Measuring Performance on P3 Projects through a Systematic Requirements Management Program

When an infrastructure fails prematurely because of poor workmanship, the developer of a public private partnership (P3) project incurs a significant cost that typically could have been prevented if a more systematic attention to higher risk requirements had of been in place. This practice paper will demonstrate how a risk based requirements verification system has been applied on a number of major transportation P3 projects as a way of addressing just such a problem. By using a total digital approach to design review and construction inspection, and by applying a systematic risk profiling approach, more and better performance verification data can be collected to clearly and objectively depict the status of the project. With this approach, developers can move beyond just saying they want a high quality project, they can actually determine with a measured level of confidence, what the level of performance is being observed. A lower level of performance is a predictor of possible future failures. The traditional approach of describing the scope of a transportation project has been by writing text in paragraph format or creating a series of books that read somewhat like a novel. The scoping of the work can be greatly improved by capturing all the expectations or requirements within a relational database structure. With each requirement identified, any number of attributes can be related, such as risk, owner, phase, cost, method of verification and observed performance. As the design effort is completed, the applicable design input requirements can be verified to ensure that they have been appropriately incorporates into the design. The performance of the design team to meet the requirements when the design is reviewed can be measured and the result used to identify areas or disciplines that are under-performing. Similarly when the design is realized on the worksite, the performance of the construction forces can be measured to objectively identify strong performers and underperforming efforts. Poor performance can be addressed early in the life of the project and not later when the cost impact can be multiple times higher.