Highway Construction Price Indexes

Detailed information for 1993

Status:

Inactive

Frequency:

Annual

Record number:

2311

These indexes measured annual price changes for work put in place of a fixed program of highway construction.

Data release - -

Description

These indexes measure annual price changes for work put in place of a fixed program of highway construction. The data are collected from provincial highway departments. Included are estimates of price change for materials such as pipe and asphalt which some provincial departments provide to the road contractors.

Subjects

  • Construction price indexes
  • Prices and price indexes

Data sources and methodology

Sampling

This is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design.

Error detection

Geographical and geological variants make the tracing of a fixed programme difficult. An assumption that the price of a unit of work will drop, the larger the orders, was adopted in the editing process.

Estimation

Indexes of various aggregation levels are calculated by ratio estimates of average unit prices weighted by fixed weighting patterns within each province.

Quality evaluation

All data refer to an April-March fiscal year. As this is basically a census type of survey (almost all the contracts awarded are covered by the survey), the sampling errors common to many surveys are non-existent. However, should there be a convincing reason to do so, bid prices are edited to eliminate extreme values. Prices used for these indexes are bid prices for specified items of work on contracts let by provincial governments for new highway construction. Also included are provincial purchase prices for selected materials provided to the contractors. Excluded are prices for municipal road work and repair and maintenance work. Weights were derived from costs incurred on different elements of work by all provinces in the period 1980 to 1982, valued in 1981 prices. Prior to 1964 the Canada index was a composite of seven provincial indexes; Quebec was added in 1964 and Alberta in 1971. For the Canada total, a Chain-Laspeyres Index Formula is used for the 1986 based series retroactively to the 1981-82 fiscal year.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects that could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

In order to prevent any data disclosure, confidentiality analysis is done using the Statistics Canada Generalized Disclosure Control System (G-Confid). G-Confid is used for primary suppression (direct disclosure) as well as for secondary suppression (residual disclosure). Direct disclosure occurs when the value in a tabulation cell is composed of or dominated by few enterprises while residual disclosure occurs when confidential information can be derived indirectly by piecing together information from different sources or data series.

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