Comparative analysis of quality assurance acceptance methods in highway construction projects

State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) in the United States are experiencing staffing shortages that challenge their ability to maintain consistent Quality assurance (QA) acceptance procedures across material categories (project-produced materials [PP], standard manufactured products [SMP], and plant-produced/prefabricated materials [PPPM]) and project profiles (low, medium, and high). The objective of this paper is to quantify and benchmark how three QA acceptance methods: sampling/testing, certification, and inspection, are reported by state DOT practitioners as being deployed across these categories and profiles. 38 responses from AASHTO Committee on Construction members and agencies were collected. The analysis combined descriptive statistics, Spearman rank correlation, hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), and the Kruskal–Wallis (KW) test. KW tests detected no statistically significant differences in reported usage across the three project profiles for any method–material combination. Spearman analysis revealed a strong, statistically significant co-use of sampling/testing and inspection for SMP (ρ = 0.79, p < 0.001) across all profiles, and exploratory HCA grouped certification into a distinct, profile-invariant cluster separate from the field-verification methods. This study sheds light on the QA acceptance practices across material categories and highway project profiles and provide actionable insights for state DOTs to balance QA acceptance procedures with limited inspection and testing resources.