Editor’s Note

“Measuring Quality Writing of Construction Specifications.” Quality writing of construction specifications is one of the greatest challenges facing construction contractors or their representatives in today’s business environment. Although the construction business environment has moved toward modernization of some of its business processes, claims arising from construction continue to rise. Kululanga and Price present the procedures that underlie the quality writing of construction specifications and give a management tool for facilitating the measurement of that quality writing. The authors also present the results of construction contractors’ practices on the quality writing of construction specifications.

“Issues in Subcontracting Practice:” Subcontractors are very important to the successful completion of most construction projects, yet the many issues involved in subcontracting practice are seldom acknowledged. A literature review indicates that these issues include the timeliness of the payments by general contractors, the selection process of subcontractors, subcontractor bonding, and many others. Arditi and Chotibhongs administer a questionnaire survey to subcontractors, general contractors, and construction owners to investigate these issues and to determine the differences in perception between the parties. Recommendations are made on the basis of the findings to minimize the negative effects of the issues.

“Benefit-Cost Metrics for Design Coordination of MEP Systems in Multistory Buildings.” Design coordination of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems in buildings is a multidisciplinary effort to locate equipment, route distribution systems, and resolve interferences between systems that can cause field conflicts. Riley, Varadan, James, and Thomas present research performed to explore the costs of design coordination in concert with the benefits of eliminating coordination conflicts that arise in the field. A standard method to measure the costs of coordination is also developed for case study projects.

“Quality and Change Management Model for Large-Scale Concurrent Design and Construction Projects.” The main sources of risk that have been identified with concurrent design and construction projects are iterative cycles that result from unanticipated errors and changes and their subsequent impacts on project performance. As an effort to address these detrimental impacts, Lee, Peña-Mora, and Park propose a framework for quality and change management that identifies those negative iterative cycles. The proposed framework is incorporated into the system dynamics model of Dynamic Planning and Control Methodology (DPM), which has been developed to evaluate negative impacts of errors and changes on construction performance.

“Project Management Education and Training Process for Career Development.” Fisher, Scluter, and Toleti aim to improve organizations’ core competency in construction project management in a focused and systematic manner with the help of a formalized education and training model. The authors describe the development of such a model for education and training standards for career development at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The goal of creating a defined procedure to identify and quantify project management gaps and strengths was achieved by administering a survey followed by a questionnaire, the results of which lead to a customized training and development path.

“Organizing Constructability Knowledge for Design.” To utilize contractors’ constructability expertise effectively, the right information must be made available to the design team at the proper point in time and at the appropriate level of detail. Today’s methods for utilizing construction knowledge in design are typically rudimentary, unstructured, inefficient, and reliant on reviews. Pulaski and Horman introduce a model for organizing constructability information based on timing and levels of detail. A description of how the model was developed is described, and the model is tested on six case study projects to assess applicability on different projects.

“Reduction of Short-Interval GPS Data for Construction Operations Analysis.” GPS data must be collected at short time intervals in order to provide the level of detail necessary for operations analysis. Thus, an issue arises in managing the large amount of data and identifying the relatively key records that mark the start and stop of activities. Hildreth, Vorster, and Martinez develop a methodology for making decisions based on GPS data and present the procedures developed to identify the key records necessary to calculate activity durations. A case study is used to illustrate application of the system to an earthmoving operation.

“International Expansion Decision Model for Construction Companies.” Because the complex international environment is affected by diverse factors and creates risks that are not well understood by companies that are active mostly in domestic markets, it is essential for construction companies to follow a disciplined and well-informed strategy when deciding whether to enter international markets. Gunhan and Arditi develop a model based on the analytic hierarchy process, improved by the addition of a Delphi survey, to structure the interactions between the complex factors of entering the international market in order to facilitate the decision of whether to expand to foreign markets.