Manideep Tummalapudi, an alumnus of GITAM University has received the 2022 Best Poster Award – First Place in Construction Management category at the Transportation Research Board(TRB) 101st Annual Conference held from 9th - 13th January 2022 at Washington D.C., USA.

The heavy civil and highway construction in the U.S. is critical infrastructure. However, 7 out of 10 highway construction projects are delayed and do not complete on time, $1 out of every $10 invested by the U.S. government on highway construction is wasted due to the construction delays, and a staggering $9.8 billion worth of infrastructure projects were delayed in 2020 alone causing severe burden to the exchequer.  

These delays cause consequences to transportation agencies and also lead to substantial social costs to the public. There are a plethora of factors that cause highway construction delays, one such factor that is often ignored by transportation agencies and other stakeholders in the U.S. is delays that happen during the project closeout phase.
 
Considering the new infrastructure bill that has been passed by the U.S. government to invest $1 trillion in the infrastructure, it is extremely important to perform research that helps to minimize the construction delays, thereby meeting social needs of the public on time and saving public money to the exchequer.

In collaboration with Prof. Christofer Harper at Colorado State University and Prof. Timothy Taylor, University of Kentucky, Manideep has performed a research funded by the National Academies of Science on identifying causes and implications for transportation construction project delays and developed recommended practices for the transportation agencies to minimize highway construction delays in the project closeout phase.

Manideep has presented this research outcome in a poster format at the 2022 -Transportation Research Board 101st Annual Conference, received Best Poster Award and accolades from transportation professions spread across all corners of the U.S.

TRB is a 100-year-old world’s largest prestigious transportation research related conference. Transportation professionals from all across the world attend and present their research every year at the TRB conference. From India, researchers notably from IITs present their research.

Every year, TRB hosts around 14,000 researchers across the world whereas this year due to Covid-19 surge in Omicron cases, TRB hosted about 7,000-8,000 researchers. Manideep’s research paper is one among the 1500 papers that were accepted from 4500 papers received this year by TRB.