Carla Lopez del Puerto, and Douglas D.

Gransberg 1

Managing Complexity for Small Highway Projects

By: Carla Lopez del Puerto, PhD, Associate Professor**
Organization: The University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, Department of Civil Engineering
and Surveying
Address: P.O. Box 9000, Mayaguez, PR, 00680
Phone: (787) 265-3862, Fax: (787) 834-1980, E-mail: [email protected]

Douglas D. Gransberg, PhD, Professor and Donald and Sharon Greenwood Chair of
Construction Engineering
Organization: Iowa State University, Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental
Engineering
Address: 494 Town Engineering Building, Ames, Iowa 50011-3232
Phone: (515) 294-4148, E-mail: [email protected]

Carlos F. Figueroa, P.E., Transportation Specialist

Organization: Federal Highway Administration, Office of Innovative Program Delivery
Project Delivery Team
Address: 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE Room E64-409, Washington, DC 20590
Phone: 202-366-5266, Email: [email protected]

Number of Words in Text: 4,495

Number of Tables and Figures in the Paper: 6

Total Word Equivalent: 5,995

Date of Submission: 10/23/2014

**Corresponding author
 Carla Lopez del Puerto, Douglas D. Gransberg and Carlos Figueroa 2

1 MANAGING COMPLEXITY FOR SMALL HIGHWAY PROJECTS

2
3 By Carla Lopez del Puerto, Douglas D. Gransberg and Carlos Figueroa
4
5
6 ABSTRACT
7 To meet the growing demand of the nation’s infrastructure, transportation projects are becoming
8 more complex. Complex projects involve an unusual degree of uncertainty and instability.
9 Decisions must be made in an environment where the project team does not have direct control
10 over many of the critical factors. This paper discusses a five-dimensional project management
11 model (5DPM) and the use of complexity maps as tools to identify and manage the sources of
12 complexity. This paper also details how complexity was managed in four projects valued
13 between $8.0 million and $50 million that were not classified as Federal Highway (FHWA)
14 Major Projects and demonstrates how an agency can determine if a seemingly routine small
15 project is indeed complex. Based on the results of the case study analysis, it can be concluded
16 that both small and large projects benefit from 5DPM and the use of complexity mapping to
17 identify sources of complexity and develop action plans that allow them to address the sources of
18 complexity proactively. The complexity maps also indicate that in small projects, context is the
19 dimension in which the most complexity is observed.
20
21 INTRODUCTION
22 As the pace at which the nation’s infrastructure accelerates, the scope of the national highway
23 renewal effort expands. To meet the growing demand, project delivery periods have been
24 compressed, increasing the impact of external factors such as environmental policy, public scrutiny
25 and availability of construction financing (FHWA 2006). The successful delivery of transportation
26 projects has morphed from a technical exercise which focused on achieving the near-term cost and
27 time objectives to a process with a broader focus using both subjective and objective project
28 performance metrics (Jugdev and Muller 2005). This reorientation of project management
29 philosophy is referred to as “complex project management” (Whitty and Maylor 2009), and the
30 College of Complex Project Managers (CCPM) maintains that it is “an emerging natural extension
31 of traditional project management to create a specialist profession…” (CCPM 2006). The
32 difference between routine projects and complex projects centers around the “… degree of
33 disorder, instability, emergence, non-linearity, recursiveness, uncertainty, irregularity and
34 randomness” found in complex projects. Recent research has recorded dynamic complexity
35 induced by the level of interaction between aspects of the project that are outside the project
36 manager’s direct control (Gransberg et al 2013). Additionally, complex projects entail a high level
37 of “uncertainty about what the objectives are, and/or high uncertainty in how to implement the
38 objectives” (CCPM 2006).
39 The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) uses the term “Major Projects” to identify
40 projects that have a “high level of public or congressional interest; are unusually complex; have
41 extraordinary implications for the national transportation system; or are likely to exceed $500
42 million in total cost.” (FHWA 2010 emphasis added). Major projects are required to prepare a
43 formal Project Management Plan (PMP) as a precursor to receiving federal funding (FHWA 2010).
44 As a result, US agencies tend to associate the term complex project only with large megaprojects
45 (Capka 2004). Research on the topic has shown that project complexity is relative to not only size
46 and scope but also the past experience of the project management team (Owen et al 2011). The
 Carla Lopez del Puerto, Douglas D. Gransberg and Carlos Figueroa 3

1 CCPM (2006) maintains that “the level of uncertainty [i.e. complexity] will vary with the maturity
2 of the individual/organisation [sic].” Thus, it is the amount of uncertainty that exists in the project
3 that is beyond the project manager’s control that makes it complex. While size may very well
4 contribute to complexity, it is not the sole parameter that defines whether or not a given project is
5 complex (Gransberg et al 2013). Therefore, the objective of this paper is to detail how complexity
6 was managed in four projects valued between $8.0 million and $50 million that were not classified
7 as FHWA Major Projects and to demonstrate how an agency can determine if a seemingly routine
8 small project is indeed complex.
9
10 BACKGROUND
11 The College of
12 Complex Project Management (CCPM) differentiates between routine projects and complex
13 projects by “the degree of disorder, instability, emergence, nonlinearity, recursiveness,
14 uncertainty, irregularity and randomness, including a high uncertainty about objectives” (CCPM
15 2008). Decisions must be made in an environment where the project team does not have direct
16 control over many of the critical factors. This leads to iterative planning and design to adjust the
17 project management plan to react to events that create previously unforeseen changes in the
18 project.. Project complexity is dynamic and its components interact with each other in different
19 ways that influence the project’s outcome. A complex project’s final scope of work is difficult to
20 determine at early stages of project development. Solutions must be developed to satisfy an
21 uncertain number of external stakeholders that may impact the ability to achieve the complex
22 project’s goals. To address the proliferation of these issues, the Strategic Highway Research
23 Program 2 (SHRP2) commissioned a study entitled: SHRP2 R-10, “Project Management
24 Strategies for Complex Projects.” The major finding of that work was that complex projects require
25 more than the three traditional dimensions of project management: Cost, Schedule, and Technical
26 (Shane et al. 2013). Technical are all the typical engineering requirements including scope of
27 design and construction, quality, and need for integrated delivery. Schedule are the calendar-driven
28 aspects of the project. Cost is quantifying the scope of work in monetary terms. As seen in Figure
29 1, a complex project requires that the project team manage complexity in five dimensions: the
30 three previously mentioned plus financing and context.
31
32
33 Technical Technical
34
35
36 Schedule
37 Cost
38 Scope: Scope:
39 Routine Complex
40 Project Project
41
42
43
44
45 Schedule Cost Financing Context
 Carla Lopez del Puerto, Douglas D. Gransberg and Carlos Figueroa 4

1 FIGURE 1 Conceptual Dimensional Difference which Routine and Complex Project

2 Management have (Routine figure adapted from Marshall and Rousey 2009).
3
4 One of the added dimensions is the situational/geographic context in which the project was
5 delivered, and it literally drives the technical scope by defining the project cost and schedule
6 dimensions. Context encompasses political issues, procurement constraints, environmental
7 requirements, public opinion, acquiring right-of-way, agency preferences/biases, and other similar
8 issues that limit the project development process. The James River Bridge case study project in
9 Virginia discussed later in the paper is an example in which the entire design and construction
10 sequence was developed around a continuous need to minimize disruption to the public, requiring
11 early public information planning to execute a complex self-detour plan.
12 The financing dimension revolves around the effect that the availability of funding has on
13 the project execution plan. The SHRP2 research found that merely knowing the estimated cost of
14 a given complex project was insufficient. The salient question was how the project is going to be
15 financed (Gransberg et al. 2013). A good example is the New Mexico case study project detailed
16 in a later section. While the estimated project cost is only about $8.0 million, the agency will need
17 to gain FHWA approval for advance construction funding and the local municipality must find
18 financing for utilities that must be relocated during construction. Figure 1 shows that increasing
19 the visibility of context and financing gives the complex PM a framework with which to
20 conceptualize the project’s complexity and develop proactive remedies for factors that are not
21 directly controlled by the project team.
22 Context factors are typically dealt with during project planning and design in a routine
23 project, and sometimes termed “context sensitive design,” making it an exercise in making
24 technical decisions that allow the final project to better fit into the community. In essence, it is a
25 thoughtful approach to minimizing the impact of the project on the environment in which it is built.
26 A routine project’s financial plan is based on the current cost estimate. The technical requirements
27 of the project are “preeminent over the constraints imposed by context and financing, making the
28 result of the entire process a ‘go-no go’ decision” (Gransberg et al. 2013). Therefore, the routine
29 project’s final design either qualifies for an environmental permit or it does not, and if the requisite
30 construction funding is not available the project development process is suspended until sufficient
31 funding is found. In the five-dimensional project management (5DPM) model shown in Figure 1,
32 the project team approaches context and financing as equal to cost, schedule, and technical. As
33 such, implementing 5DPM attempts to balance the interrelationships in all five dimensions rather
34 that viewing context and/or financing as merely the output values of the design and its estimated
35 cost.
36 This paper reports the application of 5DPM on small complex projects. It compares the
37 results of three SHRP2 case study projects whose costs were $10.0, $29.8 and $49 million, and
38 one new complex project currently estimated at $8.0 million on which the DOTs have decided to
39 implement 5DPM. The complexity maps for all four studies were used as a tool to identify sources
40 of complexity and rank each source on a relative basis. The product of the complexity mapping
41 tool is a complexity footprint which allows the results to be compared. The three SHRP2 projects
42 were mapped post-construction as part of the previous research; whereas the complexity footprint
43 of the most recent project was mapped in the pre-design phase. The new project was mapped twice
44 within a six month period and provided an opportunity to observe a change in project complexity
45 over time as the project team developed solutions to complexities.
46
 Carla Lopez del Puerto, Douglas D. Gransberg and Carlos Figueroa 5

1 METHODOLOGY
2 The study replicated the methodology used in the SHRP2 case study project protocol (Shane et al.
3 2013) to include the case study on the New Mexico project. Case studies can be utilized to look
4 in-depth at a project to focus on attitudes, behaviors, meanings, and experiences by obtaining
5 information from a number of different sources related to a project (Yin 2002). The sources include
6 archival project documents, public records, news and trade publication, journal articles, and
7 personal interviews with project participants.
8 The case study project selected for this study was included in the first round of the FHWA
9 Implementation Assistance Program for Project Management Strategies for Complex Projects
10 (R10). The Implementation Assistance Program helps DOTs to adopt and implement the solutions
11 developed under the SHRP2 Program. The Implementation Assistance consisted of an initial two
12 day demonstration workshop in which the project team was introduced to the concepts of 5DPM.
13 After 5DPM was discussed, the project management team completed an interactive exercise to
14 develop the initial complexity map for their project. The materials used in the exercise were the
15 same as were used in the previous research to develop the retrospective complexity maps.
16 The complexity maps were created by first examining the sources of complexity of each
17 dimension. The project team was given a non-exhaustive list of possible sources of complexity
18 within each dimension. Table 1 provides a sample list of sources of complexity within each
19 dimension. The project management team was asked to identify the top three sources of complexity
20 for each dimension. The next step consisted of ranking each dimension in order of complexity
21 where 5 = most complex dimension and 1 = least complex dimension. The final step consisted of
22 assigning a relative complexity value between 0 and 100 for each dimension. The team was
23 instructed to arrive at a value based on rating a typical project with normal complexity in a given
24 dimension having a value of 50. Thus, if the team believes that their project is more complex than
25 a routine project, they would assign a value higher than 50. The values were then back-checked to
26 ensure consistency with the dimensional complexity rankings in the previous step. For example if
27 context is ranked higher than schedule, its numerical value also has to be higher. After the values
28 are assigned, the data is plotted on a radar diagram and the area of the resultant pentagon is
29 calculated. A routine project where each dimension is valued at 50 has an area of 5,944 units. The
30 maximum area if all five dimensions are rated at 100 equals 23,776 units. The area is termed the
31 complexity footprint and provides a measure of the given project’s complexity.
32
33 TABLE 1 Sample List of Factors within each Dimension (Shane et al. 2013).
Cost Factors Schedule Factors Technical Factors Context Factors Financing Factors
Contingency usage Timeline Scope of the project Public Legislative process
requirements
Risk analysis Risk analysis Owner’s internal Political Uniformity
structure restrictions
Estimate formation Milestones Prequalification of Owner Revenue generation
bidders
Owner resource cost Schedule control Warranties Marketing Carbon credit sales
allocation
Cost control Optimization’s Disputes Cultural impacts Public-private
impact on schedule partnerships
34
35 The complexity footprint provides a relative metric to evaluate the change in complexity
36 over time. Ideally a project team that is actively addressing the sources of complexity will see the
37 footprint shrink as they develop solutions to the issues that arise during project development and
 Carla Lopez del Puerto, Douglas D. Gransberg and Carlos Figueroa 6

1 execution. It is also quite possible that the area may expand if the solution to one issue interacts
2 with another increasing the complexity rating in that dimension. An example would be a design
3 change that resolves an environmental permitting problem but increases the project’s costs to a
4 point where additional financing must be sought. While the complexity footprint is by no means a
5 measure of some tangible property like project cost, it does act as a dashboard for the project team
6 to assess the relative success of its efforts to adequately address the sources of complexity.
7 The project management team spent a considerable amount of time discussing the sources
8 of complexity in each dimension and reaching a consensus on the values that were assigned to
9 each dimension. Approximately six months after the initial workshop, a one-day workshop was
10 conducted to investigate the progress of the project and to develop a second complexity footprint
11 that was compared to the first complexity footprint to identify changes in the sources of
12 complexity. After the complexity maps were developed, the project team for the case study
13 conducted in this research defined critical project success factors. The critical success factors are
14 “critical at a higher order than those typically formalized in a project mission statement or project
15 chapter” (Shane et al. 2013).
16 The critical project success factors are typically comprised of both subjective and objective
17 inputs. When narrowing down the list of critical success factors the project team was asked to
18 considered if the critical success factors are measurable, justifiable, related to the long-term
19 success of the transportation asset, related to the short-term success of the transportation asset,
20 supported within the DOT/ FHWA, supported outside the DOT/FHWA and addressed a unique
21 source of complexity on the project (Shane et al. 2013). The project team also discussed the
22 interactions between success factors.
23
24 CASE STUDY DETAILS
25 The primary objective of this paper is to highlight that complexity can be independent of project
26 size and value and that 5DPM principles can benefit both large and small complex projects.
27 Complex projects, regardless of their size, benefit from using complexity mapping to identify
28 sources of complexity and develop action plans that allow them to address the sources of
29 complexity proactively.
30 Case studies of four projects are included in this study. The selection criteria included
31 projects that were smaller than the value required to being classified as major projects by
32 FHWA. Out of the 18 projects included as part of the study funded by the U.S. National
33 Academies’ SHRP2 Program entitled: “Project Management Strategies for Complex Projects.”,
34 three projects are not considered major projects by FHWA. Out of the 4 projects included as part
35 of the Implementation Assistant Program for “Project Management Strategies for Complex
36 Projects (R10)”, one project is not considered a major project by FHWA. The objective of this
37 section is to portray the breadth and depth of the case study project population.
38
39 James River Bridge/I95 Richmond
40 Project Description: The project involved replacing the 0.75 mile James River Bridge on the
41 section of I‐95 that transited the central business district of Richmond, Virginia. The project was
42 built in 1958 with a capacity of only a third of the 110,000 vehicles per day it carried when it was
43 rebuilt in 2002 to six lanes in width (Shane et al. 2013). The contractor proposed to use
44 prefabricated composite units which consisted of concrete deck over steel girders fabricated off‐
45 site and brought to the project by truck. The contractor sequenced the work so that the old bridge
 Carla Lopez del Puerto, Douglas D. Gransberg and Carlos Figueroa 7

1 spans were removed in segments, the resulting gaps were prepared, and a new composite unit was
2 placed in a single night. Traffic was returned the next morning.
3
4 Complexity: The location, volume of traffic, and potential impact on the public made this a
5 difficult project through which to maintaining traffic during construction. Its proximity to both the
6 state legislative offices and the Virginia DOT Central Office gave it unprecedented visibility to
7 both the public and the project team’s chain of command. The need to minimize traffic disruption
8 on the main freight trucking route on the US East Coast pushed the work into the night and the
9 agency implemented an untried incentive/disincentive contracting method to address the
10 requirement.
11
12 Critical Success Factors: The critical success factor was to minimize impact to the public during
13 construction, making context the most complex dimension. The agency implemented a robust
14 public information plan to encourage self-detours for commercial truckers that was successful in
15 significantly reducing the level of truck traffic through the work zone.
16
17 Lewis and Clark Bridge
18 Project Description: The Lewis and Clark Bridge spans the Columbia River and the state line
19 between Washington and Oregon, providing a link for motorists between the states. The cost of
20 the deck replacement was split 50-50 between the two states. The bridge is slightly over one mile
21 long composed of 34 spans that carry 21,000 vehicles per day. Built in 1929, it was the longest
22 and highest cantilever steel truss bridge in the nation at that point in time. The new project’s
23 objective was to extend the existing bridge’s service life by at least 25 years. A full‐depth precast
24 deck replacement was designed and constructed. The project cost about $24 million and was
25 completed in 2004 (Shane et al. 2013).
26
27 Complexity: The Lewis and Clark Bridge is the only point to cross the Columbia River from
28 Washington to Oregon. The nearest detour adds a minimum of hour to the crossing and a hospital
29 on one side of the crossing serviced the local population in both states. Thus, the context dimension
30 was the most complex. Construction sequencing solutions to minimize impact on the traveling
31 public was the primary driver on this project (Shane et al. 2013). Among other tools, WSDOT
32 developed an incentive contract to minimize full daytime closures and shift those required to the
33 night or weekends. The bridge also utilized off-site fabrication of precast deck replacement panels
34 to accelerate the construction. Lastly, the project was highly unpopular within the impacted
35 communities, which drove the agency to implement an extensive public relations and information
36 plan to manage public opinion.
37
38 Critical Success Factors: There were two major factors. First, the minimization of daytime
39 construction traffic disruption through a carefully design construction sequence of work. The
40 second was an extensive public information plan to identify and address public concerns as well
41 as provide a mechanism to gain access to current traffic status for individual drivers via live
42 webcams, a continuously up-dated website and other media.
43
44 Green Street Road Rehabilitation
45 Project Description: The City of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada decided to become the
46 “greenest city in Canada” with regard to sustainable infrastructure. As a result, this project was
 Carla Lopez del Puerto, Douglas D. Gransberg and Carlos Figueroa 8

1 developed to maximize the recycling of asphalt and Portland cement concrete rubble created in the
2 reconstruction of city streets. The project’s technical dimension focused on developing high value
3 substructure aggregates that are structurally superior to conventional aggregates through recycling.
4 Scope also included implementing newly developed Canadian mechanistic-based structural asset
5 management and pavement design protocols..
6
7 Complexity: The use of recycled rubble as structural material at this scale was unproven and
8 required a considerable adjustment of conventional road building practice to implement. This issue
9 required the project to develop and execute an untried procurement practice that was termed
10 “design‐supply‐build” in order to incorporate the newly adopted mechanistic design procedures
11 along with a system to conduct field validation. The result was that the design consultant held the
12 prime contract for both the design and the construction.
13
14 Critical Success Factors: Maximizing the amount of recycling demanded that the performance risk
15 for the rehabilitated pavement be assigned to the designer.
16
17 As previously mentioned, these three projects were analyzed by their project teams after
18 the projects had been completed. Thus, they represent a retrospective evaluation of dimensional
19 complexity. The New Mexico Highway 90 (NM 90) expansion project is an example of a project
20 team evaluating complexity before the project’s design is begun. Therefore, the amount of
21 detailed information available to the team to make its rankings is much less than the other three.
22 Intuitively, as the project’s design advances, new information on dimensional complexity must
23 be expected to be uncovered, which given the interactions between dimensions, could change the
24 way the team ranks each dimension. Table 2 summarizes the complexity rankings for the four
25 case study projects. The next section will discuss the details found during the implementation of
26 5DPM on the NM 90 project.
27
28 TABLE 2 Case Study Project Summary
Ranking by Dimension
Case Study
Timing Budget 5= Most Complex; 1= Least Complex
Project
Cost Schedule Technical Context Financing
James River
$49 M 2 5 4 1 4
Bridge
Post- Lewis and
$29.8 M 2 3 4 5 1
construction Clark Bridge
Ranking Canadia
Green Street n 4 3 5 2 1
$10.0 M
NM 90
$7.2M 2 4 3 5 1
Pre-design 2013 rank
Ranking NM 90,
$8.0M 2 3 4 5 1
2014 rank
29
30
31 New Mexico Highway 90 Expansion Project
32 Project Description: The project consists of a mile long expansion of NM 90 in Silver City. The
33 final project will result in bicycle lanes and sidewalks to be added to the existing two lanes of
34 traffic. Special architectural features will be installed to create a “gateway” to Silver City that can
 Carla Lopez del Puerto, Douglas D. Gransberg and Carlos Figueroa 9

1 be used as the start/finish line for an annual international cycle race. To accomplish the expansion,
2 additional right of way must be acquired and a number of utilities must be relocated.
3
4 Complexity: A large number of properties will be impacted by this project. Right of way
5 acquisition will drive the project schedule. The New Mexico DOT will provide the lighting fixtures
6 but the city of Silver City will pay the utility bills which requires coordination regarding the type
7 of lighting used to minimize maintenance cost and agree on the amount of energy that the city is
8 able to afford. Additionally, the City’s utility budget may not be sufficient to cover the cost of
9 relocating the utilities in the area. Lastly, the new alignment may require a FHWA waiver of
10 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) design standards regarding maximum grades at driveways
11 and other locations.
12
13 Critical Success Factors: The project management team identified two critical success factors
14 during the first workshop: ROW acquisition and general office commitment to support project
15 milestones. In the second workshop, which occurred approximately six months after the first
16 workshop, the project team had more information about the project and had become comfortable
17 with 5DPM. Table 2 shows that new information gained in the six month period between the two
18 complexity mapping exercises caused the team to rank technical over schedule, reversing the first
19 ranking. The reason for the change was the current design for the road’s cross-section caused
20 previously unforeseen constraints on ROW. In short, the upper half of the project only had half the
21 available width in which to locate the expanded roadway, cycle lanes, sidewalks and relocated
22 utilities, and the topography made it difficult to meet ADA constraints on wheelchair accessible
23 grades.
24
25 Complexity Mapping
26 This section analyzes the sources of complexity and the results of the complexity footprints for the
27 case study projects. The format has been standardized for each project to enable each project to be
28 compared with all other projects in the sample. Figure 2 contains the complexity maps developed
29 by the New Mexico DOT project team in 2013 at the initial project meeting and in 2014 at the
30 project kick-off meeting. It shows that the area of the complexity footprint increased by 14% as
31 the project advanced in its development process.
32

33
34 FIGURE 2 Complexity Footprints of the NM 90 case study
 Carla Lopez del Puerto, Douglas D. Gransberg and Carlos Figueroa 10

1
2 Table 3 shows that complexity increased during that period in three of five dimensions.
3 Context remained the most complex dimension and its rating increased due to the increased issues
4 with available ROW, the need to potentially receive a waiver for ADA design requirements from
5 FHWA, and DOT-City agreement requirements surrounding the operations and maintenance of
6 the “gateway” features of work. Technical had the largest increase due to the need to deal with the
7 horizontal and vertical alignment issues, the “gateway” features, and geotechnical investigations
8 to quantify the amount of rock required to be excavated. Cost increased due to the need for more
9 ROW and the potential for rock excavation to exceed early estimates. Comparing the NM 90
10 complexity footprint to the other three projects shows that even though it is the least cost case
11 study project, its most recent footprint makes it the second most complex. It is interesting to note
12 that the most complex of the four was the replacement of a bridge on a 6-lane interstate highway
13 in an urban setting. The comparison leads one to infer that complexity is independent of most
14 factors regarding size and scale.
15
16 TABLE 3 Rated Case Study Project Complexity by Dimension and Complexity Footprint
17 Area
Complexity Rating by Dimension Complexity
Timing Case Study Project
Cost Schedule Technical Context Financing Area (units)
Post- James River Bridge 60 95 90 55 90 14,551
construc Lewis and Clark Bridge 30 55 85 100 5 4,874
-tion Green Street 82 55 100 20 10 6,111
Pre- NM 90, 2013 65 75 70 85 50 11,127
design NM 90, 2014 70 75 85 90 50 12,685
18
19 Table 4 is a pairwise comparison of the dimensional complexity for the four projects. The
20 bold font is used when context is ranked higher than one of the other four dimensions. A glance at
21 the table provides the major finding of this paper. In small to medium projects, context is the
22 dimension in which the most complexity is observed.
23
24 TABLE 4 Pairwise Comparison of Small Case Study Project Complexity by Dimension
Technical Schedule Cost Technical Schedule Cost Context
Case Study Project vs vs vs vs vs vs vs
Context Context Context Financing Financing Financing Financing
James River Bridge Context Context Context Technical Schedule Cost Context
Lewis and Clark Context Context Context Technical Schedule Cost Context
Bridge
Green Street Technical Schedule Cost Technical Schedule Cost Context
NM 90, 2013 Context Context Context Technical Schedule Cost Context
NM 90, 2014 Context Context Context Technical Schedule Cost Context
25
26
27 CONCLUSIONS
28 Based on the results of the case study analysis, it can be concluded that both small and
29 large projects benefit from 5DPM and the use of complexity mapping to identify sources of
30 complexity and develop action plans that allow them to address the sources of complexity
31 proactively. It can be inferred that complexity is independent of most factors regarding size and
32 scale. It can also be concluded that the complexity footprint is a snap shot in time and that
 Carla Lopez del Puerto, Douglas D. Gransberg and Carlos Figueroa 11

1 complexity maps change over time as complexity is addressed and more details about a project are
2 known.
3
4 Complex projects require that the project team manage complexity in five dimensions:
5 Cost, Schedule, Technical, Context and Finance. By elevating Content and Finance to the same
6 level as the three traditional dimensions of project management, the project team is able to raise
7 the visibility of the issues related to these two dimensions before they slip to uncontrollable
8 disorder. In small to medium projects, context is the dimension in which the most complexity is
9 observed. This is logical. Projects of magnitudes similar to those presented in this paper ($8.0 to
10 $49 million) are commonly encountered and as such will not likely need to search for innovative
11 financing. Their technical challenges will likely not be much more than the routine project’s
12 design, and because of their size, they will be able to be executed in a single construction season.
13 Thus, the major opportunity for disruption of the normal project development process will come
14 from factors that are outside the control of the agency, e.g. context factors.
15
16 REFERENCES
17 Capka, J. (2004). “Megaprojects - They Are a Different Breed,” Public Roads, July/August
18 2004, 68(1), 2 – 9.
19
20 College of Complex Project Managers, and Defence Materiel Organisation (CCPM). (2008).
21 Competency standard for complex project managers, Version 3.3, Commonwealth of
22 Australia, Dept. of Defence, Canberra, Australia.
23
24 Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). 2010. Project Delivery Defined: Major Project.
25 <http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/project_delivery/defined/major_project.htm> retrieved
26 [December 4, 2010].

27 Gransberg, D.D., “Case Studies of Early Contractor Design Involvement to Expedite the
28 Delivery of Emergency Highway Projects,” Transportation Research Record No. 2347,
29 Journal of the Transportation Research Board, National Academies, 2013, pp. 19-26.

30 Gransberg, D.D., Shane, J.S., Strong, K. and Lopez del Puerto, C., “Project Complexity Mapping
31 in Five Dimensions for Complex Transport Projects,” Journal of Management in
32 Engineering, ASCE, Vol.29, (4), October 2013, pp. 316-326.

33 Owens, J., Shane, J.S., Strong, K.C., Ahn, J. and Gransberg, D.D., “Resource Allocation for
34 Complex Highway Projects,” 2011 Transportation Research Board, Paper # 11-0394,
35 National Academies, Washington, D.C. January 2011, pp. 234.1-10.

36 Shane, J., Strong, K., Gransberg, D., et al. Project Management Strategies For Complex
37 Projects, Project R-10 final report, Strategic Highway Research Program 2, Transportation
38 Research Board, National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2013, 199pp.

39