Evaluation of the Most Significant Factors Influencing the Production Rates of Highway Construction Activities

The utilization of realistic production rates is key for the accurate estimation of the contract time in highway projects. Several factors have an impact on production rates and change the total duration of construction projects. To organize and complete projects in a timely, quality and financially responsible manner, projects need to be scheduled carefully. Schedulers and planners of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) have been noticing that the estimated timelines are far from the reality and want to investigate if external factors can be the cause of this discrepancy. Some of the factors considered in this study are the systems used to schedule highway projects, weather conditions, temperature, location and shifts. This paper aims to investigate how these factors affect projects’ schedules in order to help schedulers create more realistic timelines. Past highway projects developed in Texas, were used to extract the information valuable to perform statistical analysis and determine if these factors have a significant effect on the productivity rates of construction activities