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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (4 results)

  • Article
UCCONNECT (2018)
Highway pavement rehabilitation (HPR) is a service provided by departments of transportation (DOTs) worldwide. The process of delivering HPR projects involves not only a transportation department but also many other project participants and stakeholders; furthermore, it is subject to numerous technical- as well as socio-political considerations. Interestingly—though not surprisingly—the processes DOTs use to deliver this service vary widely, not only between countries or between states in the US, but also regionally within a given state such as California. While some variation is to be expected, it is not necessarily of value to some or all concerned. Management practices such as Lean and Six Sigma can be key to driving out unwanted variation and thereby lead to performance improvements locally and overall. Addressing “Goal 5 Operational Excellence” in Caltrans’ (2015a) Strategic Management Plan, this research set out to view HPR projects through the lenses of Lean and Six Sigma, in combination referred to as Lean Six Sigma. These management philosophies—herein broadly referred to by the broad term “Lean Thinking”—overlap in concepts and methods, but they all aim to promote continuous improvement and value delivery. Caltrans started to launch Lean Six Sigma initiatives in 2015 (e.g., Dunning 2016, Tusup 2017) and its employees have to date already achieved significant process improvements in their day-today operations. However, it appears that Caltrans has not yet pursued such initiatives in the delivery of its projects. The literature overview provided in this report describes applications of Lean and Six Sigma in transportation departments in the US and abroad, and the cases referenced demonstrate the applicability of Lean and Six Sigma to project delivery. Lean applied to HPR project delivery and, more generally, applied to project-based production, in the literature gets referred to using the term “Lean Construction” (Koskela et al. 2002, Ballard et al. 2002). The exploratory research with findings presented in this report, set out to investigate if and how a state DOT might standardize the delivery of HPR projects. The researchers investigated this by collecting data on three projects that Caltrans completed recently. Using this data and building on the Caltrans (2016) work breakdown structure, they were able to map the processes used to deliver two of them. The researchers then obtained further data and gauged the performance of these projects’ delivery processes. Comparison of the resulting process maps, and their combination into a single process map that may function as a draft “standard,” serve as the basis for formulating recommendations to Caltrans. The researchers recommend that Caltrans personnel with a Lean mindset review the maps provided and fine-tune them for further use in collaborative efforts within their organization (e.g., engaging multiple functional units within districts and engaging multiple districts) as well as with supply chain partners (e.g., contractors) while using Lean Thinking to identify and pursue opportunities for continuous improvement of its project delivery practices.
    Cover page: Mapping and Improving the Delivery Process of Highway Pavement Rehabilitation Projects
    • Article
    ITS reports (2017)
    The California Budget Act of 2016 included a provision to “complete a post-implementation review of the Project Resourcing and Schedule Management (PRSM) information technology system upgrade completed by the Department of Transportation.” The PRSM system referenced is Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software deployed at Caltrans in 2014 and intended to enable Caltrans to effectively plan State employee and consultant time spent on activities related to projects in its Capital Outlay Support (COS) program. In this Part A report, the researchers studied PRSM as implemented and in practical use, based on a Caltrans document review and interviews conducted with sample groups of Caltrans staff. The result is this factual, non-judgmental description of how PRSM is used and what it is used for. The researchers’ initial sense from the PRSM review meetings is that over the course of three years of deployment, PRSM has become a well-established project management system for approximately 3,000 Caltrans users with read/write access and many others with read-only access, yet PRSM is not yet fully living up to its title. While PRSM is an acronym for “Project Resourcing and Schedule Management,” Caltrans is only using it for project resourcing, especially for annual budgeting, and is not using PRSM’s scheduling functions to their potential.
      Cover page: PRSM Review Year 1 Report A: Review of PRSM Use at Caltrans
      • Thesis
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2018)

      Owners face challenges in setting priorities between potential projects to maintain, rehabilitate, and improve their infrastructure. The estimated cost of each potential project is a factor that owners use in setting priorities between projects and in developing their long-term maintenance and construction project portfolio. Owners face a dilemma: considerable effort is needed to develop accurate estimates of the cost of each project, but this effort will be wasted if the particular project is not selected for the long-term plan. They therefore need estimating methods that will enable them to develop reasonably accurate early stage cost estimates without an excessive amount of effort. These early stage estimates are “conceptual cost estimates” and “feasibility cost estimates.”

      This research examines the tools that are available to owners for performing early stage cost estimates for infrastructure projects. It then compares alternative parametric functions that could be used for that purpose, using data from public agencies in California. These functions are the linear parametric, common exponential parametric, and modified Cobb-Douglas exponential parametric models.

      This research tests the models on 1 common type of project, pedestrian access facility projects on highways. In the United States (US) these projects result, directly and indirectly, from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that Congress passed in 1990. On highways, they produce three types of improvement: 1. wheelchair ramps at street corners to allow people in wheelchairs to cross streets at designated pedestrian crossings, 2. wheelchair-accessible sidewalks, and 3. audible signals at signalized intersections to inform visually impaired people when a pedestrian signal is in their favor.

      The author developed a data set of 39 pedestrian access facility projects on state highways in California, used multiple regression analysis to find 4 best-fit versions of each of the 3 functions (i.e., 12 alternatives in all), and evaluated them using the Choosing By Advantages (CBA) method.

      The author then benchmarks the preferred state highway cost estimating model identified in the CBA against 10 city-street pedestrian access facility projects that had been completed by 4 cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. He finds a significant difference between the state highway project cost data and the city street project cost data, and further rationalizes that these differences have their roots in both the contracting methods used by the agencies and the fact that Caltrans prepares detailed designs while cities do only minimal design. The data suggests that there is an opportunity to increase output and lower the costs of pedestrian access projects (and perhaps other types of highway projects as well) by decreasing the Caltrans design effort and transferring more of the design effort and consequent risk to contractors. This could be tested through experimentation on selected pedestrian access facility installations.

      This dissertation contributes to knowledge by providing a review of the place of conceptual and feasibility estimating both with respect to the overall project timeline and with respect to the methods used. It provides specific examples of the use of the various classes of estimates in the development of highway projects, and it provides a synthesis of the research on conceptual and feasibility estimating methods, most notably of parametric estimating. It then provides specific examples of parametric estimates on pedestrian access projects on California State Highways and in San Francisco Bay Area cities. Finally, it unveils the successful use by Bay Area cities of a minimal amount of design when developing design-bid-build contracts for pedestrian access facilities.

      The dissertation aims to provide an approach that could be used both for project-by-project conceptual estimating prior to the start of work on highway projects and for evaluating the overall credibility of the estimates on large portfolios of highway projects.

        Cover page: Parametric functions for conceptual and feasibility estimating in public highway project portfolios
        • Article
        ITS reports (2018)
        The California Budget Act of 2016 included a provision to “complete a post-implementation review of the Project Resourcing and Schedule Management (PRSM) information technology system upgrade completed by the Department of Transportation”. The PRSM system referenced is Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software deployed at Caltrans in 2014 and intended to enable Caltrans to effectively plan State employee and consultant time spent on activities related to projects in its Capital Outlay Support (COS) program. A team of researchers in the Engineering Project Management Program at UC Berkeley was selected to conduct the review of PRSM. This report summarizes the team’s findings. Looking inside Caltrans at how the agency is using PRSM, Section I reports on the researchers’ review of Caltrans documents and the interviews they conducted with sample groups of Caltrans staff. The study shows that PRSM has become a well-established system: it is now used agency-wide by approximately 3,000 Caltrans users with read/write access and many others with read-only access. Caltrans staff are using PRSM for project resourcing, especially for annual budgeting, but are not using all its scheduling functions to their potential. Looking outward for practices different from those of Caltrans that may reveal opportunities to improve Caltrans’ project management practices with PRSM support, Section II reports on findings from the researchers’ scan of comparable software, survey of state departments of transportation, interviews with private engineering firms, and review of recent developments and best practices in project management. The study shows that PRSM is but one of several possible- but still among the most highly-rated software system choices. Study recommendations include: continuing with ongoing PRSM training for District personnel to ensure consistency in use across the State, engaging more directly with the system vendor to voice Caltrans’ needs for future software enhancements, changing the current Caltrans workflow to include systematic project baselining, and developing task management practices using the Last Planner® System to enhance work flow reliability and thereby improve efficiency and project performance. This Report ends with a summary of all findings and lays the foundation for scope to be pursued in subsequent, applied research with Caltrans, aiming to further leverage the support that PRSM use can provide in its project management practices.
          Cover page: Review of the Project Resourcing and Schedule Management (PRSM) System used by Caltrans
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