Licher, Monica Katherine (2016) Estimating post-construction costs of a changing urban stormwater program. PhD thesis, Virginia Tech, USA.
Abstract
Degradation of the nation's waters continues to be a problem and urban runoff is a large contributor to it. New stormwater management policies stress the importance of using stormwater control practices that reduce the quantity and improve the quality of stormwater runoff. The new approaches tend to emphasize small-scale, on-site practices over large scale. Yet to achieve water quality benefits, stormwater control practices must be maintained over time. Maintenance costs of these facilities, however, are poorly understood. A case study of five municipalities around the United States is used to estimate inspection and enforcement costs for each case site. Maintenance activities and costs were collected at the case sites for the following stormwater controls: dry ponds, wet ponds, wetlands, bioretention facilities, sand filters, and infiltration trenches. Cost estimates indicate that inspection and enforcement is not influenced by type. Maintenance cost estimates change depending on the BMP type. Estimated annual post-construction costs applied to a hypothetical 1,000-acre indicate that moving from large-scale to small-scale stormwater controls has a large impact in terms of financial obligation.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Richardson, Jesse James; Stephenson, Stephen Kurt; Sample, David J; Randolph, John and Zhang, Yang |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | stormwater costs; operation and maintenance; low impact development; post-construction stormwater |
| Index terms: | maintenance cost, cost estimate, estimate, enforcement, sand, water quality, inspection, low-impact development, degradation, construction cost, case study, infiltration, municipality, estimating, stormwater, program, operation and maintenance, United States |
| Subjects: | data collection methods, material degradation and durability, financial and cost management, building materials, software systems, financial management, environmental engineering, administrative law, environmental science, health safety and environment, Geography, maintenance engineering, quality assurance, occupational health |
| Topics: | Quality Management, Legal Issues, Geographical Context, Engineering Principles, Health and Safety, Sustainability, Digital Applications, Research Practice, Construction Materials, Business Strategy, Cost Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here