Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

Evaluation of construction claims history can provide an understanding of improvement opportunities in a capital projects portfolio. This study analyzed cases of construction litigation involving the U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) for the period of 1982–2002, extracted from the historical trial decision record of the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals (ASBCA). The study provides trend data for all “first time” construction litigation cases brought before the Board over the last $21\text{years}$ and a total of 666 cases involving NAVFAC construction contracts were identified over this period. The characterization of these cases was accomplished through a review and tabulation of ASBCA identified “primary” causes and a subjective analysis of “root” causes from a random sample extracted from the total population. The random sample data set totals 30 cases and was taken from cases litigated in the last $10\text{years}$ (1993–2002). Findings and recommendations based on root causes, including specific recommendations are provided for NAVFAC and practitioners in other organizations.

Change orders represent one of the largest sources of cost growth on building construction projects. Field generated, or “unforeseen” change orders can also be highly disruptive to field productivity. Design-build delivery methods can potentially help minimize change orders on construction projects. This study was performed to closely examine the effects of delivery methods on the frequency and magnitude of change orders in mechanical construction, and how design-build business practices can be used to minimize the frequency of field generated chance orders. In a study of 598 change orders occurring on 120 construction projects performed by the same contractor, the total number of change orders was found to be close to the same on design-build and design-bid-build projects, however an 87% decrease in the average number of unforeseen change orders was observed on design-build projects versus design-bid-build projects. In addition, the average size of unforeseen change orders was 86% smaller on design-build projects. A detailed and qualified presentation of the research methodology and resulting data is provided. Key attributes and business practices leading to the results are discussed and practical applications of this research for owners and contractors are provided.

If a project is implemented using a project-finance approach, the debt service payment relies solely on the project cash flows and its assets. This paper identifies, quantifies, and evaluates major financial risks associated with project-financed toll road projects in Indonesia. Ordering payments by priority level, subject to cash availability, enables risk to be evaluated from the different perspectives of multiple parties involved. The paper makes use of Latin Hypercube simulations for risk analysis because they deal with problems involving large and complex systems. To better illustrate the concept, a case study is presented. A sensitivity analysis of the impact of delay-in-adjustment risk and of the adoption of a new regulation related to the toll adjustment is performed and discussed. Simulation results show that the project sponsor fares worse as delay-in-adjustment risk increases but that the creditor can fare better, given that the risk level is low or moderate. Output statistics also reveal that the adoption of the new regulation has negative impact on the project cash flows from both the project sponsor’s and the creditor’s perspectives under different scenarios associated with delay-in-adjustment risk.

The objective of the study presented in this paper is to provide owners with a decision-making mechanism that will free them from automatically taking the typical “transfer the risk to a surety” option and will allow them to make intelligent and economical decisions that include retaining or avoiding the risk of contractor default. The methodology involves using artificial neural network (ANN) and a genetic algorithm (GA) training strategies to predict the risk of contractor default. Prediction rates of 75 and 88% were obtained with the ANN and GA training strategies, respectively. The model is of relevance to owners because once the likelihood of contractor default is predicted and the owner’s risk behavior is established, the owner can make a decision to retain, transfer, or avoid the risk of contractor default. It is of relevance to surety companies too as it may speed up the process of bonding and of reaching more reliable and objective bond/not bond decisions. The comparative use of the ANN and GA training strategies is of particular relevance to researchers.

Energy sector capital projects typically cost hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars. Managing the engineered equipment is important not only because of their high dollar value but also because the long manufacturing lead times often drive the overall project schedules. In recent years, several supplier alliances have been successfully implemented on such projects leading to initial price savings in the range from 6 to 10%. This paper presents the result of a study to assess the opportunities and barriers with such partnerships. Interviewed company executives perceived that time savings and quality improvements, mostly due to the suppliers’ specialized expertise, are of much greater value than a lower bid price. Most surprisingly, very few companies use metrics to measure performance, thus leaving them in the dark on the question of how well an alliance worked or why it failed. The relevance of the presented work is in the amount of actual field data that has been generated and processed.

This paper presents a new algorithm, called the enumerative branch-and-cut procedure (EBAC), for minimizing the total project duration of a construction project under multiple resource constraints based on an enumeration tree. The EBAC generates new branches to the tree corresponding to “better” feasible alternatives. It starts with all of the feasible schedule alternatives as the trial schedule alternatives at any node. The trial schedule alternatives are then evaluated to determine whether they are “worse” than any existing partial schedules in the tree by using the presented cut rules, and a worse alternative will be eliminated from the enumeration tree. In other words, the tree will contain only better feasible schedules. The presented algorithm has been coded in the VB6.0 language on a personal computer. It has been tested with the 110 scheduling problems, which have been widely used for validating a variety of schedule algorithms over the last $20\text{years}$ . The EBAC can obtain the shortest project durations for all of the 110 problems.

Technical knowledge is a valuable asset for construction companies. The diversity and accumulation of such knowledge on an organizational level contribute to company profitability and growth. This paper discusses a new approach for extracting, consolidating, and then retrieving technical construction knowledge that builds on the contradiction resolution concepts of the theory of inventive problem solving. The approach was used to extract knowledge from a number of lessons learned describing technical construction problems encountered by a major construction company. The approach depends on finding the similarities between technical solutions of problems that belong to different technological domains. These similarities represent the essence of these solutions and are represented using domain-independent terms so that they can be applied to new problems. The outcomes of the knowledge extraction and accumulation process are discussed in the paper to address the feasibility of the proposed approach and its potential benefits and limitations.

This paper proposes a chance-constrained programming model to incorporate the variability of funding, which is quantified by the coefficient of variation. The proposed model formulates financial feasibility as a stochastic constraint, transforms it into a deterministic equivalent at a prespecified confidence level, and solves the system by means of classical optimization techniques. The time–cost curve generated by the proposed model serves as a foundation for optimizing total project cost. To demonstrate the uniqueness of the proposed model, it is compared to previous approaches through a small building example.

Both the importance and process of estimating highway construction time have increased in significance as roadway user costs themselves have become more significant. In estimating construction time, few parameters are more significant than work item crew production rates and factors significantly affecting the rates. A standardized data collection tool was used to acquire a total of 93 data points from 22 ongoing Texas highway projects between February 2002 and May 2004, for selected critical work items: Footing, column-rectangle, column-round, and cap. With the data, several hypothesized drivers of the crew production rates were analyzed. The statistically significant drivers found from the analyses include: footing size $({\mathrm{m}}^3∕\mathrm{ea})$ , excavation depth (m), and number (No.) of footings per bent for footing work item; column size $({\mathrm{m}}^3∕\mathrm{ea})$ , column height (m), No. of columns per bent for column-rectangle; column height (m), diameter (m), and No. of columns per bent for column-round; cap size $({\mathrm{m}}^3∕\mathrm{ea})$ , cap length (m), and shape of cap (rectangle versus inverted T) for cap. Findings from this study will enable highway agencies to enhance accuracy of contract time estimation for highway bridge construction. The methodology for obtaining field-based production rates will also be beneficial for future researchers.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that one in four persons in the United States will be of Hispanic origin by 2050, up from one in eight in 2002. Driven by immigration, this dramatic growth in the Hispanic population will present unique challenges in the workplace. In construction, the increase in the Hispanic population has enabled the industry to meet its workforce demands. Unfortunately, this has occurred with costs in the health and safety of Hispanic construction workers. Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ current population survey, current employment survey, survey of occupational injuries and illnesses, and census of fatal occupational injuries, this study examines relative differences in injuries, illnesses, and fatalities between Hispanic and non-Hispanic construction workers by occupation. The findings show that differences in injuries, illnesses, and fatalities exist between Hispanic and non-Hispanic construction workers, although not always unfavorably toward Hispanics, and the difference does vary by occupation. The implication of the increasing size of the Hispanic construction workforce with respect to construction safety and health training needs is discussed.

Designing for construction safety entails consideration of the safety of construction workers in the design of a project. Research studies have identified the design aspect of projects as being a significant contributing factor to construction site accidents. Designing to eliminate or avoid hazards prior to exposure on the jobsite is also listed as the top priority in the hierarchy of controls common to the safety and health professions. Widespread implementation of the concept in the United States by engineering and architecture firms, however, is lacking due to perceived industry and project barriers. Given its absence from standard design practice, a question arises as to the viability of designing for safety as an intervention in the construction industry. This paper presents a pilot study that was conducted to investigate the practice of addressing construction worker safety when designing a project and to determine the feasibility and practicality of such an intervention. Through interviews of architects and engineers, the study found that a large percentage of design professionals are interested and willing to implement the concept in practice. Among the perceived impacts of implementation, project cost and schedule were mentioned most often along with limitations being placed on design creativity. The results of the pilot study indicate that designing for safety is a viable intervention in construction. The factors that impact the consideration of safety in the design of a project do not entirely prohibit its implementation or make its implementation extremely impractical and therefore not feasible. Additionally, the outcomes of implementation provide sufficient motivation to implement the concept in practice. The paper describes the key changes needed for implementation of the concept in practice which include: a change in designer mindset toward safety; establishment of a motivational force to promote designing for safety; increase designer knowledge of the concept; incorporate construction safety knowledge in the design phase; utilize designers knowledgeable about design-for-safety modifications; make design for safety tools and guidelines available for use and reference; and mitigate designer liability exposure.