Collecting and Managing Cost Data for Bridge Management Systems

Book excerpt: This synthesis will be of interest to state department of transportation (DOT) administrators and mid- to upper-level managers; researchers; cost estimators; bridge and general management system engineers; and bridge design, construction, inspection and maintenance engineers; as well as to private industry professionals involved in developing bridge management system (BMS) software and collecting and analyzing BMS cost data. The state of the practice for collecting and managing cost data for BMS is described based on data obtained from a review of the literature and a survey of the state DOTs. This report describes BMS cost data for work done by contract and in-house forces for state and local governments. It includes project-level cost estimation as well as the collection and management of data for network- level cost models. The various cost estimate methods for replacement; maintenance, repair and rehabilitation; and emergency work are analyzed as are the special requirements of user costs and other special economic data.