Field-to-Executive Infrastructure Controls: Schedule, Cost, QA/QC, and Safety Dashboards for Heavy Civil Projects

Heavy civil projects (earthworks, highway, bridging, tunnels, water systems, and deep utility installation) are the most challenging and highly complex projects, as well as the most expensive, both from a project controls perspective and resource allocation. The loss of investment value of the construction due to poor project controls has been estimated by the Project Management Institute to be 11.4% of its total value for all projects and 14.2% for civil infrastructure projects, which is one of the highest returns available for infrastructure delivery organizations (PMI, 2021; McKinsey Global Institute, 2017). The highlights of this article will be used to present the repeatable field-to-executive controls model, which brings together the time-critical daily field reporting systems, resource allocation optimization, risk escalation plans, HCSS-style heavy civil documentation platforms, nonconformance management, change order control and executive action planning into a single management architecture. The model is based on peer-reviewed construction management research, the federal-level reporting requirements of the Federal Highway Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, benchmarking data from a variety of construction environments across water engineering, transportation infrastructure, and municipal utility construction, and production-proven practice from a cross section of the heavy civil industry. Implementation studies show that owners with integrated field-to-executive control systems fill their schedules with an average of 0.14 points higher with CPI increases of 0.11 points on average, which equates to a good and measurable improvement in project outcomes for the owners, communities and contractors.