Impact of rainfall on the productivity of highway construction

Heavy rainfall often leads to complete suspension of highway construction due to saturated and unworkable soil conditions. Therefore, quantifying the impact of rainfall on the productivity of highway construction is essential in preparing realistic schedules and cost estimates for the preconstruction stage and in analyzing weather-related claims for the postconstruction stage. This paper presents a decision support system for quantifying the impact of rainfall on productivity and duration of common highway construction operations, namely: earthmoving, construction of base courses, construction of drainage layers, and paving operations. The system incorporates a knowledgebase and a database. The knowledgebase includes if/then type rules, acquired from experts in highway construction operations, and the database contains hourly records of weather parameters from the closest weather station to the construction site. The system, named WEATHER, is a software system that provides user-friendly interface, including menus, dialog boxes, and graphical capabilities to facilitate data input and output.