Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Timely completion of environmental review has been highlighted by public agencies and industry alike as a sore point for performance management in transportation infrastructure projects.  Delays associated with ecological studies and environmental impact statements can have cascading effects on the development of engineering designs and project delivery.  Moreover, time devoted to producing environmental review documents can generate significant cost and delay in both the design and construction phases of projects.  

In spite of the importance of this issue, few academic studies investigate durations for activities related to the environmental reviews and empirically examine which factors have significant influences on the environmental review and project delivery.  In this study we observe the time duration associated with environmental review processes in relation to three forms of public management:  management of external relationships with environmental agencies setting standards and procedures for compliance, internal project management processes associated with the engineering design of transportation infrastructure, and the management of contracts with private sector providers of environmental services. 

In doing so, we explore the effectiveness of agency strategies for managing these key relationships over time.  We are also exploring a longer link in the implementation value chain.  While project management studies recognize the importance of managing these key relations, few have studied relationship of time devoted to each activity within the context of a set of projects.

Implementation of transportation infrastructure projects is primarily the domain of state agencies.  Consequently the focus of our inquiry is on the provision of environmental services by a state transportation department where the preponderance of the environmental work is performed by private sector engineering consulting firms.  We observe 690 environmental review projects that the state agency completed from 2011 to 2015.  This study investigates detailed durations for activities during environmental review process associated with management of relations with environmental agencies, management of consultant relations, and internal project management of environmental review.  We then examine the influence of these activities and other project conditions on the overall duration of the environmental review process as well as the overall duration of the engineering design project.