STATUS:  Research is complete. Guidebook and final report available HERE.  

Sustainability is often an element that informs decisions made during the planning, programming, and design phases of highway construction projects. A number of state departments of transportation (DOTs) and the Federal Highway Administration are exploring how best to integrate the principles of sustainability—meeting human needs for the present and future while preserving and restoring environmental and ecological systems, fostering community health and vitality, promoting economic development and prosperity, and ensuring equity between and among population groups and over generations—into their agency missions and operations. However, the construction phase of a highway project is also an opportunity to advance sustainability. This project provides ways to explicitly advance sustainability in procurement and contracting and how to develop a sustainability management plan for the construction phase. 

The objective of this research is to identify implementable sustainable highway construction practices that a state DOT or contractor may employ during construction, and prepare a guidebook that can be used by state DOTs, other transportation agencies, consulting engineers, and construction contractors—to aid them in identifying, evaluating, and selecting sustainable construction practices.

INTERIM REPORT: In addition to the final report, the contractor made available a summary of the results of a survey to collect information about sustainable construction practices. Download the interim report at: https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/docs/NCHRP10-91A_SurveyResultsSummary.pdf 

Researchers who wish to use the industry survey data for their own work may request it from NCHRP. Data requests should be made by email to Ann Hartell (ahartell@nas.edu). In the request email, please include a short explanation of the intended use of the data (e.g. name of research project, research sponsor, affiliation and location of research team, and general plan for publication of results).