Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 70
As-Built Soft Cost Analysis 35
when comparing projects across agencies. For example, staff and contractor soft cost charges
can be funded through separate grants and are not always reported into the project budget.
The salaries of some agency staff who support engineering, design, and/or construction
may be treated as an operating expense rather than charged to the capital project.
Early planning and preliminary engineering costs may be charged to a general planning
grant rather than attributed directly to the capital project.
Insurance may be carried by the construction contractor or the sponsor agency, and/or it
may be embedded into individual cost elements as an overhead cost.
· Project delivery mechanism
The varying methods of project development and procurement present unique challenges
to the breakdown and classification of project costs because cost classification can depend
on institutional perspective. Sections 3.5 and 4.5.3 discuss this issue more thoroughly.
4.4. Historical Soft Costs
This first portion of the soft cost analysis presents the general breakdown of project soft cost
attributes within the as-built project cost database. Total project costs are described using the follow-
ing categories: Soft, Vehicle, and Construction costs. Soft costs are then examined as a proportion
of the Construction Costs category and then further examined by individual soft cost components.
4.4.1. Describing the Data
As shown in Figure 13, construction costs made up the largest share of expenses for most proj-
ects, vehicle costs range from 0 to 25% of total project cost, ROW costs 0 to 20%, and soft costs
10 to 35%. While all projects incurred construction and soft costs, some projects had no ROW
or vehicle procurement costs. For example, the extension of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to
San Francisco International Airport (SFO) required the purchase of no additional vehicles, while
the extension of the CTA's Blue Line to O'Hare Airport did not entail right-of-way costs. Pro-
fessional services for the many varied rail transit capital projects in this database usually
accounted for around 1035% of total project costs. This pattern forms the focus of the more
detailed segmentation of these costs, presented briefly here and in more detail in Appendix C.
Figure 13 illustrates soft costs, with light bars at the top, expressed as a percentage of total costs.
To measure soft costs in a more commonly used format, Figure 14 shows soft costs as a percentage
100%
90%
% of Total Project Costs
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Hud-Berg II
Hiawatha
Salt Lake
Sacram. I
Hud-Berg I
Portland So
Sacram. Fol
Portland Int
Charlotte
LA Gold East
LA Gold Pasa
Sacram. So
St. Louis
Portland W
South NJ
Pittsburgh N
Portland Seg1
Pittsburgh I
LA Blue
San Diego
VTA Tas E
Pittsburgh II
Denver SW
VTA Capitol
Phoenix
CTA O'Hare
DC U St.
DC Anacost
DC Addison
DC L'Enfant
DC New Ca
DC Shady G
DC Huntgtn
DC Glenmt 1
CTA Douglas
NYCT 63rd
CTA Orange
Baltimore
DC Vienna
MBTA Orang
CTA Brown
MARTA N-S
Miami
San Juan
DC Anacost O
DC Springfld
DC Glenmt 2
DC Greenblt
BART SFO
Phil Frankf.
NYCT Stillw
Construction Costs ROW Costs Vehicle Costs Soft Costs
Figure 13. Project costs by category.
OCR for page 71
36 Estimating Soft Costs for Major Public Transportation Fixed Guideway Projects
Soft Costs (% of Construction)
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Hud-Berg II
Hiawatha
Salt Lake
Sacram. I
Hud-Berg I
Portland So
Sacram. Fol
Portland Int
Charlotte
LA Gold East
LA Gold Pasa
Sacram. So
St. Louis
Portland W
South NJ
Pittsburgh N
Portland Seg1
Pittsburgh I
LA Blue
San Diego
VTA Tas E
Pittsburgh II
Denver SW
VTA Capitol
Phoenix
CTA O'Hare
DC U St.
DC Anacost
DC Addison
DC L'Enfant
DC New Ca
DC Shady G
DC Huntgtn
DC Glenmt 1
CTA Douglas
NYCT 63rd
CTA Orange
Baltimore
DC Vienna
MBTA Orang
CTA Brown
MARTA N-S
Miami
San Juan
DC Anacost O
DC Springfld
DC Glenmt 2
DC Greenblt
BART SFO
Phil Frankf.
NYCT Stillw
Light Rail Heavy Rail
Figure 14. Soft costs percent of construction costs by project and mode.
of construction costs for these same projects. Construction costs include all of the guideway,
trackwork, facility, station, systems, sitework, and special conditions costs (refer to Table 14).
When expressed as a percentage of construction costs, soft costs vary considerably more across
these same projects than when expressed as a percentage of the total cost--from 11% to a high
of 54% of construction costs.
Expressing soft costs as a percentage of construction costs is pertinent to this analysis since
soft costs associated with the vehicle and right-of-way costs are expressly defined as a separate
cost element in each of those associated cost categories. This relatively wide range in soft costs as
a percentage of construction costs merits further examination.
Note that in Figures 14 through 18, 20, and 22, the historical projects are ordered in terms of
increasing soft costs as a percentage of construction costs, with separate ordering for light rail
and heavy rail projects.
To explore the wide range in this soft cost measure, the individual cost components that com-
pose total soft costs were analyzed. Total soft costs can be segmented into six major components,
as defined in the FTA SCC structure:
· Preliminary Engineering,
· Final Design,
· Project Management for Design and Construction,
· Construction Administration and Management,
· Insurance, and
· All Other Soft Costs in SCC 80.
These six soft cost components are shown as a percentage of construction costs in the bar chart
in Figure 15. The total percentages are consistent with those presented above in Figure 14. The
six components are expressed as a percentage of overall soft costs in Figure 16, where the bar
chart for each project totals 100%.
The components of soft costs appear to vary considerably across projects, especially as a pro-
portion of overall soft costs. For example, preliminary engineering costs (bottom measure and
dark aqua in Figure 15 and Figure 16) are a very small or near-zero proportion of soft costs for
some projects, while for others (e.g., Hudson-Bergen Phase 1, Phoenix) these costs are signifi-
cant expenditures. In projects with little or no reported preliminary engineering costs, there was
likely either a missing expenditure or it was rolled into a combined grant with another soft cost
component. Insurance can account for almost 10% of construction costs (e.g., CTA Douglas
Branch) for some projects, or none at all for others. This may be due to different agencies'
OCR for page 72
As-Built Soft Cost Analysis 37
60%
Soft Costs (% of Construction Costs)
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Hud-Berg II
Hiawatha
Salt Lake
Sacram. I
Hud-Berg I
Portland So
Sacram. Fol
Portland Int
Charlotte
LA Gold East
LA Gold Pasa
Sacram. So
St. Louis
Portland W
South NJ
Pittsburgh N
Portland Seg1
Pittsburgh I
LA Blue
San Diego
VTA Tas E
Pittsburgh II
Denver SW
VTA Capitol
Phoenix
CTA O'Hare
DC U St.
DC Anacost
DC Addison
DC L'Enfant
DC New Ca
DC Shady G
DC Huntgtn
DC Glenmt 1
CTA Douglas
NYCT 63rd
CTA Orange
Baltimore
DC Vienna
MBTA Orang
CTA Brown
MARTA N-S
Miami
San Juan
DC Anacost O
DC Springfld
DC Glenmt 2
DC Greenblt
BART SFO
Phil Frankf.
NYCT Stillw
PE FD Project Mgmt. for D&C Construction Admin. & Mgmt. Insurance All Other Soft Costs
Figure 15. Soft cost components as a percentage of construction costs.
approaches to project development, where one agency may provide project-wide wrap-up insur-
ance and others may require each contractor to provide their own insurance, or some combination
of these. In general, individual variances may be due to real differences in expenses incurred as
a result of project characteristics, while some variation is probably due to the way in which costs
are reported or categorized. The more consistent soft cost components were final design, project
management, and construction management.
Some projects appear to have inconsistencies in the reported soft cost experience that may
indicate questionable data. For example, some projects show zero engineering or design costs,
which is unlikely given the complexity of constructing major transit capital projects. In these
cases, expenditures may have been classified elsewhere in the SCC structure or charged to a sep-
arate, off-project funding source and not reported into the project budget.
In subsequent analysis in this report, certain outliers were omitted from the more detailed
analyses to eliminate the effect of these uncertain data. The decision to remove an outlier was
based on analyzing the distribution of projects' soft costs, and is more fully described in Section C.4
in Appendix C.
Figure 17 shows the average soft cost percentages by component for all projects in the dataset
(outliers excluded) and the range of percentages encountered. The bars represent average soft-cost
100%
Soft Costs (% of Total Soft Costs)
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Hud-Berg II
Hiawatha
Salt Lake
Sacram. I
Hud-Berg I
Portland So
Sacram. Fol
Portland Int
Charlotte
LA Gold East
LA Gold Pasa
Sacram. So
St. Louis
Portland W
South NJ
Pittsburgh N
Portland Seg1
Pittsburgh I
LA Blue
San Diego
VTA Tas E
Pittsburgh II
Denver SW
VTA Capitol
Phoenix
CTA O'Hare
DC U St.
DC Anacost
DC Addison
DC L'Enfant
DC New Ca
DC Shady G
DC Huntgtn
DC Glenmt 1
CTA Douglas
NYCT 63rd
CTA Orange
Baltimore
DC Vienna
MBTA Orang
CTA Brown
MARTA N-S
Miami
San Juan
DC Anacost O
DC Springfld
DC Glenmt 2
DC Greenblt
BART SFO
Phil Frankf.
NYCT Stillw
PE FD Project Mgmt. for D&C Construction Admin. & Mgmt. Insurance All Other Soft Costs
Figure 16. Soft cost components as percentage of total soft costs.
OCR for page 73
38 Estimating Soft Costs for Major Public Transportation Fixed Guideway Projects
35% 60%
Soft Costs (% of Construction)
Soft Costs (% of Construction)
30% 50%
25% Maximum
40%
Minimum
20%
30%
15%
10% 20%
5% 10%
0%
Proj. Construction 0%
All Other
PE FD Mgmt. for Admin. Insurance All Components
Soft Costs
D&C & Mgmt.
Soft Costs as % of Construction
Average 2.7% 9.7% 8.8% 6.3% 1.6% 2.2% 31.3%
Minimum 0.0% 2.6% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 11.4%
Maximum 8.3% 31.0% 23.2% 19.4% 9.4% 10.5% 53.6%
Figure 17. Average and range of soft cost components as percent of construction.
component expenditures, and the lines indicate the maximum and minimum values in the dataset.
For instance, the average project incurred final design expenses of 9.7% of construction costs, but
this percentage ranged as low as 2.6% for one project and as high as 31.0% for another. Most cat-
egories contained projects with zero expenditures for that category, resulting in the minimum of
the range being zero.
Figure 17 also shows that when all components are combined, projects show average soft costs
of around 31% of construction costs. However, the range of total soft costs has been as low as
11.4% for one project and as high as 53.6% for another project, after excluding outliers.
To test the hypothesis that soft-cost component costs may have been inadvertently assigned
and reported to a related soft cost component, the analysis grouped some related soft cost com-
ponents and subtotaled them into the following three soft-cost component categories:
· Pre-construction costs (design and engineering),
· Construction expenditures (construction management, administration, etc.), and
· Other costs (insurance, others).
Although an approximation of these project development phases, this broad categorization
produces the results displayed in Figure 18 (as a percentage of construction costs) and Figure 20
(as a percentage of total soft costs).
A more consistent soft cost basis appears to emerge from the analysis when soft cost compo-
nents are grouped by these categories, which approximates the project development phase in
which the expenditures were incurred. Figure 19 shows the averages and ranges of these three
groups of soft cost components, expressed as a percentage of construction costs. This figure
indicates that a typical project incurs preliminary engineering and final design costs of 12.4% of
construction, and construction management and project administration soft costs of 15.1% of
construction, but that these percentages can range from around 3% to 33% for some projects.
When expressed as a percentage of total soft costs as shown in Figure 20, the resulting cost
proportions are more consistent. About 4050% of soft costs are generally related to engineer-
ing and final design, another 4050% of soft costs are related to construction management and
administration, and about 10% are other costs. The first two of these three categories (engineer-
ing and final design, and construction management and administration) are sometimes used in
subsequent analysis in this report.
OCR for page 74
Soft Costs (% of Total Soft Costs) Soft Costs (% of Construction)
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
0%
100%
20%
40%
60%
80%
0%
Hud-Berg II
Hud-Berg II
Figure 18.
Hiawatha
Figure 20.
Hiawatha
Salt Lake
Salt Lake
Sacram. I
Sacram. I
Hud-Berg I
Hud-Berg I
Portland So
Portland So
Sacram. Fol
Sacram. Fol
Portland Int
Portland Int Soft Costs (% of Construction) Charlotte
Charlotte
LA Gold East
Average
LA Gold East
Minimum
Maximum
LA Gold Pasa
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
LA Gold Pasa
Sacram. So
Sacram. So
St. Louis
St. Louis
Portland W
Portland W
South NJ
South NJ
Pittsburgh N
Design
Pittsburgh N
Portland Seg1
Preliminary Engineering & Final Design
Portland Seg1
Pittsburgh I
Pittsburgh I
Preliminary Engineering + Final Design
LA Blue
LA Blue
31.0%
3.6%
12.4%
San Diego
San Diego
Soft Costs as % of Construction
VTA Tas E
VTA Tas E
Pittsburgh II
Admin. &
Pittsburgh II
Denver SW
(PE + FD) Management
Denver SW
VTA Capitol
33.2%
3.2%
15.1%
VTA Capitol
Phoenix
Phoenix
CTA O'Hare
Minimum
Maximum
CTA O'Hare
DC U St.
DC U St.
Costs
DC Anacost
DC Anacost
Other Soft
DC Addison
16.0%
0.0%
3.8%
DC Addison
DC L'Enfant
DC L'Enfant
components as a percentage of construction.
Soft Costs (% of Construction) DC New Ca
DC New Ca
DC Shady G
DC Shady G
DC Huntgtn
DC Huntgtn
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
DC Glenmt 1
DC Glenmt 1
CTA Douglas
CTA Douglas
NYCT 63rd
Project and Construction Management
Figure 19. Average and range of subtotaled soft cost
NYCT 63rd
CTA Orange
Project and Construction Management
CTA Orange All Baltimore
Baltimore
DC Vienna
DC Vienna
MBTA Orang
MBTA Orang
Components
CTA Brown
Subtotaled soft cost components as a percentage of total soft costs.
CTA Brown
53.6%
11.4%
31.3%
MARTA N-S
MARTA N-S
Subtotaled soft cost components as a percentage of construction costs.
Miami
Miami
San Juan
San Juan
DC Anacost O
DC Anacost O
DC Springfld
DC Springfld
DC Glenmt 2
DC Glenmt 2
All Other Soft Costs
DC Greenblt
All Other Soft Costs
DC Greenblt
BART SFO
BART SFO
Phil Frankf.
Phil Frankf.
NYCT Stillw
NYCT Stillw
As-Built Soft Cost Analysis
39
OCR for page 75
40 Estimating Soft Costs for Major Public Transportation Fixed Guideway Projects
4.4.2. Measuring Soft Costs
Developing a guidebook on the estimation of soft costs requires the identification of specific
measures. This section tests a number of different ways to measure soft costs and explores how
each may be used in a guidebook context. Soft costs of as-built projects can be measured in the
following ways:
· As a percentage of total project cost;
· As a percentage of all other costs, excluding only soft costs;
· As a percentage of construction costs;
· In constant dollar value terms; or
· In constant dollars per linear foot of constructed guideway.
This analysis does not rely on the first and fourth measurements on this list. Figure 13 above
showed soft costs as a percentage of total project cost, and this measurement is sometimes used
to describe soft costs. However, measuring soft costs as a percentage of total project cost is not
an appropriate metric for a cost estimator since the estimator does not know total project cost
until the soft cost estimate is complete. Soft costs may also be expressed in dollar value terms,
but this measure would fail to account for differences in project size across the dataset. Therefore
this analysis focuses on measuring soft costs as a percentage of all other costs, as a percentage of
construction costs, and in dollars per linear foot of guideway.
Figure 21 compares measuring soft costs as a percentage of all other total costs (i.e., all other
costs besides soft costs themselves) and as a percentage of construction costs (i.e., excluding
vehicle and right-of-way costs) and shows that these two percentage-based methods of measure-
ment are highly correlated. This applies to both light and heavy rail modes and the combined
analysis of projects of both modes. These results suggest that ROW and Vehicle category costs
(those that are excluded when measuring construction costs only) have a relatively small effect
on soft costs. This may indicate that their related soft costs (ROW and Vehicle category costs)
have been accurately accounted for within each of these categories.
Measuring soft costs per linear foot is another way to measure soft costs. To test the quality of
this measure, all project costs were normalized by applying the national average metropolitan
area Means Construction Cost Index (Murphy, 2008) and then inflating to 2008 dollars. Signifi-
cant project outliers were excluded from this analysis to focus on the more consistent results.
Figure 22 shows this measurement for all included projects.
LIGHT RAIL HEAVY RAIL LIGHT + HEAVY RAIL
70% 70% 70%
Soft Costs (% of Construction)
Soft Costs (% of Construction)
Soft Costs (% of Construction)
60% 60% 60%
50% 50% 50%
40% 40% 40%
30% 30% 30%
R2 = 0.79 R2 = 0.84
20% 20% 20%
10% 10% 10%
0% 0% 0%
0% 20% 40% 60% 0% 20% 40% 60% 0% 20% 40% 60%
Soft Costs as % of All Other Costs Soft Costs as % of All Other Costs Soft Costs as % of All Other Costs
R2 = 0.79 t-Stat = 9.4 R2 = 0.836 t-Stat = 11.07 R2 = 0.781 t-Stat = 13.2
Figure 21. Soft cost percentage of construction costs versus soft cost percentage of total other costs.
OCR for page 76
As-Built Soft Cost Analysis 41
Soft Costs per Linear Foot of Guideway
$12,000
$10,000
$8,000
$6,000
$4,000
$2,000
$-
Sacram. I
Salt Lake
Sacram. Fol
St. Louis
Denver SW
South NJ
Sacram. So
Hiawatha
Portland Seg1
Charlotte
Portland So
LA Gold Pasa
Portland Int
VTA Capitol
VTA Tas E
Phoenix
LA Blue
Pittsburgh I
Portland W
Hud-Berg I
Pittsburgh II
San Diego
Hud-Berg II
LA Gold East
CTA O'Hare
DC Anacost O
CTA Orange
DC Glenmt 2
CTA Douglas
DC Springfld
DC Greenblt
Miami
DC Anacost
DC Vienna
Baltimore
DC Glenmt 1
MARTA N-S
DC U St.
DC Addison
DC Huntgtn
DC Shady G
DC New Ca
DC L'Enfant
BART SFO
Phil Frankf.
Light Rail Heavy Rail
Figure 22. Soft costs per linear foot of constructed guideway by project and mode.
Soft costs on a per-linear-foot basis vary considerably, even with the removal of outliers, from
less than $1,000 to nearly $10,000 per linear foot (all costs in 2008 dollars). Specifically, light rail
projects averaged $2,572 per linear foot, heavy rail $5,726, and all projects combined $4,044 per
linear foot, as shown in Figure 23. The range for soft costs in light rail is somewhat less than for
heavy rail projects.
In general, soft costs tend to be higher for heavy rail, consistent with the generally higher cost
of heavy rail overall. The soft cost per linear foot measure appeared to offer some consistency
with the range estimates noted above. The next step in the analysis was to see if there was any
relationship with the soft cost percentage of construction. Figure 24 compares the measurement
of soft costs as a percentage of construction cost and as a dollar value cost per linear foot.
As Figure 24 indicates, measuring soft costs as a dollar-value cost per linear foot versus a per-
centage of construction cost would not yield similar results. The heavy rail projects have a some-
what better relationship that may indicate a greater relationship of increasing complexity of the
heavy rail projects with greater soft cost requirements.
$12,000
Soft Costs per Linear Foot
$10,000
$8,000
$6,000
$4,000
$2,000
$-
Light Rail Heavy Rail Light & Heavy
Rail
Soft Costs per Linear Foot
Average $ 2,572 $ 5,726 $ 4,044
Minimum $ 335 $ 1,191 $ 335
Maximum $ 6,201 $ 9,728 $ 9,728
Figure 23. Average and range of soft costs per
linear foot of constructed guideway.
