By James F. Gallagher, P.E., F.ASCE
I wish I’d known how critical the implementation of proper planning and risk avoidance techniques can be to successfully completing a project on time and within an established budget.
My introduction to transportation construction occurred in 1987 when I was an intern for a municipal department of streets as part of a local university’s cooperative education program. The project involved the reconstruction and widening of local streets, including underground utility relocation, that would serve as ingress/egress access points for Interstate 95. Although this work gave me firsthand experience in the importance of planning and coordination, I also noticed the reactive (instead of proactive) manner in which changed conditions were addressed. Such conditions rarely received the same level of attention and detail that planning for the base scope of work was originally given.
During the bid process and the early preconstruction phase, there was usually adequate time to prepare an estimate and the preliminary schedule for the initial stages of the project. As the work progressed and the baseline schedule was developed, the schedule evolved from a planning measure to a tool mainly for monitoring work progress and, when necessary, recording lost-time events from unanticipated conditions or unexpected problems.
But back then, few (if any) resources were committed to implementing the sort of risk avoidance and mitigation techniques that have now become the norm in the construction industry.
The ability to deliver work on time and within budget is the cornerstone of any successful transportation construction project. But engineers and other stakeholders need to understand that all projects are likely to experience changes, and one or more delay-causing event can be expected.
Whether the team responds to such changes in a proactive or reactive manner will determine whether the project is successfully completed.
As the current chair of ASCE’s Roadway Council and past chair of the Highway Construction Committee, I’ve long urged my fellow engineers and other transportation and construction industry stakeholders to examine the available literature on risk management techniques.
These measures proactively identify potential cost and scheduling challenges that your firm might face so that you can monitor and plan around them, minimizing their possible impacts on the work.
Moreover, these techniques may help you identify measures to improve project performance. To properly implement these approaches, however, you must make a commitment prior to the start of the project to invest the time and resources necessary to develop and maintain a proper risk management program.
James F. Gallagher, P.E., F.ASCE, is a principal for Resolution Management Consultants Inc.
This article first appeared in the May/June 2026 issue of Civil Engineering as “Wish I’d Known.”
