FRA’s FINAL CAPITAL COST ESTIMATING GUIDANCE IS AVAILABLE HERE

FRA developed this capital cost estimating guidance for project sponsors and the railroad industry as part of its continuing efforts to provide technical assistance and ensure successful project delivery.

By following this guidance, project sponsors’ cost estimates should become more reliable, and project as-built costs should land within a reasonable range of estimated costs. By using a consistent estimating approach, project sponsors should be able to easily compare estimates from similar projects, to conduct order-of-magnitude or reasonability checks.   

This guidance will be incorporated by reference into FRA’s Notices of Funding Availability/Opportunity and grant and loan agreements. FRA expects project sponsors to adhere to this guidance, and the principles and methods described herein.

Notice of the draft guidance was provided to the public through the Federal Register and a comment period was held between July 13 and August 29, 2016. No comments were received.