Thesis (M.S. in civil engineering)--Washington State University, December 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Jan. 15, 2010). "Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering." Includes bibliographical references (p. [9-10]).

Time delays and cost overruns in construction projects are generally due to factors such as inappropriate planning, design errors, unexpected site conditions, inadvisable tools selection, change scope, weather conditions, lack of resources, and other project changes. Time delays and cost overruns are of concern to most project managers, owners, and governments. These elements of time and cost are two of the critical defects that impact the construction project delivery. These defects can lead to project failures and to various negative issues like increasing in disagreements among the project team, the contractor, suppliers, and the owner. State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) in the U.S. continue to spend heavily on roads, highways, and bridges construction, as well as development, maintenance, and expansion. This continued financial commitment reflects decades of commitment to improve the transportation service for safer and better use by the general public. Despite the notable efforts from most of the states to develop the transportation infrastructure, budget restrictions and lack of funds are some of the major challenges faced by DOTs. Highway and bridge infrastructure has a high potential growth in the U.S. construction market. Well-organized highway and bridge project investment decision-making becomes increasingly crucial in the transportation sector. In this research, transportation is specified to highway and bridge projects, and it focused on high-profile projects. These projects are defined as high-cost projects, and are associated with higher project delivery risk (typically $100 - $500 million). All states are working with their state transportation plan, listing the projects based on each state priorities and population growth. Proper planning leads to the right decision regarding selecting the best alternative within budget, and it must reflect certain core principles, including a comprehensive analysis. To facilitate such a decision process, decision makers need a trusted decision model that considers all important options and impacts. By using a decision model, decision-making will not be subjectively influenced to favor one option or group. The decision model becomes the primary tool for selecting the best option, based on its structure levels, perspectives, sub-criteria, and experts’ input. Recently, there is an apparent need for a decision model to help DOTs evaluating their options. Effective project delivery assessment tools, techniques, or practices are strongly needed to improve transportation construction projects’ performance. The research objective is to develop a comprehensive decision model that can be used by project managers and their teams to choose the most effective project assessment technique for measuring the success of performance and outcomes related to the delivery of transportation projects. This research was focused on the assessment techniques that are used in the development phase within the transportation project lifecycle phases. To this end, the research identified and screened the innovative assessment tools and techniques of project delivery that the transportation and other industries have used by reviewing numerous of academic literature and technical reports. Based on the review, value optimization elements such as cost, time, performance, risk, and resources were selected to be the primary evaluation criteria that lead to achieving the model objective. Also, the model sub-criteria were investigated and selected based on the literature review and direct discussion with some experts such as project managers, civil engineers, and value management consultants. The outcome analysis of the results showed that in terms of objectives that performance efficiency was rated the highest importance with respect to the mission, while resources presented the lowest importance from an overall assessment point of view. The results showed that Alternative 4, the VE-RACRDAM technique, was ranked as the most important alternative among others followed by Alternative 5, while Alternative 2 was ranked the least important. A five scenarios analysis was applied to measure the sensitivity of the effects of changing the relative importance of the assessment criteria on alternatives’ rankings. Results showed that Alternative 4 was maintained as the most effective assessment technique among the other alternatives in the five scenarios. In the end, experts were asked to validate the final research results, and they confirmed that the results were appropriate and valid. The validity of the decision model and findings of this research contribute new insights into the transportation construction industry as the case of state departments of transportation. Also, the experts agreed that this decision model is generalizable and could be used in other industries. Therefore, the model significantly contributes to the project management knowledge, and construction project development and delivery success.

As a result of the changing needs of society since the early 20th century, approaches to transportation planning have been continually shifting from highway-focused to multimodal, an approach which takes multiple modes of transportation into consideration. This evolution has been reflected in federal transportation legislation and continues to have many implications for transportation agencies, especially state departments of transportation (DOTs). The objective of this thesis is to analyze what state DOTs have done in order to adapt to the shift. More specifically, the project focuses on the organizational and funding structures of state DOTs. First, an organizational structure analysis of all 50 state DOTs was carried out. This analysis looked at how state DOTs incorporate multiple modes of transportation into their organizational structure. Secondly, the results of a statewide multimodal planning survey, to which 35 states responded, were analyzed. The survey gauged to what extent the representative from a given state DOT thought that their agency was conducting multimodal transportation planning. It also analyzed state DOT modal responsibilities, funding options, and characteristics that influence multimodal transportation planning. Lastly, case studies were carried out for six state transportation agencies: Florida DOT, North Carolina DOT, Oregon DOT, Virginia's Transportation Secretariat, Maryland DOT, and Massachusetts DOT. These case studies focused on organizational structure, funding, and multimodal efforts. Findings from the three different aspects of this thesis support the notion that highway is still the dominant mode in statewide transportation planning in most state DOTs. However, this research also supports the idea that this situation is changing, though more rapidly in some states than in others. Though it is not evident that one type of organizational structure is better than another, states have used the reorganization of these structures as a method for adapting to multimodal transportation planning. Overall, state DOTs tend to incorporate multiple modes of transportation into their organizational structure through multimodal divisions, separate modal divisions, or a combination of both. In addition to the organizational structures, some states have also restructured their funding mechanisms in order to make funds more flexible across all modes of transportation so that they may be able to better accommodate multimodal transportation planning. Those state DOTs with transportation trust funds and separate modal programs have generally shown more initiative in embracing a more multimodal approach to transportation planning. Besides organizational and funding structures, leadership, organizational culture, and institutional issues have been recognized as factors that influence the extent of multimodal planning.