Accelerating Delivery at the Front End: Rethinking A&E Contracting for SB 1-Funded Projects
California's Senate Bill 1 (SB 1) provides critical funding for transportation improvements throughout the state, including roadway, bridge, transit, and active transportation projects. Despite significantly increasing transportation infrastructure investment, SB 1 projects continue to face delivery challenges, with nearly 30% experiencing substantial preconstruction delays. These delays often occur during the early stages of project development, including planning, preconstruction, consultant procurement, and contracting activities. Extended timelines can increase costs, reduce the effectiveness of public investments, and delay transportation benefits for California communities.
This research will examine why delays occur during the front-end phases of SB 1-funded projects and identify practical strategies to improve project delivery. The study will focus on architectural and engineering (A&E) contracting processes, including project scoping, consultant selection, procurement procedures, approvals, and coordination among agencies and stakeholders. By studying these processes across state, regional, and local transportation agencies, the project aims to determine the challenges that prevent projects from moving efficiently from concept to implementation.
To achieve these objectives, the research team will review existing studies and agency practices, analyze transportation agency policies and procedures, conduct a statewide survey of transportation professionals, and perform detailed case studies with selected public agencies and consulting firms. Information gathered from these activities will be used to identify recurring challenges, document successful practices, and develop recommendations for improving front-end project delivery.
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
This research will produce a comprehensive understanding of the factors that delay the front-end delivery of SB 1-funded transportation projects in California and develop practical tools and processes to address those challenges. Specifically, the project will generate:
- A statewide assessment of front-end project delivery bottlenecks, including delays in planning, scoping, preconstruction, procurement, consultant selection, approvals, A&E contracting, and the effects of state and federal requirements across agency types.
- Comparative process maps and workflow models documenting project development from project initiation through Notice to Proceed (NTP) across transportation agencies.
- A database of bottlenecks, contributing factors, and best practices identified through surveys, case studies, agency document reviews, and literature reviews.
- Evidence-based recommendations for improving project delivery, procurement, contracting, and approval processes.
- Standardized implementation resources, including templates, workflows, guidance documents, and potential digital decision-support tools for common SB 1 project types.
The proposed research directly responds to agencies’ needs to accelerate project delivery while maintaining transparency, compliance, and equity by providing a cross-agency perspective on challenges and solutions. The results of this research will benefit Californians by helping SB 1-funded transportation projects be delivered more quickly, efficiently, and transparently, ensuring that public investments result in tangible mobility, safety, and accessibility improvements in a timely manner. By identifying and addressing bottlenecks in planning, preconstruction, and A&E procurement, the research supports faster delivery of roadway, bridge, transit, and active transportation projects that Californians rely on for daily travel. Delays in early project phases increase administrative costs, reduce the purchasing power of public funds, and postpone community benefits.
By recommending scalable, evidence-based best practices, this research will help agencies improve front-end efficiency, better manage project risks, and make more effective use of taxpayers’ dollars. These improvements contribute to cost control, improved accountability, and increased public confidence in transportation investment programs such as SB 1. Transportation practitioners can apply the results of this research through practical, actionable recommendations that will be provided on A&E scoping, consultant selection, and contracting approaches that align with project complexity and agency capacity. These recommendations can be adapted by agencies in their existing procedures, including improvements to procurement workflows, standardized tools and templates, and strategies for coordination among planning, engineering, and procurement staff. These outputs are intended to be usable by state, regional, and local agencies without requiring major policy or legislative changes.
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Contact Us
San José State University One Washington Square, San Jose, CA 95192 Phone: 408-924-7560 Email: mineta-institute@sjsu.edu
