The Influence of Task Complexity in Shaping Environmental Review and Project Design Durations

The timely completion of environmental review has been highlighted by public agencies and industry alike as a sore point for performance management in transportation projects. In spite of the importance of this issue, few academic studies investigate durations for activities related to the environmental review process and examine which factors significantly influence environmental review and project design empirically. In this study, we observe 540 transportation projects that a state transportation agency completed from 2011 to 2015. We investigate detailed durations for activities during the environmental review process associated with 1) the management of relations with environmental agencies, 2) the management of consultant relations, and 3) internal project management of the environmental review process. Adopting task complexity theories, we then examine the influence of dimensions of task complexity on task performance that is measured by the overall duration of the environmental review process as w...