QUALITY IMPROVEMENT.

SEC. 303. QUALITY IMPROVEMENT. (a) Life-Cycle Cost Analysis.—Section 106 of title 23, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following: “(e) Life-Cycle Cost Analysis.— “(1) Establishment.—The Secretary shall establish a program to require States to conduct an analysis of the life-cycle costs of each usable project segment on the National Highway System with a cost of $25,000,000 or more. “(2) Analysis of the life-cycle costs defined.—In this subsection, the term ‘analysis of the life-cycle costs’ means a process for evaluating the total economic worth of a usable project segment by analyzing initial costs and discounted future costs, such as maintenance, reconstruction, rehabilitation, restoring, and resurfacing costs, over the life of the project segment.”. (b) Value Engineering.—Such section is further amended by adding at the end the following: “(f) Value Engineering for NHS.— 109 STAT. 579 “(1) Requirement.—The Secretary shall establish a program to require States to carry out a value engineering analysis for all projects on the National Highway System with an estimated total cost of $25,000,000 or more. “(2) Value engineering defined.—In this subsection, the term ‘value engineering analysis’ means a systematic process of review and analysis of a project during its design phase by a multidisciplined team of persons not involved in the project in order to provide suggestions for reducing the total cost of the project and providing a project of equal or better quality. Such suggestions may include combining or eliminating otherwise inefficient or expensive parts of the original proposed design for the project and total redesign of the proposed project using different technologies, materials, or methods so as to accomplish the original purpose of the project.”.