A Social Cost Calculator for Utility Construction Projects

Over the past ten years the significance of costs burdened by parties not engaged in the contractual agreement (social costs) is gaining growing acknowledgment by city planners, municipal administrators and the engineering community. For many years the trenchless technology industry promoted the consideration of social costs in the project planning process. A key obstacle for such consideration is the lack of consistent methodologies for calculating the various social cost categories and a unit cost database that supports the utilization of such methodologies. While several researchers studied various social cost categories and proposed methodologies for estimating their monetary value, there is no single source where all that information is compiled in a highly accessible, user friendly and comprehensive manner. The need for such an automated social cost estimation tool led to the creation of a Social Cost Calculator (SCC). The SCC guides the user through an interactive interface to yield a more complete cost forecast taking into account the project specific parameters, calculating user travel delay costs, increased vehicle operating costs, pavement repair costs, decreased property values due to noise pollution, and loss of parking space. The user is aided by an extensive built-in database that provides unit cost data and typical traffic information for various road configurations. The paper describes the algorithms used by the SCC, the mathematical formulations deployed and database structure. The usefulness of the SCC is demonstrated by employing it for computing the social costs for a case history associated with utility construction projects comparing a trenching project and a microtunneling operation.