Integrated Construction Engineering Activities to Satisfy Challenging Project Objectives

Growing market demands for improved lifecycle performance of facilities are increasing challenges in meeting project objectives. Integrated project delivery and BIM offer significant potential assistance in meeting these challenges, but require change by a set of activities that we will term construction engineering in this paper. The purpose is to identify and describe activities that improve project performance related to cost, schedule, quality, safety, and sustainability and to convincingly illustrate their importance. These activities include designing work process and temporary works, providing construction and permanent resources, and integrating work processes within and between project phases. For each of the major types of project objectives, this paper describes the requirements and implications for different types of projects and the construction engineering activities necessary to satisfy the objective. The applications and conclusions highlight the importance of construction engineering for success in meeting project objectives, the career benefits of this experience, and ways to realize these potential benefits.