Sustainable Highway Construction Guidebook (2019)

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5 Sustainability is a modern word for an ancient concept that expresses the human desire to achieve health and happiness within the context of a healthy planet over the long term. While the idea is quite old, the use of the word sustainability to describe it has become more common in the last 30 years. Within the transportation sector, there is substantial guidance on sustain- ability at the public agency organizational level. This guidance generally addresses the necessary organization and/or metrics to measure, manage, and improve an agency’s contribution to sustainability. Other guidance exists for private corporations, generally focusing on corporate social responsibility, or the business case for sustainability. At the project level, sustainabil- ity guidance tends to come in the form of general policy or sustainability rating systems that can assess and document individual project efforts. While some sustainability guidance exists for construction as a general practice, there is little for the specific sub-category of highway construction. This guidebook defines highway construction sustainability and provides guid- ance on how to meaningfully incorporate it into highway projects. It is meant to be used by practitioners as an aid in communicating, implementing, and evaluating sustainable highway construction. 1.1 Audience and Purpose This guidebook is intended for the highway construction industry: the practitioners who work for and with owner agencies, construction contractors, designers, and related professions. It is intended to assist in: • Communicating sustainability in highway construction, • Selecting appropriate sustainable construction practices given project context, • Using sustainability as a criterion to evaluate highway construction practices, and • Specifying sustainability in procurement and contracts. To achieve this purpose, the guidebook is written according to two guiding principles: 1. Provide concise and useful information to practitioners. This guidebook is written to be used by an industry that is short on time and wants information, not essays. Writing is concise and direct; information is intended to be useful in practice; and underlying theories, philoso- phies, and supporting data are left to other publications (referenced where appropriate). 2. Provide ideas, but do not tell the industry how to construct highways. This guidebook is an idea book meant to assist the industry in doing sustainable highway construction. It is not an instructional textbook; highway construction is best understood by the industry that does it every day for a living. Advice and sustainable construction practices (SCPs) described in this guidebook result from a research effort designed to collect industry knowledge of sustainable practices, and to communicate this knowledge to the reader. C H A P T E R 1 Introduction

6 Sustainable Highway Construction Guidebook 1.2 Scope 1.2.1 Sustainability Within This Guidebook This guidebook addresses sustainable highway construction practices that can be implemented now, meaning those practices that (1) influence how the construction process is delivered, pro- cured, and specified, or (2) are directly carried out during the construction process, and (3) can be readily implemented with today’s knowledge and technology. Other practices that may be necessary for construction (such as planning, design, permitting, funding), that happen when construction is complete (such as operations and maintenance), or that are not currently feasible (such as future technology), are not addressed in this guidebook. The focus of this guidebook is at the project level including project delivery and project-specific practices. Organizational- level strategies, policies, and management principles, which are useful and often necessary pre- requisites for enabling the SCPs in this guidebook, are addressed by other resources. 1.2.2 Sustainability Beyond This Guidebook The scope of this guidebook is strictly limited to highway construction. As such, it does not address other important sustainability topics including organizational commitment. Even so, this guidebook assumes an organizational commitment to sustainability; without it, individual sustainability actions at the project delivery and project level suggested in this guidebook are not likely to be successful or endure from one project to the next. However, organizations without such a commitment to sustainability may still find this guidebook useful in developing sustain- ability ideas and arguments for adopting such commitments. There are many resources that address sustainability beyond highway construction for both public and private organizations. This section lists some key resources that relate to the trans- portation industry. Public agency organizational level: • Zietsman, J., T. Ramani, J. Potter, et al. 2011. NCHRP Report 708: A Guidebook for Sustain- ability Performance Measurement for Transportation Agencies. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. • Booz Allen Hamilton. 2014. NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Vol- ume 4: Sustainability as an Organizing Principle for Transportation Agencies. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. • ICF International. 2011. Guide to Sustainable Transportation Performance Measures. EPA 231- K-10-004. EPA, Washington, D.C. Private company sustainability reporting: • Global Sustainability Standards Board. 2018. Consolidated Set of GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards 2018. Global Reporting Initiative. Amsterdam, Netherlands. • Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. 2017. Sustainability Accounting Standards: Infrastructure Sector (proposed changes to provisional standards, exposure drafts, redline of standards for public comment). San Francisco, California. Major U.S. sustainability rating systems appropriate for highways: • FHWA. 2012. INVEST version 1.3. Washington, D.C. • Greenroads International. 2017. Greenroads Rating System v2. Redmond, Washington. • Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure. 2018. Envision, 3rd Edition. Washington, D.C. Many of these publications address construction in some manner. However, they are gener- ally focused on more holistic interpretations of transportation or roadway sustainability that may include planning, design, operations, maintenance, and more.

Introduction 7 1.3 Organization This guidebook is organized into two parts—Part 1: Sustainable Highway Construction Guidance and Part 2: Sustainable Highway Construction Practices. Part 1: Sustainable Highway Construction Guidance has the following chapters: • Chapter 1: Introduction outlines the purpose, scope, organization, and use of this guidebook, • Chapter 2: Background offers a practical definition of what sustainability means for this guidebook and other information about sustainability, • Chapter 3: Sustainable Highway Construction Practices is a summary of sustainable highway construction practices organized by highway construction categories, • Chapter 4: Sustainability as Criteria to Evaluate Highway Construction Practices outlines a short procedure for evaluating proposed construction practices for sustainability, • Chapter 5: Procuring Sustainability provides guidance on how to procure sustainable highway construction practices, • Chapter 6: Contracting Sustainability offers suggestions on how to implement the recom- mendations in this guidebook as part of organizational change, • References, and • Glossary. Part 2: Sustainable Highway Construction Practices has the following chapters: • Chapter 7: Construction and Sustainability Framework shows how construction and sus- tainability relate to each other, • Chapter 8: How to Read Chapter 9 provides guidance on how to read the 77 SCPs identified in this guidebook, and • Chapter 9: Sustainable Construction Practices provides a complete listing of the 77 SCPs grouped under 26 construction categories. Chapter 3 contains the summary; this chapter provides the full discussion. 1.4 How to Use the Guidebook This guidebook defines sustainability as it relates to highway construction and is intended to provide a common language and approach to integrate sustainability into highway con- struction processes. Guidance comes from the experience of others in the industry as gathered through the work described in Section 1.5. This guidebook can be used to: • Define a common meaning for sustainability when included in construction procurement and contracting. The provided practical definition (Section 2.1.1) removes ambiguity and better defines sustainability as practices that are desired and are possible now but are above- and-beyond standard practice or regulation. • Describe sustainability goals and objectives more precisely in project procurement and contracting. Sustainability is a broad term; the included sustainability framework (Sec- tion 3.1.2) provides precision and common language that can be used directly in project procurement and contracting documents. • Identify what construction categories and practices best address what sustainability com- ponents. If a project identifies sustainability objectives, Chapter 3 and Table 3 can be used to identify which construction categories and specific SCPs address these priorities. In this way, owners may specify sustainability priorities and contractors can identify SCPs that address those priorities. • Provide a source of SCP ideas. Chapter 3 lists 77 SCPs and, along with Chapter 9, is intended to provide a general understanding of each SCP plus several key resources to consult for a more in-depth treatment of that SCP. It is expected that users may use the exact SCPs pro- vided, modify or alter them to fit their context, or use them as inspiration for different SCPs

8 Sustainable Highway Construction Guidebook not included in this guidebook. In some cases, Chapter 3 and Chapter 9 can be used to identify practices already used that may not have been thought of as SCPs, but actually are and can be communicated as such. In sum, Chapter 3 and Chapter 9 should stimulate ideas rather than serve as a comprehensive guide. • Evaluate any construction practice for sustainability. Chapter 4 describes a straightforward process to evaluate any construction practice for sustainability. This can be used by an owner wishing to evaluate a contractor-proposed construction practice to see if it merits inclusion as an SCP for a project. Conversely, it can be used by a contractor seeking to define the sustain- ability impacts of a particular construction practice it is proposing. • Aid in procuring and contracting sustainability. Chapter 5 provides guidance on how sustainability can be procured and contracted based on examples and experience from the industry. It provides guidance on a simple sustainability management plan that can be used to track, measure, and manage a project’s sustainability efforts. Sustainability can be implemented in a one-off project-by-project approach or in an organization-wide programmatic approach. Each has its advantages: the one-off approach is often easier to start as there are fewer organizational roadblocks and less bureaucracy to navigate. In contrast, the programmatic approach can impact more infrastructure, and can offer economies of scale and more readily influence standard practice. Both approaches require orga- nizational change, and the execution of that change is likely the determining factor of success or failure. 1.5 Origins of the Guidebook This guidebook is the principal product of NCHRP Project 10-91A, Sustainable Highway Construction, which includes the following research: • Literature review. Review of 196 published sources that defined sustainability, developed an organizing framework, and identified 64 SCPs. • Industry survey. Online survey of industry that received 367 responses and identified indus- try trends and 57 SCPs. Some interview candidates were selected based on their responses to this survey. • Industry interviews. Personal interviews with 26 industry experts with a variety of back- grounds that identified 32 SCPs and expanded upon responses in the survey. • Workshop. Day-long in-person workshop with 28 attendees who reviewed the SCP list, discussed the construction and sustainability frameworks, and provided preliminary ideas for this guidebook. This guidebook contains the results of this work, but not all the details. Research methods and details can be found in NCHRP Web-Only Document 262: Sustainable Highway Construction.