Technical and Program Support for Highway Policy Analysis

The Federal Highway Administration established this Master IDIQ for technical and policy analysis support on January 7, 2019, with a shared ceiling of $19 million, but ordering closed on January 5, 2024, making this vehicle inactive for new task orders. The vehicle is no longer available for pursuit.

For context on historical activity: 46 task orders were awarded across seven prime contractors between 2019 and September 2021. Combined task-order potential value reached $25.8 million, with $25 million (97% of potential value) obligated. ICF Incorporated, L.L.C. led by order count with 13 awards totaling $4.7 million in potential value, followed by Battelle Memorial Institute with 10 awards and $4.6 million, and Cambridge Systematics, Inc. with 6 awards and $2.6 million. Applied Research Associates, Inc. held the largest single-prime potential value at $5.6 million across 3 orders. All task orders were unrestricted, non-set-aside procurements. The Federal Highway Administration was the sole customer across all 46 orders.

Work contracted included data collection, analysis, and reporting on highway infrastructure investment impacts; travel behavior data systems; vehicle classification and weight data standardization; cost-effectiveness assessments of transportation infrastructure and policy alternatives; highway revenue forecasting and financing tools; traffic monitoring and performance management systems; and policy research support including intergovernmental coordination analysis. Task orders employed firm-fixed-price, time-and-materials, and labor-hours pricing models. Representative 2019–2021 awards ranged from approximately $70,000 to $5.2 million, with the largest single task order at $5.2 million for enhanced data analysis and visualization capability.

Award momentum peaked at 29 orders in 2019, declining to 9 orders in 2020 and 8 in 2021, with no new orders issued after September 2021.

The Federal Highway Office of Policy develops and implements research programs and tools to help answer sophisticated policy questions that can be multifaceted and contentious in nature as well as provide a broad range of policy support functions. This scope of this IDIQ includes assessing the cost-effectiveness and economic impacts of transportation infrastructure investments; assessing how mobility, socio-economic and technology trends are shaping transportation policy needs in the future; assessing options for paying for and efficiently delivering transportation investments; helping facilitate discussion of the policy and strategic implications of the changing transportation system; developing and refining the tools, data and information needed to analyze current trends and emerging issues relating to transportation; developing new tools and refine existing tools for quantitatively assessing the relationships among current and future highway investment, transportation system performance, and the economy; enhancing the agency's strategic planning and performance management processes and products through the development of analytical tools, procedures and reports; developing, improving, and innovating data collection and processing systems and methods with the goal of timely and quality data to enable the monitoring, analysis, and evaluation of transportation system characteristics; designing and implementing national and regional travel behavior data collection and analysis and devise new data collection methods; designing and operating integrated data systems to enable efficient and timely analysis of a broad scope of data; analyzing intergovernmental policy issues relating to the relationships among the Federal government, States, cities, and Indian tribal governments, and investigating broader issues that may impact future policy decisions, budgetary processes, and legislative recommendations; developing and refining the tools and information needed to formulate program policy positions in areas relating to procurement and revenue mechanisms, public-private partnerships, innovative finance and other aspects of project development; undertaking studies relating to the international transfer of transportation innovations and practices and to facilitate international technical collaboration; and developing, obtaining and delivering data and data analysis and management tools, and provide how FHWA can maintain and update such information, on-going analyses and studies.