Currently, a project for organizing the transportation of perishable freights by “Cold Express” trains is under development, which is a new transport product aimed at delivering food, agricultural raw materials and other highly profitable goods to cities where regular container trains are impractical. The article discusses the economic efficiency of the investment project for organizing the transportation of freights in regular refrigerated container trains on the example of the Vladivostok—Moscow—St. Petersburg route, taking into account the arrangement of at least 18 container sites capable of handling transit container trains. Transportation according to the “Cold Express” concept involves the delivery of freights on the Vladivostok— Moscow—St. Petersburg route to associated large cities by container train loaded with refrigerated and insulated containers, according to a developed schedule with a known arrival and departure time. Capacity of the freight transportation market on the pilot route of the “Cold Express” is 2.0 million tons with the development of transportation in both directions when reaching the design capacity. Freight traffic will be formed by 23 stops on the route, 2 port hubs, 2 border land crossings with a traffic size of 7 pairs of trains per week. As part of the project, an assessment was made of the need for the local reconstruction of passing stations and equipping them with new ones or refurbishing existing container terminals. At the same time, the commissioning of these terminals is supposed to be gradual within 7 years of the project, which also allows gradually increasing the freight base and improving the quality of transportation. The article presents the results of calculations of the commercial efficiency of the project for the Russian Railways as the owner of the infrastructure, carrier and operator of these container terminals, which show its high prospects. Even with an incomplete train load predicted due to uneven density of freight traffic, the net discounted payback period is 10 years.

Introduction. The purpose of this research project is to study the development of construction digitalization methods and means. Substantial discrepancies between the state digitalization policy and the practice of mastering digital instruments in the course of construction and investment activities hinder the high-quality implementation of certain tasks. Of particular interest is the problem of calculating capital expenditures at various stages of implementation of an investment project. Materials and methods. Methodological approaches to digitalization problems are based on the pricing subsystem extracted from the information model of a project. This subsystem is used to address the main pricing tasks pursued by the government authorities and construction industry contractors implementing their own digitalization options. Conflicting interests of different participants in construction and investment projects, as well as the variance in the informatisation stra­tegy, implemented at the previous stages, substantially complicate the search for a solution that equally satisfies the state and the business community. Results. The authors have identified the need to devise consistent state-level methodological approaches to developing information modelling architecture, taking into account the current practice of construction cost budgeting in the course of project management. Towards this end, the logical structure of the “Pricing” subsystem was developed using the information modelling technologies. Design companies, technical clients, project managers, and construction contractors must have equal rights to access and handle construction cost data. Conclusions. The authors have found a discrepancy between state approaches to construction project budgeting and cost management practices at the stages of construction project implementation. No large-scale transition to information mode­lling is feasible without the adoption of unified methodological solutions in terms of cost calculations.

Material and technical supply is traditionally considered as a set of activities united by one project purpose. As a rule, a hierarchical approach to management functions is not applied and the links between management functions are determined by the classical form of the implementation of a construction project. The selection of the best types of material resources and its component that is the costs determined by the properties of the applied materials are becoming a key link in project management in modern Russia. This is an important scientific phenomenon. The research of this phenomenon allows finding the problem points in costing and the solution to the problems of the increase in the efficiency of building materials assembly through them. The relevance of this research is important for those countries where there is strong regulation of the estimated cost. The authors of the paper propose the measures to improve the efficiency of the choice of construction materials due to a more reliable determination of the estimated cost. For this, there are two ways to improve the project bill of materials: through the improvement of the regulatory framework and management of the process of the application of this framework. The quality level of resource and cost norms is a paramount problem in conditions of state regulation. This is intensified by the use of the basic costing method. The lag of norms calculated at the basic cost level can not be compensated for the use of conversion indices due to territorial and industrial classification. The attempts to create in Russia a unified information system for setting costs for construction products have not yet had measurable results. This results in a large percentage of outdated regulations that take into account materials with insufficient usability. The participants of the construction process have to spend large human resources to manage material resources in projects. The process of management in terms of material and technical equipment of construction is on top in terms of importance in the field of project management in transport construction. The quality of the projects being implemented largely depends on the success in the improvement of the regulatory framework.

Introduction. The focus on transition to the input method of estimated cost accounting, demonstrated by the leaders of the construction industry, outlines the principal goals pursued in the process of improving the pricing system. The monitoring of prices for construction resources gains in importance. The research is based on the analysis of the construction industry’s current need for updated regulatory information and an improved pricing methodology. Materials and methods. A relevant problem of pricing, which is now quality-driven, has been solved by the construction industry amidst the strengthening role of government agencies. Presently, pricing is driven by the factors that characterize the course of an investment process, primarily, promoted by the customer. This methodology encompasses the assessment of pricing regulations with a required extent of generalization in terms of any submitted data. Results. The experiment conducted to assess the established pricing regulations in terms of special construction facilities has proven the maximal significance of factors, describing a construction project stage as a correlation between estimated and actual costs incurred by a construction company. Against the background of impeded introduction of changes into costing standards, a pool of solutions has been generated to monitor prices for construction resources and to generate price escalation models. Conclusions. The best methods used to adapt standard prices to actual costs of construction products should involve the monitoring of prices for the whole range of construction resources. Methodological problems are to be solved in a way that must improve the trustworthiness of estimated construction costs. The novelty and practical significance of this research stem from the analysis of the current development stage of the system of federal and industry-specific regulations and methodologies.

The paper considers the issues of improvement of the evaluation methods of new materials in construction. The features of regulatory control over the use of resources in Russia are characterized by the presence of a dual approach to choosing a regulatory framework, which in some cases leads to incorrect choice of materials. Engineering solutions during design are closely dependent on the cost parameters laid down in the regulatory and methodological framework. As a result, the problem of improving norms and methodologies is relevant for highly significant regulation. The property of recursivity of design solutions, normative support of construction and quantitative parameters of construction materials used in the design of structures is noted. The mutual influence of the process of developing standards and their further application in projects made it possible to use the recurrent formula tool for pre-design analysis of the possibility of using certain materials. The method allows performing a separate analysis of the possibility of application in projects for different materials, which can be useful when introducing new materials. On the basis of the proposed calculation method, conclusions on the need to improve the process of developing standards were drawn. The main problems of regulating the consumption of construction resources at the present stage are formulated. The need to design new standards based on the practice of applying new materials in construction projects was noted. The paper suggests the mechanisms to solve the problem of improving the reliability of determining a set of construction materials when designing construction works in transport construction, which would reduce the time for developing new and updating the existing standards. The assessment of the applicability of construction materials should not remain within the framework of subjective decisions of the engineering practice; on the contrary, it should improve the calculation methods to justify the applicability of materials.