Editor’s Note

“Partnering Mechanism in Construction: An Empirical Study on the Chinese Construction Industry.” Tang, Duffield, and Young note that little research outlines the mechanism behind the application of partnering used to improve the efficiency of project delivery. The authors present the findings of a study that was conducted to develop and test a partnering model that reveals the relationships between the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of partnering and demonstrates their importance to construction. With support of data collected from the Chinese construction industry, the study reveals strong correlations among partnering CSFs, risk management, Total Quality Management, use of incentives, and project performance.

“Comparing Procurement Methods for Design-Build Projects.” Selecting the right design-build team is a very important issue associated with design-build delivery. El Wardani, Messner, and Horman quantitatively analyze the correlation between the design-build procurement method and the performance of the design-build project, with regard to cost, time, and quality metrics. Data were collected through surveys from 76 design-build projects in the United States. Based on the patterns and relationships identified in the data, a better understanding of the procurement process and how it influences project performance is achieved.

“CAPM-Based Valuation of Financial Government Supports to Infeasible and Risky Private Infrastructure Projects.” Driven by acute fiscal problems and disenchantment with the performance of publicly delivered quality services, many governments in both industrial and developing countries are now relying on the private sector to deliver infrastructure services. In this situation, it is not uncommon for governments to support private infrastructure financing. Andreas Wibowo discusses the theoretical framework of the valuation of the financial impact of support on the cost of debt, cost of equity, expected return on equity, and the project’s net present value. Special focus is placed on a minimum revenue guarantee, a direct cash subsidy, and a subsidized subordinated debt.

“Offshore Decommissioning Cost Estimation in the Gulf of Mexico.” Offshore decommissioning operations are more uncertain and costly than onshore due to the hostile ocean environment, and cost estimation is an important aspect of the business since engineers, project managers, and financial accountants frequently perform cost estimates in support of evaluating decommissioning alternatives, divestiture opportunities, and liability assessment. Author Mark Kaiser aims to provide an overview of the factors that impact the primary stages of decommissioning and to describe a general methodology to estimate cost functions.

“Particle Swarm Optimization for Preemptive Scheduling under Break and Resource-Constraints.” Zhang, Li, and Tam introduce a particle swarm optimization-based methodology to implement preemptive scheduling under break and resource-constraints (PSBRC) for construction projects. The PSBRC under study allows the preemptive activities to be interrupted in off-working time and not to resume immediately in the next working period because all the limited resources are to be reallocated during the break. The set of priorities deciding the order to start the activities or restart the interrupted activities is represented by the multidimensional particle position. Particle swarm optimization is applied to find the optimal schedule for the PSBRC and transforms the particle-represented priorities to a schedule.

“Automated Statistical Analysis in Stochastic Project Scheduling Simulation.” To aid practitioners in producing a realistic prediction of the probability of completing a project in a specified time, Lee and Arditi describe an approach known as a Stochastic Simulation-Based Scheduling System (S3). S3 integrates the deterministic critical path, the probabilistic program evaluation and review technique, and the stochastic discrete event simulation approaches into a single system, which lets the scheduler make an informed decision as to which method is better suited to the company’s risk-taking culture.

“Empirical Evaluation of Structural Frame Performance Criteria: Realizing the Potential of Hybrid Concrete Construction.” Soetanto, Dainty, Glass, and Price explain that despite its enormous potential to improve performance hybrid concrete construction is currently underutilized. Results from a survey of U.K. experienced clients, engineers, architects, surveyors, and contractors revealed seven Structural Frame Performance Criteria (SFPC) dimensions. These dimensions aid in improving the decision-making process when selecting an appropriate structural frame during early project stages by providing a simple list of performance criteria to be considered.

“Application of Lean Concepts and Simulation Analysis to Improve Efficiency of Drainage Operations Maintenance Crews.” To develop improved work methods and engineered productivity standards for the various drainage operation, Agbulos, Mohamed, Al-Hussein, AbouRizk, and Roesch present a study focusing on six drainage operations maintenance crews in Edmonton. The study utilized the concept of work simplification to improve crew work methods, to develop an established work standard, and to verify the proposed improvement based on the simulation mode’s output.

“Web-Services Environment for Collaborative Management of Product Life Cycle Costs.” El-Diraby presents a web-based semantic system for managing products’ life-cycle costs, the basic architecture of which represents costs as a hierarchy of cost elements. Through the analysis of different impact possibilities and probabilities, a decision maker can study various alternative scenarios and define the optimum set of costs and their values. The semantic nature of the system allows for it to be an integral part of a corporate memory system, where decision makers will be able to document and access lessons learned about life-cycle cost optimization.

“Measuring Project Level Productivity on Transportation Projects.” Ellis and Lee introduce the development of a method for measuring and analyzing the project level productivity of all project activity over the life of a project. The authors note that a key aspect of the measurement method is the development of a process to combine multiple simultaneous work activity productivity values into a global productivity value for the project. Three case studies, including the collection of thousands of productivity values, were performed on highway construction projects to demonstrate the validity of the analysis method.

“Analysis of Construction Worker Injuries That Do Not Result in Lost Time.” Some injuries may be either minor or serious depending on small differences in worker position. However, the assumption that the root causes of serious injuries could lead to identifying approaches to prevent the recurrence of similar injuries in the future as well as eliminating many minor injuries does not appear to be valid for most injuries. Hinze, Devenport, and Giang examine nearly 136,000 construction worker injuries, most of which did not result in lost time. Results indicate that these injuries, not resulting in lost time, generally do not fit the profile of injuries that result in fatalities or that are serious.