Federal-aid Program Administration

ARCHIVED: Price Trends for Federal-Aid Highway Construction

The National Highway Construction Cost Index (NHCCI) is intended as a price index that can be used both to track pure price-changes associated with highway construction costs and to convert current-dollar expenditures on highway construction to real- or constant-dollar expenditures. The NHCCI is intended to replace the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Bid-Price Index (BPI) in the future, but also to be compared with the BPI for historical purposes. This report presents a description of the research into developing a new price index using Oman Systems, Inc. (OSI) Bid-Tabs data and the methodology used to produce the NHCCI on a quarterly basis. A companion document describes the mathematics of the indexing used in NHCCI. The conclusion is that a Fisher Index based on the OSI Bid-Tabs data gives results that are both representative of construction costs as a whole and are consistent with related price indexes, such as the PPI for Highway and Street Construction and the historical BPI.