Economical Impact of Full Closure for Accelerated Bridge Construction and Conventional Staged Construction

Abstract

Accelerated bridge construction (ABC) methods have been increasingly used in recent years to reduce the impact of construction operations on traffic and mobility. ABC methods, however, often require a higher initial cost, more planning, and additional design coordination. Several tools have been developed to assist decision-makers in the selection of conventional staged construction or ABC methods based on bridge characteristics and requirements. Most of these existing tools, however, are qualitative and depend on the subjective opinion of decision-makers/experts. Accordingly, there is a need for additional research to develop quantitative tools for generating reliable cost estimates for conventional and accelerated bridge construction methods. This report presents the findings of a research project funded by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to develop a decision support tool (DST) that IDOT can use to estimate and compare the cost of all bridge construction methods, including conventional staged construction and ABC methods. This project has four objectives. The first objective is to develop a qualitative DST that can be used by IDOT planners and decision-makers to identify all feasible bridge construction methods for any bridge project based on its specific characteristics, requirements, and constraints. The second objective is to create a quantitative cost-estimating DST that can be used to accurately estimate construction, road user, maintenance and rehabilitation, and life cycle costs for all feasible construction methods including conventional and ABC methods. The third objective is to develop guidance for the user interface of the developed DST to explain how it can be used to compare and rank all feasible bridge construction methods based on their individual performance in design, construction, road user, and maintenance and rehabilitation costs. The fourth objective is to evaluate the performance and accuracy of the developed quantitative DST for estimating bridge costs.