Daily work reports-based production rate estimation for highway projects

Production rate estimation of major construction activities in a project play an important role in the planning of resources, tracking project progress, and determining contract time of construction projects as these activities typically fall in the critical path of the project schedule. This paper discusses the possiblity that readily available data from highway agencies such as Daily Work Reports (DWRs), soil data, average traffic information, and weather information can be successfully used to identify and assess significant factors that must be considered in estimating the production rates of major highway activities and to develop production rate estimation models. Common production rate estimation methods such as expert opinion, engineering judgment, and production rate charts may lead to erratic production rate estimation by comparing the production rates calculated and estimated through different methods. Actual project data-based production rate estimation might be the most reliable method. An Excel-based software program was developed in this study for estimating the production rates of controlling highway construction activities when project information is given as input data.