Bridge Investment Program Benefit-Cost Analysis Tool
For Bridge Investment Program (BIP) Bridge Project grants, the USDOT FHWA is statutorily required to consider specific benefits including whether the benefits of a project outweigh the total project costs.1. Similarly, for BIP Large Bridge Project grants, there is a statutory requirement that the USDOT FHWA evaluate whether a Large Bridge project is cost effective.2 The USDOT FHWA is also required to develop a template for applicants to use to summarize project needs and benefits and to enable applicants to use data from the National Bridge Inventory to populate the template.
The FHWA developed the Microsoft® Excel®-based Bridge Investment Program Benefit-Cost Analysis Tool (BIP BCA Tool) to help applicants for either BIP Bridge Project or Large Bridge Project grants to summarize project costs and benefits, and to obtain data from the NBI in preparation of the economic analysis required for both Bridge Project and Large Bridge Project applications.
- BIP BCA Tool (.xlsb) (64 mb) UPDATED
- Changes in version 1.0.4:
- Corrected data link between Table 17 “Manual O&M Cost Entry” and Table 57 “BCA Annual Calculations.” Previously the O&M Cost Difference by year was shifting forward 3 years.
- Changed Table 40 “Safety Benefits due to Avoiding Detouring” to use Crash Rate per 100 Million VMT
- BIP BCA Tool Q&As
- BIP BCA User Manual (.pdf, 1.1 MB)
- BIP BCA Training Video
Resources
- Estimating Benefits for Bridge Protection Improvements (July, 2023) (.pdf, 750 kb)
1 The USDOT FHWA must consider in its evaluation whether the extent to which the benefits, including those described in 23 U.S.C. 124(f)(3)(B)(i), are more likely than not to outweigh the total project costs (23 U.S.C. 124(f)(3)(B)(ii)).
2 The USDOT FHWA must evaluate whether a Large Bridge project is cost effective based on an analysis of whether the benefits and avoided costs, described in 23 U.S.C. 124(g)(B), are expected to outweigh the project costs (23 U.S.C. 124(g)(4)(C)).