Profile Monitoring for Examining Impact of Hurricane Katrina and Rita on Highway Construction Cost

Extensive destruction and damage to communities in the aftermath of large-scale disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes can cause substantial disorder in social and economic activity. The ensuing repercussions to social and economic systems lead to considerable uncertainty in continuing existing construction projects and implementing new reconstruction is problematic for accurately determining construction costs and making appropriate investment decisions. A large-scale disaster magnifies the importance of empirically examining variations in construction costs. Therefore, the overarching objective of this research is to analyze submitted unit price bids for superpave asphaltic concrete line items for highway projects let in the state of Louisiana after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We employ two-way analysis of variance and a cumulative sum (CUSUM) control chart to monitor and detect changes in submitted unit price bids for hurricane- and non-hurricane-impacted areas. The results of the CUSUM control chart indicate that unit price bids for asphalt line items in the impacted areas significantly increased immediately after Hurricane Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf of Mexico, and those in the non-hurricane-impacted areas significantly increased six months after the hurricane. The findings of this research enable transportation agencies to more closely estimate the cost of rebuilding highway projects and make more-informed investment decisions for highway recovery programs in the aftermath of large-scale disasters.