Contract Prices for Road Construction as a Function of Landform

Abstract

In the context of the terrain conditionings, the volatility of unit prices of road construction in Europe and Poland was analyzed. On the basis of the price volatility index of twelve contracts concluded in 2016 by the Directorate of National Roads and Motorways (DDKiA), there was little variation in the average construction prices of 1 km of technical class S expressways on flat and undulating terrain, over a large area of Poland, above Wrocław and Lublin towards the north. However, also for the expressway, but in mountainous terrain in Małopolska, between Lubień and Chabówka, on three sections of S7, together with a length of 15.8 km, the coefficient of variation in unit prices was very large (5.7 times greater than in the flat and corrugated areas mentioned above). Among the reasons for this high price volatility, it was pointed out that it was necessary to adapt to difficult mountain conditions through the use of specialized technical solutions, costly in implementation and other on almost every of these sections. Necessary were, among others over a 2-kilometer tunnel (many times more expensive than the other sections of the route), intensive reinforcement of escarpments with ground nails (with a total length of over 350 km) and foundation of embankments on gravel columns, as well as construction of numerous flyovers, viaducts and bridges with a total length of 5,752 km. Attention was also paid to the necessity of taking into account the proportion of the tunnel’s length to the length of the remaining road section, as this is a condition of correct expenditure analysis.