Working Conditions of Public-Transport Drivers (ARESEP)

Costa Rica’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (ARESEP) commissioned this study to answer a very concrete question: how long do bus drivers actually work, how much of that time is spent driving, and how should that translate into fair compensation? We answered it with both hard numbers and human context: building time-and-motion instruments for a quantitative field study, and running focus groups with drivers for the qualitative side, a combination that required careful coordination between analytical teams working across methodological lines.

My role was project manager across the full research cycle. I managed the consultants responsible for each research component, both quantitative and qualitative, ensuring methodological consistency and quality across strands that were often pulling in different directions. I also led the political-administrative interface with ARESEP, our institutional counterpart, and presented interim and final results directly to regulatory stakeholders.

The work produced a differentiated suite of communication products: technical reports, policy briefs, and data visualizations, that provided the evidentiary basis for regulatory decisions at the national level.