Reference no: EM133982168
Assignment:
At 4:31 a.m. on January 17, 1994, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake hit Los Angeles and collapsed large sections of four major freeways, snarling one million commuters in daily gridlock for the indefinite future.
Clearly, solutions to this crisis were of the highest priority.
Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation, sprung into action with a three-pronged attack.
First, they rushed into emergency response, fanning out to conduct visual inspections and close dangerous segments of the roads and freeways.
Second, they initiated interim traffic management strategies for all closed segments, utilizing parallel streets and old bypass roads to expand their capacity, change their signage and striping, and redirect adjacent traffic including traffic signal timing.
Last, they planned for speedy demolition and rebuilding of the damaged portions of the freeways. Time was all important and Caltrans used every tradeoff available to expedite the repairs which would normally take years to complete.
1. California's governor signed an Emergency Declaration allowing Caltrans to streamline its contracting procedures so that RFPs, bids, and evaluations that usually took four months could be completed in five days.
2. Significant incentives/disincentives were built into the contracts, the incentive depending on the value of the construction under consideration. One firm spent heavily on overtime, extra equipment rentals, and bonuses to keep working 24 hours a day, rain or shine, and came in 74 days ahead of a contractual date of 140 days, thereby earning a $14.8 million bonus that became the talk of the town!
3. All resources of the Federal Highway Administration were made available to work with Caltrans.
4. "Force Account" contracting was employed for immediate selection of sole-source contractors.
The contractor then began work immediately under the direction of a Caltrans Resident Engineer.
5. Major project management processes were initiated including disaster response and an earthquake recovery task force consisting of top executives in local and national governmental agencies.
6. Millions in additional funds were made available through Caltrans' Director, a declaration of a state of emergency by President Clinton, and eventually Congress.
Source: J. B. Baxter, "Responding to the Northridge Earthquake," PM Network, November 1994, pp. 13-22.
a. Of the six constraints, which were cost trade-offs, and which were performance trade-offs?
b. In what way were the performance trade-offs been made and how did they affect performance?
c. What kinds of resource allocation approaches were used in this situation?