It starts with a review of the literature related
to the method and an argument for the need for it. It then provides
details on the development phase followed by a section on how to
use the method. The paper continues with the presentation of the
testing of the APRA on real completed and ongoing projects.
Initial benefits of the method were captured during the testing and
are presented in the section that follows. Finally, the paper dis-
cusses some limitations and avenues of future research.
Background
A typical highway projects life cycle includes six main phases as
illustrated in Fig. 1. The PDP is the period that covers all of the
four first phases of the project life cycle, from needs assessment
to detailed design. Closely related to the PDP is advance plan-
ning, which refers to the process that includes the first three
phases needs assessment, feasibility/scoping, and preliminary de-
sign. Advance planning has several acronyms; the most fre-
1Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental
Engineering, Univ. of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station C1752,
Austin, TX 78712. E-mail: [emailprotected]
2Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental
Engineering, Univ. of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station C1752,
Austin, TX 78712 corresponding author. E-mail: [emailprotected]
utexas.edu
3Professor, Garry Neil Drummond Endowed Chair, Dept. of Civil,
Construction, and Environmental Engineering, Univ. of Alabama, 259
H.M. Comer MIB Box 870205, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0783. E-mail:
[emailprotected]
4Project Controls Engineer, Oil, Gas, and Chemicals Unit, Bechtel
Corporation, 3000 South Post Oak Blvd., Houston, TX 77056. E-mail:
[emailprotected]
Note. This manuscript was submitted on May 23, 2008; approved on
February 2, 2009; published online on April 30, 2009. Discussion period
open until February 1, 2010; separate discussions must be submitted for
individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Construction
Engineering and Management, Vol. 135, No. 9, September 1, 2009.
ASCE, ISSN 0733-9364/2009/9-900910/$25.00.
900 / JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT ASCE / SEPTEMBER 2009
quently used ones are preproject planning, front-end planning,
and conceptual planning. Such planning is defined by the Con-
struction Industry Institute CII 1994 as the process of develop-
ing sufficient strategic information with which owners can
address risk and decide to commit resources to maximize the
chance for a successful project. It is an important subset of
project planning and it is typically the responsibility of the owner
Gibson et al. 1995. The early intensive involvement of major
project stakeholders with diverse expertise e.g., planning, design,
environmental, right-of-way, and construction is required if the
projects objectives are to be effectively met. The advance plan-
ning and PDP in relation with the entire project life cycle are
illustrated in Fig. 1.
The PDP is a long-lasting, comprehensive, and complex pro-
cess Arts and Lamoen 2005. During these early project stages,
the scope is defined and refined. Efforts invested during this pe-
riod have far more influence on project success than those during
the construction phase Gibson et al. 1995. Therefore, strategies
and techniques that can streamline the PDP have the potential to
improve the project performance.
The need to improve the PDP has been emphasized by recent
studies that indicated poor cost and time performance of transpor-
tation infrastructure projects. A research investigation looking at
258 infrastructure projects i.e., roadways, rail, fixed links world-
wide reported that 90% of the projects experienced cost overrun
with an average cost escalation of 27.6%. The escalation for road-
way projects was 20.4% Flyvbjerg et al. 2003. One may argue
that the performance of a later phase i.e., construction is not
solely dependent on the performance of the earlier phases, how-
ever, to a large extent it does depend on such earlier performance
CII 2008a,b. In spite of this connection, much more attention in
project management research and practice has been paid to con-
struction, while much less has been focused on the PDP Atkin-
son et al. 2006; Arts and Lamoen 2005.
As one of the areas of project management and a key practice
in the advance planning process, risk management is no exception
to this lack of attention. The current practices and literature tend
to focus on the management of risk events. This approach does
not consider the range of risk sources in a project Atkinson et al.
2006. An intensive literature review of project risk management
by Williams 1995 has also shown that most of the research on
risk management focus on risk events. Similarly, project risk
management processes developed and used by various organiza-
tions tend to address risk as an event, such as those of the Cali-
fornia Department of Transportation Caltrans, the Federal
Highway Administration FHWA, and the Association of Project
Managers in the U.K. California Department of Transportation
2003; Ashley et al. 2006; Chapman 1997.
An approach that identifies and addresses risk at its source is a
more proactive one that a project team can use. And as more than
one risk can originate from one source, addressing a risk source
may give the project team the power to solve the root of the
problems effectively, while managing more than one risk at a
time. For instance, poor soil conditions may seriously affect the
construction schedule and also impact the efficacy of the founda-
tion or base of a roadway. Understanding the implications of the
existing soil conditions in advance planning will help address
potential risks in this area before detailed design and construction
through design or contracting language. Moreover, it is not un-
common for risks that are previously unknown by the project
team to arise. Addressing risk sources may help the project team,
proactively or even unknowingly, prevent the occurrence of such
unknown risks.
Systematically assessing project scope elements is probably
one of the most appropriate ways to identify risk sources because
scope elements are those that altogether describe the entire work
that the project team needs to perform. By completely defining all
the work included in the scope and described by these elements,
the project team essentially addresses risk sources, and thereby
minimizes risks that may originate from the lack of satisfactory
management of these sources. This approach has been success-
fully used in a number of efforts in the past, such as those by CII
2008a,b.
There have been various studies focused on project scope defi-
nition and management during the PDP. One of the first methods
developed and used extensively in the heavy industrial construc-
tion sector was that by Hackney 1965. To rate the state of
project scope definition quantitatively, Hackney proposed a
method based on checklists. In all of Hackneys checklists, each
item is assigned a weight, which depends on the items relative
importance to the project.
The project definition rating index PDRI is a successful ad-
vance planning method developed by CII 2008a,b, Cho and
Gibson 2001, and Dumont et al. 1997 for assessing project
scope definition during the front-end planning of building and
industrial projects. Front-end planning in building and industrial
construction is similar to advance planning in highway construc-
tion. The PDRI has a list of project scope elements, including
descriptions, which are organized in categories and sections.
Using a rating mechanism for each elements definition, the PDRI
allows the project team to determine the level at which a pro-
ject is defined at any given time during the front end planning
process.
In the highway construction sector, Shane 2006 developed a
scope definition index for use in the early project development of
design-build highway projects. Shanes results include a check-
list of attributes and a mechanism for weighting them on a scale
from one to six. This research focuses on design-build projects,
which are normally let with less than 30% design Shane 2006.
This level of design is usually obtained at the completion of
preliminary design. This research, while having an important
contribution for scope definition in the early phase of project
development, does not address scope definition from the end of
preliminary design to the completion of detailed design, an
Fig. 1. Project development and advance planning processes in project life cycle
JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT ASCE / SEPTEMBER 2009 / 901
equally important period that involves high level of activity and
complexity in all major functions such as environmental process,
right-of-way acquisition, utility relocation, and design.
The review of the current state-of-the-art reveals the impor-
tance and need for methods that can help improve the overall
effectiveness of the PDP in highway projects using scope defini-
tion. Industrial and building construction sectors have successful
methods for scope definition in front end planning. There is also
research on scope definition in early phase of design-build high-
way projects. The current literature, however, lacks a method and
tool for scope definition of the entire PDP, from needs assessment
to detailed design completion. The APRA was developed to meet
this need. The research methodology was adopted from similar
successful research efforts by CII 2008a,b and from the work
made by Hackney 1965,1992.
The results from structured interviews with eleven Texas De-
partment of Transportation experts at the beginning of the re-
search reaffirmed the need for a method like the APRA. One of
the main objectives of these interviews was to understand the
current processes and practices, including the existence and use of
tools that the practitioners had their disposal during the PDP. Al-
though most of the disciplines had developed tools to help expe-
dite the planning process and keep track of progress, these tools
did not cover all the requirements in the disciplinary work. The
interviewed experts repeatedly requested a new method that
broadly covered relevant issues Thole 2006. The feedback from
the interviewed experts was, therefore, a practical motivation for
a method like the APRA.
Development of the Advance Planning Risk
Analysis
The APRA method uses an integrated list of scope definition el-
ements that altogether describe the work that needs to be per-
formed during the project development process. Each of the scope
elements has a description of its parameters and what specific
tasks or issues it may include. The method uses six definition
levels to represent how much is known about each element at a
given point in time. The overall project scope definition is as-
sessed by considering the definition of all individual elements. By
knowing which scope elements are not well defined, the project
team can proactively identify potential risk sources. The team
thus can develop action plans to respond to and work to mitigate
these potential risks. This section will present how the project
scope elements were identified, categorized, and weighted based
on their potential impact on a project.
Identifying and Categorizing Risk Elements
The first step in developing the APRA was to identify the scope
elements that the project team needs to address during the entire
project development process. The methodology used to perform
this identification was to investigate current published state DOT
and federal processes and literature related to the highway project
development processes, as well as to interview experts with ex-
tensive relevant experience. A variety of sources of information
and practices were reviewed to generate a preliminary list of
scope elements. These sources were also used for developing the
descriptions of each element and the items i.e., specific tasks
and issues pertaining to each element. The documents and
sources used included manuals for various functions performed
during the project development processes of state departments of
transportation, such as those of Texas and Minnesota DOT Texas
Department of Transportation TxDOT 2000, 2003, 2004a,b,
2005a,b,c,d; Minnesota Department of Transportation MnDOT
2002; publications by federal agencies and institutions such as
the FHwA 2000, 2001, 2002, Transportation Research Board
Waters 2000 and the CII 2008a,b; and input from periodic
meetings with the DOT project monitoring committee, which was
in charge of monitoring, guiding, and assisting the research team.
In generating a list of elements, the research team also con-
ducted face-to-face interviews with eleven professionals who had
relevant experience and expertise in this subject matter. This in-
vestigation allowed the researchers to identify critical project de-
velopment elements that are of practitioners concern.
As a result, a list of 59 elements was generated in addition to
their respective descriptions, which provide essential information
about each of the elements, their significance to the project, and
the considerations they require. The complete list and descriptions
of all these elements are included in Caldas et al. 2007a. An
example of one of the 59 elements descriptions, B4. Future
expansion and alteration considerations, is displayed in Fig. 2.
The elements cover the major tasks that need to be performed
in all main areas of the highway project development process.
The tasks relate to different phases of the project life cycle
and involve all project stakeholders, including federal and state
agencies.
The next step was to synthesize and categorize the list of ele-
ments into meaningful and organized groups. After a series of
internal research team meetings, the 59 elements were segregated
into twelve categories, which were further grouped into the fol-
lowing three sections: basis of project decision, basis of design,
and execution approach. The sections represent their relative se-
quences in project development while the categories are groups of
related tasks. The elements, categories, and sections are presented
in the two left columns in Appendices IIII.
Advance Planning Risk Analysis Element Definition
Levels
The description of a project scope element provides the level of
detail and the tasks that need to be performed for that element.
Early in the project development process, the project scope ele-
ments are not well defined. However, as the project moves along
Fig. 2. APRA elements description example
902 / JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT ASCE / SEPTEMBER 2009
to the later phases and more tasks have been performed, the
project scope elements become more defined. The definition level
is therefore used to indicate the level at which each element is
defined at a given point in time in comparison with its complete
definition. A scale of five levels, from one to five, is used for this
purpose. Additionally, a definition level of zero is used to indi-
cate an element that is not applicable to the project being as-
sessed. The definition levels are described as follows:
Level 1: completely defined. The element is well defined. All
of the work pertaining to the element is performed completely.
No more work is required.
Level 2: minor deficiencies. Only some minor work is needed
for several items of the element.
Level 3: some deficiencies. There is major work needed for
some items or some work needed for most of the items of the
element.
Level 4: major deficiencies. There is major work needed for
most of the items described in the element.
Level 5: incomplete or poor definition. The element is poorly
defined. Major work is needed for all or almost all items of the
element.
As the descriptions reveal, Definition Level 1 is the most de-
sired status of an element while Definition Level 5 is the least
preferred. This preference is not meant to imply that level five is
bad since it also depends on the time of the assessment to judge
an elements definition level.
Weighting the Advance Planning Risk Analysis
Elements
Although all scope elements are critical to the development of a
project, they have different relative impacts on the project. An
element with a higher impact would pose a higher risk to the
projects success if it is not properly addressed. Therefore, more
attention should be paid to those with higher relative impacts.
The relative impacts of scope elements are not obvious. These
impacts should reflect the practices of the project development
process, therefore expertise in project development should be
used to weigh the elements. Among the weighting methods con-
sidered, the research team determined that using workshops with
experienced professionals would be the most suitable way to
evaluate the elements relative importance, to have direct interac-
tions with the participants, to maximize information conveyance
consistency, and to improve the response rate. An alternative
method would have been to capture actual definition level data for
all 59 elements and compare to project performance, thereby de-
veloping factor weightings. Because of the large data pool that
this method would require and the length of development time
required, among other considerations, the writers chose not to use
this method for development.
Six workshops were organized with the participation of 51
experts. The participants were from all major disciplines in the
project development process, including programming and plan-
ning, design, right-of-way acquisition, utility adjustment, environ-
mental, and surveying. The participants experiences ranged from
a few years to more than 30 years. At the workshops, the experts
were asked to select a typical project among those they had been
involved in and use it as a reference project in the entire weight-
ing process that would follow.
For each element there were two scenarios. First, if the ele-
ment, as described in the scope element descriptions document
provided, was incompletely or poorly defined Definition Level
5, respondents were asked how much contingency they would
assign to that element. Both time and cost effects as the result of
poor definition of the element were taken into consideration; both
types of effects should be converted to monetary value, in terms
of a percentage of the projects total installed cost. The second
scenario was the case when the element was completely defined
Definition Level 1. It is logical that when the element is more
defined, less contingency should be assigned to it to offset the
uncertainties it may bring to the project during its execution. This
process was used for all elements on the list. The participants
were given some time at the end of the workshop to adjust the
contingency values.
The contingencies assigned for the poorly defined case of an
element would be used to calculate the score for Definition Level
5 of that element. This score was the maximum score an element
could have and it denoted the weight of the element versus other
elements in the tool. The more weight an element had, the more
important it was to a project. Likewise, the contingencies for the
well defined case were for calculating the score of Definition
Level 1. Note again that Level 1 was the desired level of defini-
tion when an element was well defined. However, the score of
Level 5 determined the importance of an element.
It was not unusual for an element to be not applicable in a
project regardless of size. In this case, the expert was asked to
write N/A in both places for levels of Definitions 1 and 5 of that
element.
Calculating Weights of the Elements Definition Levels
The next research step was to calculate the elements weights
based on the data collected from the workshops. Out of these 51
weighting forms received from the 51 workshop participants, two
had a significant amount of missing data, and thus were dis-
carded. Three other participants had less than 3 years of experi-
ence so their completed forms were considered unsuitable for use
in calculating the elements weights. After this preliminary data
screening, data sets from 46 experts were qualified to be included
in the further data analysis. Their experience had a wide range of
distribution, from 331 years with an average of 17.7 years. Five
of the participants have less than 10 years of experience, 25 with
1020 years, and 16 with more than 20 years.
A score range from 701,000 points was selected to represent
the final score of a project. The project score is obtained by add-
ing up the scores of all elements. A score close to or at 1,000
indicates a very poorly and incompletely defined, and therefore,
highly risky project. On the other hand, a score close to 70 means
that the project is well defined. The score of 70 as a minimum
was chosen because it corresponded to weighting scales used in
the PDRI tools developed by CII. A project has a maximum score
of 1,000 when all elements are applicable and have Definition
Level 5.
The contingencies assigned for elements in percentage of
total installed cost by the workshop participants were used to
determine the elements score at Definition Levels 1 and 5. The
percentage values at Level 5 were normalized so that the total of
all the elements scores at Level 5 for each participant is 1,000
points. The boxplot technique was used to screen the normalized
scores. Participants with a significant number of element scores
that were outliers were discarded from further data analysis. As a
result, data sets from 39 participants were valid for use in calcu-
lating elements scores. An elements scores at Level 5 as as-
signed by all participants were averaged to become the score of
that element. These scores were rounded and adjusted to be inte-
gers and added up to 1,000 points.
JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT ASCE / SEPTEMBER 2009 / 903
After being normalized, scores at Level 1 were adjusted so that
their total was 70 points. The value of 70 signifies the fact that
there is still risk in a project even if all elements are deemed to be
well defined, i.e., having Definition Level 1.
From the element scores at Definition Levels 1 and 5, scores at
Levels 2, 3, and 4 were determined using linear interpolation. As
mentioned before, Level 0 was used to denote the case when an
element was not applicable to the project. A nonapplicable ele-
ment would have Level 0 and be eliminated from any consider-
ation and further analysis of the project. A project with
nonapplicable elements would have a total maximum possible
score of less than 1,000 points. Weights of all elements were
finalized and are presented in Appendices IIII.
Analyzing Weighting Results
An element has the highest score when it has a definition level of
5. This highest score represents the importance of the element; the
higher the score, the more important the element is to a project. A
category has the maximum score when all of its elements have
their maximum scores. This maximum score also illustrates the
relative importance of the category when compared with other
categories. Likewise, the highest scores of all categories in a sec-
tion will make the section have the maximum score. And maxi-
mum section scores add up to the project maximum score, which
is 1,000. Fig. 3 shows the weights of all categories and sections.
Interestingly, the weights of the three sections are similar, from
30% total weight for Section I to less than 36% total weight for
Section II. This implies that in a highway project, the basis of
project decision, basis of design, and execution approach contrib-
ute relatively equally to the outcome of the project. Section
Ibasis of project decision, consists of information necessary for
understanding the project objectives. The completeness of this
section determines the degree to which the project team will be
able to achieve unification in meeting the projects business ob-
jectives. Section IIbasis of design, consists of geotechnical, hy-
drological, environmental, structural, and other technical design
elements that should be evaluated to understand fully the designs
impact. Finally, Section IIIexecution approach, consists of ele-
ments that should be evaluated to understand fully the require-
ments of the owners execution strategy and approaches for
detailed design, right-of-way acquisition, utility adjustments, and
construction.
The ten most highly weighted scope elements are presented in
Table 1. These elements total weight accounts for 25% of that of
all elements 250 out of 1000. These elements are the most criti-
cal ones to the project development process from the workshop
participants perspective. If poorly defined, they will have the
biggest negative impact on the outcome of a project. Conversely,
if well defined, these elements will play a large role in securing
the success of the project. It is not necessarily implied that con-
centrating on the ten most critical elements will ensure project
success; rather, the suggestion is that while more attention should
be paid to the most important ones, all of the elements need to be
properly addressed.
How to Use the Advance Planning Risk Analysis
The APRA should be used at various points during the project
development process especially prior to moving to a subsequent
stage or at any time of critical importance. As mentioned previ-
ously, the project development process covers all stages from the
initiation of the project to the beginning of construction. Fig. 4
illustrates the points in time when the APRA should be applied.
Table 1. Ten Most Highly Weighted Scope Definition Elements
Rank
Element
ID Weight Element
1 C4 30 Determination of utility impacts
2 A3 30 Programming and funding data
3 C3 26 Survey of existing environmental conditions
4 A2 25
Investment studies and alternative
assessments
5 I1 24
Long-lead parcel and utility adjustment
identification
6 E3 24 Schematic layout
7 B1 23 Design philosophy
8 A1 23 Need and purpose documentation
9 A5 23 Public involvement
10 D5 22 Environmental documentation
TOTAL 250
Fig. 3. APRA section and category weights at Definition Level 5
Fig. 4. Employing the APRA, application points
904 / JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT ASCE / SEPTEMBER 2009
Evaluating a project using the APRA should be performed in a
team environment, such as a meeting, if its benefits are to be best
used. Each meeting, especially the first one for a project, should
be facilitated by a neutral person who is knowledgeable about
team dynamics and familiar with the method. A meeting may take
from 24 h depending on the familiarity of the participants with
the APRA method.
A projects key participants including those from right-of-
way, utilities, design, planning, environmental, and construction
should participate in the evaluation meeting not only to provide
input for the evaluation, but also to gain insight into the issues of
concern to others. This multidisciplinary participation is useful
for the project team as it helps enhance collaboration among the
members. At the meeting, each APRA element is evaluated and
assigned a consensus level of definition based on the current
knowledge the team possesses and the work done pertaining to
that element. After determining the elements definition level, the
team will be able to identify what should have been done, what
will be done, what might go wrong, and who should take care of
each issue. All of the information from discussion should be cap-
tured in a report that provides the basis for risk mitigation.
When evaluating a project, the team assesses each element
based on how much work has been done pertaining to the element
as compared to the elements description at the time of the assess-
ment. A definition level is selected to reflect this assessment. Each
level of each element has a predetermined score as presented in
Appendices IIII. Once all elements have been assessed and as-
signed a definition level, their scores are tallied to get scores of
corresponding categories, sections, and the entire project. Ele-
ments that are not applicable to a specific project can be zeroed in
upon, thus allowing their elimination from the final scoring cal-
culation. However, during the evaluation, scores should not be the
major focus. Focusing too much on the scores may undermine the
APRAs main benefit, which is helping the project team as a
whole identify the risky areas of the project and develop a plan of
action to improve the project.
At the end of this evaluation, the team may continue with
discussion of mitigation actions, or plan another meeting to de-
velop an action plan in response to the high risk elements using
the list generated and the notes captured during the evaluation.
All of the information should be developed into a risk r
