National Academies Press: OpenBook

Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements (2013)

Chapter: Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools

« Previous: Chapter Three - Factors That Influence Construction Staffing Requirements for Projects
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Four - Construction Staffing Forecasting Tools ." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22514.
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Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

18 1100 Bituminous Concrete Pavement → Section Engineer Responsibilities → Assigning Personnel to Paving Operations The section engineer (SE) assigns as a minimum the following personnel to each paving operation: ▫ One Paving Inspector ▫ One Ticket Taker (when available) The contractor’s operations may require two or more paving inspectors. One inspector stays with each paving operation and additional inspectors may be necessary to aid in overseeing the operation. It may also be necessary to add additional ticket takers on projects where significant tonnage is laid each day. This is a clearly stated minimum staffing requirement for bituminous concrete paving operations. However, no such clear requirements were found for other types of work in that construction guidance manual. Most staffing requirement information needed to be extracted from the context as dem- onstrated by the following example. 1300 Structure → Concrete → Investigating Low-Strength Concrete: The district materials engineer (DME) shall automatically inves- tigate any in-place concrete that is represented by a low-strength cylinder report. From the previous statement readers can learn that a dis- trict materials engineer may be involved in the construction of concrete structures. Table 11 is a summary of staffing requirements that are mentioned in similar manners in the manual. By summarizing the staffing requirements for each type of work in a matrix, one can acquire a general idea of the idealized staffing level of a highway construction proj- ect in Kentucky. These staffing levels do not indicate the number of construction staff on the project everyday, rather the staff involved for various activities. Discussions with Kentucky Transportation Cabinet personnel revealed that the guidelines are not commonly used for planning or staffing purposes. In response to the survey’s request for staffing metric information, West Virginia provided the following metric for “typical personnel requirements for normal daily operations of a project” (Figure 14). These types of staffing metrics may be useful for planning construction staff resource needs as they provide a founda- tion for the estimate of construction staffing requirements for projects. This chapter describes the construction staffing forecasting tools identified during the course of the project. This infor- mation was collected through the survey, interviews with non-STA transportation agencies, and workshops at the 91st Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board in January 2012. USE OF FORECASTING TOOLS AND STAFFING METRICS WITHIN STATE TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES To examine the use of construction staff forecasting tools across STAs data were collected through the survey on con- struction forecasting tools in use at STAs and specified staff- ing metrics at different state agencies. When asked if their agency had a method for forecasting construction staffing requirements, six of the 38 respondents (15.8%) (Michi- gan, North Carolina, North Dakota, Utah, California, and Virginia) indicated their agency did have a tool for forecast- ing construction staffing needs. In addition, information was received by e-mail on construction staff forecasting methods in use in Texas. The systems reported in use at these states are described in more detail in the following sections. Survey respondents were also asked if their agencies had construction staffing metrics for their projects. A staffing metric describes the number and type of personnel needed for a given type of work. The responses are summarized in Table 10, with most STAs having no formal staffing metrics. STAFFING METRICS AT STATE TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES In addition to the information collected through the sur- vey, 33 state highway construction manuals or standard specifications that were available online were also studied to determine how many states provided staffing metrics for their projects. Most manuals included information on the basic personnel organization of the STA, but did not provide detailed information on the number of personnel required for a given project or type of work. Of the available manuals, only Kentucky and Nevada provided what could be consid- ered a staffing metric. The example here is taken from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Construction Guidance Manual (Kentucky Transportation Cabinet 2009): chapter four CONSTRUCTION STAFFING FORECASTING TOOLS

19 • Senior Construction Technician • Construction Technician • Office Technician The user enters the projects that are scheduled to be ongo- ing during that month as shown in Figure 15. For each proj- ect the user enters the estimated monthly man hours by staff type required for each project (Figure 16). This information is then used by the system to calculate the available con- struction staff compared with the required construction staff for the TSC for an entire year. To balance staff requirements versus availability, users have the option to include the use of temporary positions and overtime in the calculations. An example of the output of the system is shown in Figure 17. Conversations with MIDOT revealed that the system was developed within the last 10 years “due to funding concerns based on [MIDOT’s] ability to match federal funds.” The CONSTRUCTION STAFF FORECASTING AT MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION The construction staff forecasting system used at the Michi- gan Department of Transportation (MIDOT) calculated estimated man hour requirements for individual projects to estimate the manpower requirements for an entire division. The system operates in Microsoft Excel® with cells defined for user inputs and other protected cells that calculate total staffing needs. Each Transportation Service Center (TSC, similar to a district office in other DOTs) estimates monthly construction staff manpower requirements for each project in their entire project portfolio based on the following staff- ing titles: • TSC Construction Engineer • Assistant Construction Engineering • Staffing Engineer Response Construction Administration Construction Engineering Construction Inspection Count % Count % Count % Yes 7 19.4 5 13.9 8 22.9 No 29 80.6 31 86.1 27 77.1 TABLE 10 STAs WITH CONSTRUCTION STAFFING METRICS Section No. Section Scope Minimum Total Number of Personnel Involved Central Office— Division of Construction District Office— Project Delivery & Preservation Section Engineer (SE) Operator District Materials Engineer (DME) Project Inspectors Ticket Taker Superpave Mix Design Technolo- gist (SMDT) Superpave Plant Technologist (SPT) 200 Preconstruction Requirements 3 1 1 1 300 Contract Administration 3 1 1 1 400 Post- Construction Requirements 3 1 1 1 600 Construction Surveying 1 1 700 Environmental Protection & Landscaping 1 1 800 Nuclear Density— Moisture Meters 4 1 1 1 1 900 Grade & Drain Construction 2 1 1 1000 Subgrade & Base Construction 4 1 3 1100 Bituminous Concrete Pavement 6 1 1 1 1 1 1 1200 Jointed Plain Concrete Pavement 3 1 1 1300 Structure 5 1 1 1 1 TABLE 11 STAFFING REQUIREMENTS FOR A KENTUCKY TRANSPORTATION CABINET PROJECT

20 Based on this information, the user can identify the recom- mended number of personnel for each project. For exam- ple, for a $1.5 million interstate project with an estimated duration of 9 months the recommended staffing level is two inspectors and half of a survey crew’s time. The form only provides recommended staffing guidelines and does not per- form any calculations for the user. To forecast staffing needs for an entire district or DOT the table shown in Figure 18 would be implemented to estimate staffing requirements for each type of project and then aggregate the personnel across the project portfolio. CONSTRUCTION STAFF FORECASTING AT NORTH DAKOTA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION The North Dakota Department of Transportation estimates construction staffing needs according to the Construction Manpower Planning Staff Standards, which was provided to the study team through the survey by the agency. The stan- dard is provided in Appendix C. FIGURE 14 Project staffing matrix for a West Virginia DOT project. Note: A dash means the type of personnel is not applicable to the project type. original intent of the system was to balance technicians between TSCs. The system has been shared across all TSCs, with most adopting the program. The forecasts for staffing needs are updated annually and the user indicated that the system had not been formally validated, but the tool has improved their planning processes. CONSTRUCTION STAFF FORECASTING AT NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION Construction staff forecasting at the North Carolina DOT is based on staffing requirements for six generic project types (bridges, interstate, rural, urban, rest area, and safety). The forecasting tool is shown in Figure 18. The tool focuses on estimating the number of construc- tion inspectors and survey parties needed for a given type of project. Within the bridge, interstate, rural, and urban generic project types staff requirements are further differentiated based on contract amount and estimated project duration.

21 FIGURE 15 Michigan DOT ongoing projects for a single month. The stated purpose of the standard is: • “To provide guidelines for determining the number of engineers and technicians required to adequately staff construction projects. • To maximize personnel use. • To provide a resource for evaluating staffing patterns. • To provide estimates of numbers and classifications of employees required to meet future staffing needs. • To provide personnel projections for budgeting purposes. • To provide an estimate of numbers and types of vehi- cles needed for construction.” To use the system to estimate staffing requirements for a project the user must estimate the number and type of people needed for a particular type of project and the construction duration of the project. The system uses a set of 15 construc- tion staffing standards that provide recommended staffing levels for different types of projects. Figure 19 shows the standard for a grading and aggregate surfacing project. The standard also provides a tool for estimating the proj- ect duration based on the length of the project (Figure 20). For each type of improvement shown in Figure 20, a staffing standard (similar to the one shown in Figure 19) is provided in the manual.

22 FIGURE 16 Michigan DOT estimated staffing requirements by type for a single month per project. FIGURE 17 Output of Michigan DOT construction forecasting tool.

23 FIGURE 18 Construction staff forecasting data from North Carolina DOT.

24 FIGURE 19 Example staffing standard for North Dakota DOT project. FIGURE 20 Table to estimate project duration from North Dakota DOT.

25 in the New Economy held during the 91st Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board in 2012 (Lehman 2012). Staffing needs for future projects are estimated using a regression model developed by means of a step-wise regres- sion analysis of historic project staffing needs. The primary input variables for the model are project cost and project type. The model has a number of underlying assumptions listed here: • One inspector can handle $250,000/month. • Seal coat inspectors can handle $850,000/month and project will be completed the next season after letting (start—May, complete—end of August). • One inspector can handle up to a $5 million bridge proj- ect; above this amount two inspectors are required. • Overlay projects that produce up to $1,500,000 monthly estimates. One inspector can handle up to $1,500,000/ month in overlay work. • Sharing of work duties will take place. Number of inspectors is average required over life of project. Inspectors from other projects will assist during peak periods on individual projects. • One manager is required for 14 employees. For this calculation, a manager is defined as AE, AAE, project engineer, project manager, etc. • Support staff includes record keepers, AO lab staff, dis- trict lab staff, district construction, etc. • One inspector can handle ten local-let projects. • Inspector needs for Comprehensive Development Agreement and Pass-Through Financing projects will require district decision dependent on type of project and nature of the agreement/contract. • Inflation will increase by 5% annually and will reduce effective inspector needs by that rate. • FTE staffing needs increased by 10% as follows: 5% in- efficiency for vacation, sick leave, etc.; 5% contingency for increased letting, project delays, added work, etc. The system also includes allowance for seasonal variability by geographic location of work and therefore staffing needs. The system is still under development and is currently being tested on a limited basis by TxDOT personnel. An example of the output of the system showing the estimated construction staff required for all TxDOT projects is shown in Figure 22. The final Center for Transportation Research report on the system is expected to be published at the com- pletion of the project, currently scheduled for Fall 2013. CONSTRUCTION STAFF FORECASTING AT CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION Information was received on construction staff forecast- ing practices at Caltrans. The system used at Caltrans was described in an e-mail communication with the Central In addition to providing a description for the methodol- ogy, the standard also specifies when the forecast is to be performed and by whom [district engineer]: Before February 15 of each year, the districts will furnish the Construction Services Engineer with a district staffing plan. The plan will be reviewed, revised if necessary, and adopted by March 1. These plans will provide staffing guidelines for the construction season and will become part of the Construction Services Staffing Plan. CONSTRUCTION STAFF FORECASTING AT UTAH DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION The construction staff forecasting tool used by the Utah DOT (UDOT) differs considerably from the previously discussed tools. The system is contained within a macro enable Micro- soft Excel® template. A screenshot of part of the template is shown as Figure 21. The system aggregates the billable hours for both techni- cians and engineers by pay period based on estimated infor- mation imported into the system from UDOT’s Electronic Program Management System (ePM). ePM is the system UDOT uses to track the planning, funding, scheduling, and staffing of their design projects. Information from this sys- tem contains the estimates of staffing needs for each proj- ect that is imported into the Excel template. The template is extremely detailed and includes the names of specific engi- neers and technicians, their billable rate, and their project assignments. The sheet also contains information about spe- cific projects, including the current location of the project in the development process. Once staff is assigned the proj- ect the total billable hours for each person can be tabulated across the project and the project portfolio. CONSTRUCTION STAFF FORECASTING AT VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION The Virginia DOT (VDOT) has developed construction staff forecasts periodically in the past for specific time periods. Each district calculates the number of construction personnel required based on the projects funded in each fiscal year by type, location, duration, and dollar value of the project. CONSTRUCTION STAFF FORECASTING AT TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION Although a response to the online survey was not received from the Texas DOT (TxDOT), the study team was able to collect information on a construction staffing forecasting tool currently being developed by the agency with assistance from the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas–Austin. Information on the system was obtained from the workshop FHW12-012 Coming Out of the Reces- sion: Changes in Transportation Infrastructure Construction

FIGURE 21 Control panel for Utah DOT construction staffing forecasting tool.

27 FIGURE 22 Texas DOT construction staffing analysis (horizontal lines represent average number of staff needed) (Draft). Region Construction Chief (M. Der Matoian, personal com- munication, July 6, 2012) as follows: The California Department of Transportation uses a bottoms- up method for estimating support needs for most of its capital improvement projects. Preventative maintenance projects like chip seals and small signal projects do not, nor do general small projects under $1,000,000. It should be noted that as these smaller projects many times require a high support budget as a percentage of the capital cost, which is difficult to explain without a detailed breakdown, expanding the workplan method to these smaller projects could have significant benefits. For all major projects and some significant small projects, a workplan is developed early in the life of the project. The workplan contains a series of linked activities, with man hour resource needs and duration estimates for each. When develop- ing the cost, scope and schedule, and writing the programming document, each division generates its estimated support needs. There is no one proscribed method for doing so. The Construc- tion Division in the Central Region of California (a Cooperative of capital functions for Districts 5, 6, 9 and 10) uses a method that is similar to the other districts and regions in the state. A centralized support squad starts the process by taking the basic job information, location, length, description of work to be performed, and capital cost estimate, and then generates a straw man type estimate. It estimates the type of personnel needed, Resident Engineer, Construction Manager, Inspector, etc., and gives an estimated number that will be needed over the life of the project for each, sometimes using fractions of a person for smaller jobs. Factors for weather day disruptions are also applied, as well as any anticipated logistic factors for remote location projects. These initial estimates are made with our his- torical usages in mind, but are not solely based on our historical project spending data. This base workplan is then sent to the Resident Engineer (RE) and Construction Manager that will most likely be assigned to the project when it goes to construction. They review the esti- mate and suggest changes based on their experience with similar projects, the anticipated breakdown and experience level of their staff, any area specific conditions, as well as potential economies of scale due to their overall workload from other projects. When completed, this workplan is sent to the project manager (PM). They review and if necessary meet with the Construction team to negotiate the final workplan details for the Construction Division. When the workplan is agreed to, the PM enters the details into a proprietary program known as XPM. XPM lists all scheduled projects and can generate estimated resource needs for a project, series of projects or program in a specified geo- graphic area, or for an individual RE or PM. Each district has its series of projects at all stages of develop- ment entered into XPM, and can use the system to analyze and break down resource needs now and in the future for all divi- sions. As with any system, the projections are only as good as the assumptions they are based on. As each project is developed, after its initial scoping, more information about the details of the project is generated, and therefore a more refined estimate of the resources needed in Construction can be made. At least once a year, and at important programmatic milestones during the year, the Construction Division reviews its upcoming projects, and requests any updates to the estimates it feels are necessary

28 portation Authority (LA Metro) uses a budgeting process for staffing that is based on experience acquired on similar types of projects. The team was provided with the following budget information for the Metro Orange Line Bus Rapid Transit Project: Percentage of Total Bid Cost (including indirects and profit): • Construction Management Support (consultants) = 2.3% • Project Management Assistance (consultant) = 1.0% • Specialty consultants = 1.0% • *Legal services = 1.3% • Total Agency Cost = 14.5% inclusive of Construction Management Staff • *3rd party = 7.7% • *Contractor controlled insurance = 3.6% • Contractor controlled QA/QC = 3.2% *Services that may be classified elsewhere, but could fall under Construction Management Services guidelines. On light rail transit projects completed in the 1990s, the cost of Construction Management Services was as high as 20% of construction costs. This budget information is converted to personnel require- ments based on the specific needs of the project. The number of personnel and hours worked by each is adjusted during the project to reflect needs and budget requirements. San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Members of the team visited with the Construction Manager for Transportation Planning and Development for the Central Subway Project in San Francisco. The agency’s approach is similar to that employed by LA Metro. Budgets are estab- lished for agency construction staffing requirements and the specific personnel requirements are determined by project needs and budgetary guidelines. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District Meetings were held with the Group Manager for Civil Engi- neering and Construction, Principal Engineer for the Auto- matic Fare Collection Capital Program, Project Manager for the Warm Springs Extension, and Project Director for the Silicon Valley Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) expan- sion. During this visit the team reviewed several projects with BART representatives. These projects ranged in value from $300 million to $2.5 billion. Because of the size of the projects, extensive use is made of outside consultants for construction staffing. For example, on the Oakland Air- port Connector project, there are 17 full-time construction management services personnel, but only two of these are BART employees. Staffing plans are developed individu- ally for each project based on the project schedule, budget, and characteristics. based on the new and more detailed descriptions of the projects and their various construction features. As each new fiscal year approaches, a new allocation is made by combining the resource needs generated by the XPM system, and the estimates of non- workplanned projects and other non-project direct needs (train- ing, safety programs etc.). One important omission in the system is the estimation of the number of vehicles and types of equipment needed, and other cost information necessary to properly anticipate support spending on the project. As a result, there are times when the equipment needed is not available or is in the wrong locations, resulting in inefficient use of the personnel resources. At any point in time, you can get a project direct workload estimate for Construction for the next several years. Using aver- age percentages for the non-project direct resource needs, you can estimate your total Personnel Equivalents for any given future year. It must be noted that the group of projects shown in XPM to be worked on in any given year are subject to change as funding levels for future years become more accurate, and as the development of the projects proceeds, and the final delivery date to construction becomes more predictable. CONSTRUCTION STAFF FORECASTING AT NON-STATE TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES Although the response to the survey by non-STA transpor- tation entities was low, the study team was able to collect information on construction staff forecasting practices at some of these agencies through site visits by some members of the study team to the organizations in January 2012. The organizations visited included the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), the Los Angeles Country Metro- politan Transportation Authority, the San Francisco Munici- pal Transportation Agency, and the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District. San Diego Association of Governments Members of the study team met with the Principal Trans- portation Engineer and Principal Construction Engineer for SANDAG. The agency does not utilize a model or formula to determine project staffing. A resident engineer is appointed to a project. This individual, based on an analysis of the project characteristics and anticipated construction methods, estimates the project’s staffing requirements. This analysis includes an assessment of issues such as: Does the project have unique storm water impacts or implications? Is there a potential for archeological issues? Will the project have significant noise impacts that must be addressed and moni- tored? Is the project in a politically sensitive area? The resi- dent engineer then determines the nature and number of staff required for the project. Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Team members met with the project manager for a large construction project, the director for program management, and the Principal Technical Estimator for Program Manage- ment Oversight. Los Angeles County Metropolitan Trans-

29 line Crew Scheduling System (TPACS) (Graves et al. 1993). It divides flight segments into disjoint sets of pairings where no two pairings have the same flight segment. The program takes two to three pairings at a time and rearranges the flight segments in the pairing to find the one arrangement with min- imum cost. The iterative process goes on when all combina- tions have been tried and a satisfying solution is found. This was the method that United Airlines used until the 1990s. American Airlines and the former Continental Airlines use a system called Trip Reevaluation and Improvement Pro- gram (TRIP) (Graves et al. 1993). Schedulers build an initial feasible solution manually or using an interactive computer system. TRIP then randomly selects a set of pairings from the current best solution and optimizes the pairings as illustrated in Figure 23. The two methods use a local optimal strat- egy that breaks the large scheduling problem into smaller sub-problems. Although it may be helpful for STAs to study how airlines schedule their crews, we must notice that there are big dif- ferences between scheduling flight crews and assigning con- struction personnel to transportation projects. For example, a flight crew cannot be working on flights that overlap in time; however, a project inspector can work on multiple con- current projects. The flight crews are assembled teams, each being competent of performing any flight segments in the scheduling problem so that the prime concern of flight crew scheduling is to minimize overlay time to reduce cost, while construction personnel are not always teamed and staff mem- bers’ competency may vary. Nonetheless, the methods being STAFFING AT MAJOR U.S. COMMERCIAL AIRLINES One STA survey respondent suggested that the highway construction industry could learn lessons on construction forecasting from staff forecasting programs used by U.S. commercial airlines. Major U.S. airlines face complex scheduling problems on a daily basis. United Airlines oper- ates over 5,000 daily departures to nearly 800 destination cities around the world. Poorly constructed crew schedules result in high crew cost for airline companies. In the 1980s, large U.S. airlines each paid several million dollars each month for hotel rooms (Gershkoff 1989). The initial settings of a flight crew scheduling problem include a set of flight segments to be covered exactly once; a set of destinations, each having its assigned manpower; and restraints such as crew’s maximum monthly work time. The problem involves pairing up flight segments into round-trip itineraries over several days and assigning these pairings to available crews. Optimization means finding a set of pair- ings that covers all of the flight segments with minimum cost (Graves et al. 1993). The flight crew scheduling problem is to some extent simi- lar to the problem of staffing highway construction projects, with flight segments representing projects and crews repre- senting teams of engineers. Therefore, studying the method of how airlines solve their scheduling problems could provide insight into solving construction project staffing problems. In the 1970s, IBM developed a program called Trip Pairing Air- FIGURE 23 The block diagram of the optimization process used by TRIP (Gershkoff 1989).

30 mended staffing levels based on a project type (North Dakota and North Carolina), some used historical data to develop regression analyses to estimate staffing needs (Texas), whereas others used a historic percentage estimate of staffing costs based on total project costs that could then be converted into staffing estimates. Of the non-STA agencies visited, SANDAG (San Diego Association of Governments) is most like many transporta- tion agencies in that an ad hoc approach is used to determine construction staffing requirements. Los Angeles Metro, San Francisco MTA, and BART are very similar. Limited in-house staff is utilized and the great majority of construction manage- ment oversight services are provided by external consultants. This allows the agencies to maintain minimal employment levels that are supplemented by consultants as needed. used by major airlines for scheduling flight crews provide valuable insights into our problem of interest. CHAPTER SUMMARY Relatively few STAs reported having a formal system for estimating construction staffing requirements for future proj- ects. The formal construction staff forecasting systems in use at the responding STAs represent a diverse set of approaches. Systems in North Dakota and North Carolina are relatively simple systems that rely on using recommended staffing levels for different generic project types. Systems in use in Michigan, Utah, and Texas are more complex and make extensive use of project data available through the STAs’ electronic project databases. The approaches also varied in terms of how staff needs were estimated; some used recom-

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TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 450: Forecasting Highway Construction Staffing Requirements gathers information on the methods being used at highway transportation agencies to forecast staffing requirements.

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