Project Performance Comparison of Vertical Projects versus Horizontal Projects: Fid-Bau Portal

Project Performance Comparison of Vertical Projects versus Horizontal Projects

Shrestha, Pramen P. / Prajapati, Elina

State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) not only build highways and bridges, but also construct building projects for their sites, divisions, and head offices. All state DOTs have construction budgets every year for building new projects or renovating existing buildings. The project performances of highway and bridge projects built by state DOTs have been analyzed by numerous studies. There have been many studies conducted to determine project performance differences using different delivery methods by the same owners. However, no study has been conducted to determine the project performance difference in vertical and horizontal projects built by state highway agency using the Design-Bid-Build (DBB) method. Therefore, the researchers conducted this study to compare the performances of horizontal and vertical projects performed by the same state agency. Thus, this study collected the construction costs and schedule data of vertical and horizontal projects built by Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (MTA), in order to determine whether the performance of vertical projects is different from horizontal projects. The authors used cost growth and construction intensity as the metrics to measure project performance of horizontal and vertical projects. The study findings show that the cost growth and construction intensity of vertical projects are better than horizontal projects; however, the differences were not significant. This showed that MTA’s personnel are managing both types of projects with similar efficiency and productivity. It is recommended to conduct similar study with other state DOT’s data, so that it can be determined whether other state DOTs are managing these two types of projects with equal efficiency.