Development of unit cost database to estimate costs for utility relocation projects
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Abstract
Utility relocation is a consequential step while undertaking a new transportation project. Past research shows that utility adjustment or relocation is one of the several major factors that causes delay in timely delivery of infrastructure projects, and cost overruns. Despite being recognized as an impeding factor to project delivery, there is no ready-to-use cost database or software platform available for estimating the relocation costs of different utilities. This thesis aims to collect, analyze and record historical cost data available through the executed utility agreements and develop a unit cost database which can be used in generating a cost estimate for a project. Since the data collected from agreements is limited by the availability of useful and relevant agreements gathered, data available from RS-Means and other publicly available databases is used to fill any gaps in cost data recorded, and further serve as a basis for validation of data collected from past agreements. As a product of this research, a database spreadsheet was developed which stores the data collected during the study and also allows for addition of new data by the user to further improve the database.