Integrated framework for quantifying and predicting weather-related highway construction delays

Constant exposure to the environment makes highway construction highly dependent on weather. However, highway construction contracts are often unclear about the potential influence of weather-related delays on highway construction project schedules. There is a need to discourage litigation arising from weather-related delays by including in contracts a reasonable number of nonwork days as a consequence of adverse weather and providing an equitable criteria for the course of action when the predictions in the contracts turn out to be inaccurate. To address this need, an integrated framework consisting of the following two key components is proposed: (1) identification of attributes of weather that cause construction delays and (2) generation of synthetic weather sequences using a stochastic weather generator to quantify and provide probabilistic forecasts of weather threshold values. The utility of this framework is demonstrated through its application to construction work on a project in Texas. The use of probabilistic forecast of construction delay attributes provided by a semiparametric weather generator in this research is an example of interdisciplinary study to help address this problem. The result of the research is better decision support for agencies who wish to author contracts that more equitably allow for the influence of weather during construction.