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Conclusion 55
· Projects procured with alternative delivery methods such as designbuild appear to have incurred
less soft costs.
· The health of the national economy and the level of construction activity can affect the relation-
ships between soft and hard costs.
· Longer project planning phases, unusual political influence, and a sponsor agency's capital-
ization policies may increase soft cost requirements.
· In the end, cost relationships based in historical evidence cannot explain 100% of the variability
in soft costs. Therefore, soft cost estimation must blend the art of human judgment with the
science of cost relationships.
5.4. Future Research Directions
More in-depth research into the documentation of one or several recent construction proj-
ects will enhance the understanding of soft cost drivers. Moreover, a comprehensive industry
outreach will provide further insight on context-specific soft cost estimation practices. Finally,
the methodology to estimate soft costs for public transportation infrastructure projects devel-
oped here is based on past heavy and light rail construction projects and is therefore not entirely
applicable to other prevalent public transportation capital infrastructure projects such as BRT,
commuter rail, streetcar, or other state-of-good-repair projects to repair or replace aging infra-
structure. Additional data and research would help estimate soft costs for these kinds of projects.
