Best Practices from WisDOT Mega and ARRA Projects - Request for Information: Benchmarks and Metrics

Successful highway construction is measured by cost, time, safety, and quality. One further measure of success is the quantity of Request for Information‟s (RFI) submitted and their impact. An RFI is a formal written procedure initiated by the contractor seeking additional information or clarification for issues related to design, construction, and other contract documents. The RFI process was identified as an important best practice for the delivery of major highway project and as a significant source of benchmarking and metric opportunities. Implementation of an RFI process is considered to be an integral part of successful project management for construction projects because it improves communication between the construction, design, and project management teams. The ability to quantitatively measure the performance of the RFI process has the potential to identify areas of concern within a project, to breakdown the reasons for why an RFI is submitted, and to understand the expected submittal rate of RFIs. However, there are no studies completed on the quantitative evaluation of the RFI process for highway construction. Even though the procedure for using RFIs has been documented by State Highway Agencies (SHAs), there are currently no available benchmarks or metrics identified as performance measures for use within the RFI process for major highway projects. The primary purpose of this research is to develop performance measure indicators within the RFI process for major highway projects. The following objectives were completed to achieve this purpose: 1) provide a new method to classify RFIs because the current classification process used by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) is not adequate due to lack of specificity and due to difficulties in deriving meaningful conclusions, 2) develop project benchmarks and metrics for project performances and practices to aid project teams in assessing the performance of a transportation infrastructure project, and 3) provide best practices and recommendations to improve the RFI process and to allow for other SHAs to implement an effective RFI process.