Sustainable Highway Construction (2019)

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84 4 SURVEY An online industry survey returned 367 respondents (TABLE 15) and identified 57 SCPs (see Section 8 for the list). The goals of this survey were to (1) generate leads for potential inclusion in the interview process and/or workshop, (2) identify SCPs, and (3) capture information on perceptions of sustainability within the highway construction industry. TABLE 15. Survey Descriptive Data Descriptor Data Total Responses (total number of surveys taken, complete or not) 367 Completed surveys (number of surveys completely filled out) 141 Partial completions (number of surveys that were not completely filled out but still used in the analysis of survey results) 226 Availability (when the survey is available to be taken) 3/9 – 7/20/17 Average response rate per day 5.94/day Agreed to be contacted for interviews and workshop participation 124 (34%) Mean and Median time to complete survey (367 respondents) 23 min / 5 min Best estimate of time to take entire survey 8-10 minutes 4.1 SURVEY METHOD The survey was administered using an online application. Appendix A contains the survey text. The survey is designed to collect from each participant (1) basic demographics, (2) general views on sustainability, and (3) SCPs with which they are familiar. Key aspects of survey design were:  Take less than 10 minutes to complete.  Ask about participants’ sustainability definition before revealing the project sustainability definition.  Use categorical prompts to get participants to think broadly about what might qualify as a SCP. 4.2 SURVEY RESPONSE SUMMARY 4.2.1 Respondents’ Organizational Roles Respondents could select more than one category. There was a good mix of survey respondents by industry role (FIGURE 18). The other category contains those in government, academia, research, other consulting, technology/software, and other aspects of engineering. As expected, construction firms were hard to reach. Of note, about 90% of the public owner responses were from state DOTs.

85 FIGURE 18. Respondents’ organization’s role in the engineering/construction industry. 4.2.2 Respondent Organizational Size For those organizations that have annual revenue (i.e., not public owners), all sizes (as defined by the U.S. Small Business Administration) are represented (FIGURE 19 and FIGURE 20). As expected, the mid-sized definition ($36.5 million - $1 billion for contractors/materials suppliers and $15 million - $1 billion for designers/consultants) described most respondent organizations.

86 FIGURE 19. Organization revenue for construction firms/materials supplier respondents. FIGURE 20. Organization revenue for designer firms and other consultants. 4.2.3 Respondent Job Categories There was a good mix of respondent job categories (as defined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) with the exception of technicians (FIGURE 21). There were also 64 responses identified as official/executive, which was higher than expected.

87 FIGURE 21. Respondent job categories. 4.2.4 Geographic Diversity Respondent organizations represented each of the U.S. DOT regions represented in FIGURE 22 as well as 22.9% doing work internationally (FIGURE 23). Each U.S. DOT region and international are represented by at least 50 responses. Many organizations do work in multiple regions. FIGURE 22. U.S. DOT regions (stars are Federal Transit Administration Regional office locations, but not relevant to the intent of showing the map). superintendent)

88 FIGURE 23. Areas where respondents’ organization do work. 4.2.5 Project Delivery Systems Involvement Respondents were involved with a broad range of project delivery systems (FIGURE 24). As expected, design-bid-build was most popular followed by design-build.

89 FIGURE 24. Respondent project delivery system use. TABLE 16 indicates various other project delivery methods mentioned by the participants apart from the options mentioned above.

90 TABLE 16. Other Project Delivery Systems Indicated by Respondents Count Project Delivery System 2 Research 1 Bid-Build Contract 1 Construction Manager/General Contractor 1 Consulting Engineer 1 Contracted R&D, services provided 1 Design Evaluation, Public Participation, Environmental Impact 1 Design, specifications, training 1 I do not have experience with project delivery systems 1 IDIQ, D-B-B Best Value 1 Job Order Contracting (ID/IQ) 1 Laboratory 1 Local Assistance 1 Low bid 1 Material supplier of various delivery systems 1 Perhaps same as Public Private Partnership, which was not defined. Most common type with state DOTs where owner designs project, contractors build the project 1 Project promotion and technical support 1 Research - no design or construction 1 Research Report 1 Research and Design Services 4.3 VIEWS ON SUSTAINABILITY Respondents were asked some basic questions on their sustainability views including their definition, how they think their organization values sustainability, and two level-of-importance questions. 4.3.1 Sustainability Definition We asked participants to define sustainability in their own words. We received 182 responses. Of note:  38 specifically mentioned some form of human wellbeing.  85 specifically mentioned some form of environmental wellbeing.  55 specifically mentioned some form of economic wellbeing.  Many responses implied some combination of human/environmental/economic wellbeing but did not specifically mention them. For example, a Brundtland Commission definition does this.  22 presented a version of the standard Brundtland Commission sustainable development definition (“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”)  5 specifically mentioned “triple bottom line” in reference to the three common components of sustainability (human, environment, economic).

91  26 responses specifically mentioned reducing consumption in some way. Many others implied reduced consumption as being part of sustainability.  57 responses directly referred to durability and endurance concepts (long life, lasts a long time, etc.). This seems to be a strong sentiment among the respondents. Several specifically stated durability/long-life issues with minimal maintenance were more important that more popular definitions of sustainability that typically lean towards environmental stewardship.  5 responses defined sustainability to refer to the sustainability of infrastructure assets specifically. For example, their durability (the ability to maintain them in good condition) and their ability to serve their intended purpose.  When responses discussed impacts of highway projects (to humans, environment, economy) they almost unanimously discussed reducing negative impacts. This may be a product of our current technological abilities, but few mentioned highway projects being able to improve much. 4.3.2 Sustainability as a Core Value of Organization/Company Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement with the statement, “Sustainability is a core value of my organization/company.” (FIGURE 25). A majority agreed, with very few selecting “disgaree” or “disagree strongly”.

92 FIGURE 25. Respondents’ level of agreement with the statement “Sustainability is a core value of my organization/company.” 4.3.3 Motivations for Sustainability Respondents were asked to rank order five motivations for sustainability (FIGURE 26). “Optimization of life-cycle cost of highway infrastructure” emerged as the clear top rank, and “reduction of waste at all levels of organization in highway construction projects” was the clear lowest rank, while other motivations were quite close together in the middle.

93 FIGURE 26. Overall rank order of five different motivations for sustainability. 4.3.4 Negative Impacts from Construction Activities Respondents were asked to rank order five negative impacts from construction activities as identified in a previous study (FIGURE 27). The top three items were ranked very close on aggregate (impact to human health, air pollution, water quality degradation), while the remaining two (impact on biodiversity, impact on human comfort) were ranked substantially lower. FIGURE 27. Overall rank order of five different negative impacts from construction activities. 4.3.5 Sustainable Practices Participants were asked to identify sustainable practices in different construction topics. These topics were listed and grouped together to prompt respondents to consider all of these areas, some of which are not traditionally considered to address sustainability. In all, we received 340

94 meaningful responses (Appendix A) that are summarized in TABLE 17. In some cases, a single response was classified in more than one category. Observations based on SCP question responses (Appendix A) are:  The range and number of responses was influenced by the respondents’ organization’s role in the highway construction industry.  Materials was the most popular SCP category with 31% of the responses. Materials had the most responses regarding SCPs, failures, unrecognized SCPs, and rewarded SCPs.  The second-highest SCP category was policy/program with 9% of the responses, which is significantly less popular than materials.  Recognition and lack of recognition was not a significant concern for most respondents.  It is likely that SCPs tend to work when implemented. 340 SCPs were identified by respondents but only 53 failures were identified and most all of these related to improper use of or high use rates of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) and recycled asphalt shingles (RAS). While there was no question that specifically asked about failure rate, the relative response numbers are indicative of SCPs tending to work.

95 TABLE 17. Summary of SCP Survey Responses Levela Categorya SCPsb Failedc Not recognizedd Rewardede TOTALf Program Org. Strategy/Culture/Ex. Support 14 1 1 16 Policy/Program 31 3 4 5 43 Human Resources 6 6 Environmental Management Syst. 18 1 1 3 23 Project Project Delivery Method 17 1 18 Delivery Project Procurement 10 1 1 12 Contracting 7 1 8 Project Scheduling 4 4 Estimating 3 3 Project Controls 7 7 Contract Administration 15 1 16 Earthwork 11 2 2 15 Drainage/Sewer/Water 13 5 1 1 20 Structures (Aesthetics) 0 1 1 2 Structures (Bridges) 3 2 3 8 Structures (Walls) 1 1 1 3 Pavement 8 4 2 4 18 Work Zone Traffic Control 24 24 Materials 98 31 11 8 148 Safety 10 10 Employment 10 1 2 13 Training 6 2 8 Public Outreach 22 22 Noise 4 1 5 Light 1 1 2 Design for Constructability 25 1 2 1 29 Notes: a. Level and category are taken from the “Framework for Highway Construction” as presented in the Literature Review (Appendix A). b. Sustainable Construction Practices (SCPs). This summarizes the number of responses in each category of the Framework for Highway Construction for all questions asking respondents about SCPs in various groupings. c. Examples where a supposed sustainable solution failed to produce the desired outcome. d. Something done believed to be sustainable, but it was never described or recognized as sustainable. e. Instances where an organization was rewarded for doing something sustainable on a project. f. The total number of times a category was addressed in all the SCP questions. This is a gross indication of prominence or popularity of categories.