Editor's Note

“Critical Success Factors for Public∕Private Partnerships in Infrastructure Development”: Different types of public/private partnerships have been practiced throughout the world with diverse results. Zhang identifies, analyzes, and categorizes various critical success factors for public∕private partnerships, then develops a CSF package containing five main aspects for evaluating the probability of a successfully completed project.

“Production System Loading—Cycle Time Relationship in Residential Construction”: Bashford, Walsh, and Sawhney address current management issues in the mass production of residential homes that hurt fiscal performance. The relationships between cycle times, work in process, system throughput, new construction starts, and the capacity of the production system are examined and a foundation for further study is created with the hopes of sparking the development of new construction management tools which factor in characteristics that have historically not been included in construction management models.

“Building Better: Technical Support for Construction”: Due to the increasing complexity of many constructed facilities, significant changes in design and construction are taking place. Tatum identifies and describes nine critical activities to increase technical support for construction.

“Estimating the Acceptability of New Formwork Systems Using Neural Networks”: Elazouni, Ali, and Abdel-Razek discuss the use of neural networks in modeling construction problems requiring analogy-based solutions. Using a test group of 40 users in Egypt, a set of six performance characteristics that mostly pertain to acceptability estimating was identified. The study used the analytical hierarchy process to develop pairs of the characteristics and the corresponding acceptability values, which were then utilized to train neural networks.

“Fuzzy Logic Approach for Activity Delay Analysis and Schedule Updating”: Oliveros and Fayek present a fuzzy logic model that integrates daily site reporting of activity progress and delays with a schedule updating and forecasting system for construction project monitoring and control. The model developed assists in the analysis of the effects of delays on a project’s completion date. The model makes a contribution in project scheduling by developing a complete approach for handling the uncertainty inherent in schedule updating and activity delay analysis.

“Quantifying Levels of Wasted Time in Construction with Meta-Analysis”: Horman and Kenley draw upon the methodology of meta-analysis to provide a synthesis of the findings of $30\text{years}$ worth of studies documenting time wasted in construction activities. The analysis reveals that a shockingly high average percentage of time in construction is devoted to wasteful activity.

“Fuzzy Decision Framework for Contractor Selection”: As construction clients are becoming more aware that selecting a contractor based solely on tender price is quite risky, evaluation of contractors based on multiple criteria is becoming more popular. Singh and Tiong present a systematic procedure based on fuzzy set theory to evaluate the capability of a contractor to deliver the project as per the owner’s requirements. The notion of Shapely value is used to determine the global value or relative importance of each criterion in accomplishing the overall objective of the decision-making process.

“Paving the Way for Public∕Private Partnerships in Infrastructure Development”: Infrastructure privatization has multidimensional impacts with long-term uncertainties and wide risk portfolios. Zhang identifies six broadly-classified barriers to public∕private partnerships. Addressing the issues presented, the writer proposes an improved public∕private partnership protocol for infrastructure projects, tackling key issues in nine crucial areas.

“Applying Pareto Ranking and Niche Formation to GA-Based Multiobjective Time-Cost Optimization”: Time-cost optimization is one of the greatest challenges in construction project planning and control, since the optimization of either time or cost is usually at the expense of the other. Zheng, Ng, and Kumaraswamy propose a genetic algorithms-driven multiobjective model for time-cost optimization. The model integrates the adaptive weight to balance the priority of each objective according to the performance of the previous “generation.”

“EnvironalPlanning: Analytic Network Process Model for Environmentally Conscious Construction Planning”: In their paper, Chen, Li, and Wong address the problem of how to select the best construction plan based on distinguishing the degree of its potential adverse environmental impacts. After reviewing environmental issues and their characteristics in construction, the writers employ the characteristics to structure two decision models for environmentally conscious construction.

“Cost Impacts, Scheduling Impacts, and the Claims Process during Construction”: Construction mismanagement results in multiple problems that can cascade throughout the workforce chain, affecting the schedule and leading to damages to multiple parties. Chester and Hendrickson present a case study of a project with seven different mismanagement scenarios. Damages resulting from each problem are quantified after which a discussion is presented outlining possible preventative steps to minimize the damages from the problems presented.

“Performance Evaluation for Cost Estimators by Reliability Interval Method”: Addressing the difficulties in evaluating a consultant’s performance, Yiu, Ho, Lo, and Hu develop a Consultant’s Performance Evaluation Model for the evaluation of the performance of cost estimators in the construction industry of Hong Kong. A Reliability Interval Method is developed to assess the importance weighting of each criterion, after which the results show that traditional functions of cost estimators are the least treasured from the clients.

“Cost of Site Clearance and Verification Operation in the Gulf of Mexico”: Studying nearly 300 jobs performed by B&J Martin, Inc., from 1997–2001, Kaiser, Pulsipher, and Martin examine the cost of site clearance and verification operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Based on their research, the writers estimate the expected size and potential value of the site clearance verification market in the Gulf of Mexico. A major conclusion of the analysis is that the cost of site-clearance verification is a time-variant site-dependent function that cannot be predicted prior to performing the service.

“Automating Schedule Review for Expressway Construction”: Dzeng, Tserng, and Wang suggest an automated schedule review as a solution to reduce problems stemming from human schedule review. A module-based schedule generation and review model is presented, including a Network Builder Assistant computer system in addition to another computer system, designated Network Review Assistant. An evaluation conducted using real projects supports the use of the model.

“Cost of Abrasive Cutting in Decommissioning Operations in the Gulf of Mexico”: Kaiser, Pulsipher, and Byrd examine data collected over a $3\text{‐}\text{year}$ period from 2000–2002 regarding the cost of abrasive cutting operations associated with decommissioning offshore structures in the Gulf of Mexico. Relations are derived that estimate the time and cost of a cutting operation based on various descriptor variables. A major conclusion of the analysis is that the cost of abrasive cutting is structure independent.