Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

Over the years, contractors have looked to educational institutions to provide a cadre of skilled construction employees, and to gain access to new construction technologies. Early contractor proponents of construction education considered research to be a necessary educational component of benefit to the contracting community. It now appears that this research objective has been over‐looked and that communication has been lost between contractors and the researchers. The present work attempts to show that the research community, needs the construction industry if construction programs are to survive in the major universities, and that nonengineering construction education programs also need research to provide the teaching personnel and the subject matter for educating students. The construction industry needs research to develop the advanced construction methods and management skills needed to meet competition and increase profits. The research community is asked to expend greater efforts in developing mutual relationships with contractors and technology oriented educational programs. The Construction Research Council (CRC) is proposed as a possible leader in these efforts.

This paper presents a technology transfer $\left(T^2\right)$ model for expert systems (ES). The $T^2$ model describes the stages of $T^2$ process as well as the factors affecting ES adoption in an organizational setting. The decision to adopt ES is heavily influenced by the top management's attitude toward technology and by factors of an environmental, organizational, and technological nature. However, the decision to adopt ES technology is not sufficient for the success of the $T^2$ process. For ES technology to contribute to the improvement of the organizational performance, the ES applications must be of real value to the organization, must be technically correct, and must be properly utilized by the end users. The paper also presents the methodology used for the development of the $T^2$ model and focuses on the flavors and mixins, that is, the alternative strategies from which managers can choose to introduce ES in their firms. The paper shows that for each stage of the $T^2$ process, there is no single way of performing it. Rather, a spectrum of options are available. Which options are chosen is a function of the characteristics of the firm.

Technology for fast‐cure concrete, used in other construction areas in the past, recently found application in highway pavement. During July 1986, a 4‐in. (10.2‐cm) concrete overlay was applied to 7 mi (11.2 km) of U.S. Highway 71 north of Storm Lake, Iowa. The project team developed a new type of concrete mix that cures fast to allow traffic onto the road in only 24 hours. This innovation provides an example of cooperative government‐industry effort and successful procurement policies implemented by a government agency. Initiated as a response to competition from other materials, the development of fast‐track concrete illustrates the process and involvement of many organizations in product innovation. This paper describes the development of paving technologies in Iowa, the formation of an industry association, and the innovation process to bring about technical improvements and cost competitiveness. The implications section describes elements of government policy to foster an increased rate of innovation in U.S. public construction, including supporting increased technical capability, using demonstration projects, encouraging competing technologies.

This paper describes in a clear and understandable way the primary rules of law that are applied to construction contract disputes involving the misrepresentation of concealed or subsurface conditions. The rules are based on the judicial inquiries derived from more than 45 appellate court decisions. The rules are presented in the form of questions to be asked by contractors and contract administrators. The application of these questions should result in a correct determination of the dispute. The questions are organized in an easy‐to‐understand flow chart. The roles of the soil report and site visit and disclaimers clauses are also explained. The rules were tested using another 10 case decisions. The results show considerable consistency in the law and that the outcome is entirely dependent on the facts.

The paper describes the principles, operation, and development of an expert system for progress scheduling in the construction of modular multistory buildings. Objectives of effective scheduling are presented and some rules for attaining them in this type of buildings are suggested. The scheduling in the system is task rather than component oriented. The system plans the execution of tasks in view of various managerial goals, and is very flexible in terms of building activities that it can handle and the amount of data required from the user. The system at its present stage is applicable to residential buildings with reinforced concrete skeletons. Operation of the system includes input processing of the project attributes, estimation of works quantities, generation of activities necessary for their execution, allocation of time and resources to activities, and determination of the schedule. An application example is presented. The knowledge base of the system includes a rule base, a data base, algorithms, context knowledge, and user interface. Further development will involve expansion of the technological domain, alternative managerial policies, and different compositions of floors.

Based on examples of successful construction innovation, this paper makes four principal arguments. First, the notion that owner's demands or problems dominate the innovation process in construction is largely a myth. Second, in most successful processes of construction innovation, technology plays a critical role in inducing owner's demands as well as in formulating problems. Third, in light of the importance of technology in the innovation process in construction, a proactive technology leadership strategy is more feasible than commonly thought. Fourth, effective implementation of technology‐push strategy requires continuous research and development (R&D) efforts that are integrated but informal in nature. Implications and conclusions from these findings include: development of technical capability in specific areas can provide a basis for innovation and competitive advantage, incremental improvement through persistant efforts at all levels of the organization can produce significant long‐term advantages, and viewing technology as a broad opportunity for improvement can arm firms with solutions for project innovation.

Simulators of construction operations often must approximate the underlying distribution of a random process using a standard statistical distribution (e.g., lognormal, normal, and beta). In many of these cases, the underlying distribution of the random process remains unknown to the modeler and its properties have to be inferred from the available sample of data or from experience with similar processes. This paper summarizes the findings of research aimed at investigating the statistical properties of construction duration data. Seventy‐one samples of durations of construction activities are analyzed by: (1) Plotting the sample's coefficient of skewness and kurtosis on a ${\beta }_1‐{\beta }_2$ plane; and (2) constructing histograms for each sample and comparing them with the shapes of known probability density functions. The results of the research indicate that flexible distributions (e.g., the beta distribution and Pearson system) are required to ensure proper modeling for the diversified characteristics of construction duration data.

Heavy construction contractors are continuously looking for better, more economical ways to prepare estimates. They are extremely wary of product advertising that proclaims to have the answer to a contractor's prayers and does everything remotely connected with estimating. Acquisition of estimate programs are vastly different from equipment acquisition, about which the contractor knows about and for which the contractor has access to detailed specifications that can be relied upon for information necessary to make sound decisions. This paper presents methods that enhance the preparation of heavy construction estimates, comments on the status of estimate program development as of 1991, and outlines the major requirements necessary to develop a heavy construction estimate program.

Growing piles of discarded tires create fire and health hazards. Current disposal methods are wasteful and costly. This paper presents the results of an investigation into the potential of shredded tires as fill material in road construction. A test road was built to study the constructability, durability, and performance of tire chips as a new construction material. The road was made up of six sections to examine the effects of (1) Tire‐chip size; (2) method of placement; and (3) soil‐cap thickness on road performance. The field operation proved that use of shredded tires in road construction poses no major handling or placement problems. However, the high compressibility of tire chips and their tendency to shift laterally under compaction equipment need to be noted. The performance of the test road was monitored under freeze‐thaw conditions and under service loads. The road showed acceptable performance with moderate maintenance requirements and minimum undesirable effects on ground water quality under the tested conditions.

It is difficult to quantify the intangible benefits of advanced construction technologies and the risks involved in implementing such technologies with the use of traditional economic analysis techniques. An analytical approach to assessing the intangible aspects of technical innovation in construction is presented. The approach uses the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique and incorporates both favorable and unfavorable evaluation factors in one framework. The methods for constructing the comparison matrices, measuring the consistency of the pairwise comparisons, and aggregating the eigenvectors for the matrices to produce a final result are discussed. The sources of information for evaluation using the AHP method are identified and the significance of the method as a communication tool for group discussion is addressed. An example evaluation of two tower‐crane alternatives, one traditional and one semiautomated, is given to demonstrate the viability of the proposed approach. The effect of the managerial judgments on the acceptability of a new technology alternative is shown via a sensitivity analysis.

Using the site‐layout task as an example to compare existing practices and tools used in industry and research environments, this paper puts artificial intelligence (AI) modeling techniques in perspective. The site‐layout task is characterized, field practice is described, and a thorough review of available tools for layout product modeling (including physical models and computer‐aided design tools) and process modeling (using AI as well as operations research methods) is presented. A rationale is provided for why many such tools have failed to gain widespread use in the construction industry. Comparing the capabilities as well as the data and knowledge needs of computer programs with those of construction practitioners reveals a large discrepancy, which is also apparent when fitting the layout literature in a comprehensive table. This paper argues that AI‐based systems can reduce this discrepancy by better matching model capabilities with industry needs, and, therefore, suggests that such models will become valuable decision‐support tools for construction management.

This paper's dual intent is to assist contract administrators in better understanding the impact of contractor failure and to aid them in establishing adequate evaluation programs prior to contract award using quantitative data. Failure is defined in this study as a significant breach of the contractor's legal responsibilities to the owner (for example, bankruptcy or material breach of contract related to meeting the desired project objectives such as cost, schedule, and quality). This study quantitatively documents both the amount of owner evaluation performed prior to contract award and subsequent monitoring during the construction process and correlates these efforts with the actual project outcome, either failure or nonfailure. A survey used to collect data prompted responses from 82 different organizations representing both public and private owner concerns; they provided information for a total of 107 projects. Of these, 44 involved a contractor failure. Results demonstrated a significant increase in final project cost and schedule duration as a result of the contractor's failure. The practical considerations regarding contractor failure are also presented.