Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

Project delivery systems define the roles and responsibilities of the parties involved in a project. They also establish an execution framework in terms of sequencing of design, procurement, and construction. The decision made in the selection of a project delivery system for a project impacts all phases of execution of the project and greatly impacts the efficiency of project execution. Such decisions should be facilitated by thorough analysis. Structured, quantitative decision analysis processes have been shown to have several benefits over the simplistic, holistic, and informal processes that typically characterize subjective evaluations. However, a dearth of quantitative values of project delivery systems established and validated through research has invariably left project managers with no alternative than to make project delivery selection decisions on the basis of subjective evaluations. Development of the needed quantitative values for application in a decision analysis process would greatly enhance the quality of the decision-making process and provide a defensible rationale for selection of project delivery systems for capital projects. This paper presents research findings that provide the needed quantitative values in this area. Based on the quantitative values defined here, interested parties can develop and implement quantitative evaluation of project delivery alternatives to identify the optimal solution for a given project. Multicriteria decision analysis was found to be the suitable approach for a quantitative, analytical evaluation of project delivery systems. Consequently, the quantitative values presented in this paper were developed in accordance with the requirements of the multicriteria decision analysis technique known as simple multiattribute rating technique with swing weights (SMARTS). Utilizing the quantitative values presented here and applying the analysis technique of SMARTS, a decision support tool has been developed and validated for the Construction Industry Institute. The decision support tool is presently being utilized by member companies of the Construction Industry Institute that were privy to its development. With the presentation of the quantitative values in this paper, other parties interested in developing similar tools would benefit from the research results presented here.

Repetitive projects involve the repetition of activities along the stages of the project. Since the resources required to perform these activities move from one stage to the other, a main objective of scheduling these projects is to maintain the continuity of work of these resources so as to minimize the idle time of resources. This requirement, often referred to as work continuity constraints, involves a tradeoff between total project duration and the resource idle time. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, we provide an extensive literature summary of the topic under study. Although most research papers deal with the scheduling of construction projects, we show that this can be extended to many other environments. Second, we propose an exact search procedure for scheduling repetitive projects with work continuity constraints. This algorithm iteratively shifts repeating activities further in time in order to decrease the resource idle time. We have embedded this recursive search procedure in a horizon-varying algorithm in order to detect the complete tradeoff profile between resource idle time and project duration. The procedure has been coded in Visual C++ and has been validated on a randomly generated problem set. Finally, we illustrate the concepts on three examples. First, the use of our new algorithm is illustrated on a small fictive problem example from literature. In a second example, we show that work continuity constraints involve a tradeoff between total project duration and the resource idle time. A last example describes the scheduling of a well-known real-life project that aims at the construction of a tunnel at the Westerschelde in The Netherlands.

This paper discusses three common approaches used by owner organizations to deliver infrastructure maintenance/repair (M/R) programs that involve multiple distributed sites: using in-house resources, outsourcing to contractors, and a combination of both. A scheduling model is then introduced that uses genetic algorithms to suggest the optimum combination of in-house crews and outsourcing that meet execution constraints. The scheduling model considers all the variables that relate to in-house delivery, such as available crews, methods of construction, sequence of work sites, and the time and cost of moving resources among sites. In addition, it incorporates a mechanism to examine the feasibility of replacing in-house resources by outsourcing to delegate execution risks, at minimum additional cost. Details of model development are discussed and an example application is presented to demonstrate the planning and control features of the proposed model. The model presents practitioners and researchers with a practical tool for realistic what-if assessment and greater level of control over the execution of infrastructure M/R plans.

The application of network techniques of project scheduling to repetitive projects has been criticized for the inability of network techniques to help maintain work continuity. Moreover, current network techniques require a large number of activities to represent a repetitive project and presume that there is only one logical sequence. This makes schedules time consuming to develop as well as maintain. Further, the logic chosen by the planner might be far from the shortest possible duration. This paper, utilizing the soft logic sequencing principles developed by Fan et al., develops a system which provides an easy input module in addition to scheduling and work-continuity-maintenance modules. The system eases the network generation and update processes, which in turn provides the shortest possible duration logics and the start and finish dates required to maintain work continuity.

The belief that the design–build (D/B) project delivery system does not lend itself to effective quality assurance and control is quite common in construction circles. Total quality consists of: (1) the corporate quality culture; (2) the quality of the project service; and (3) the quality of the constructed facility. This paper describes a model that was developed to measure the total quality of a D/B firm using quality function deployment (QFD). The first part of this model is described elsewhere and measures the effectiveness of the corporate quality culture and the quality of the service when delivering a project by using QFD. The second part of the model is described in this paper. It makes use of eight building quality factors, three building performance factors, and the relationships between building quality and performance factors (obtained from building users/evaluators) and it measures the quality performance of the constructed facility by using QFD. A total quality performance index is generated by combining the quality performance at the corporate, project, and product levels. The total quality performance measurement model described in this paper can be used by D/B firms to benchmark themselves against their competitors or to monitor their own performance. It can also be used by owners to rank D/B firms relative to their total quality performance.

A central opening strut system is used to support a diaphragm wall for foundation excavation. This system contains at least one regular polygon module and a number of straight strut members. These strut members connect the diaphragm wall and the regular polygon module together, so that the earth pressure acting on the diaphragm wall in one direction can be transmitted to the diaphragm wall in the other directions by the arch action of this polygon module. In this research, the basic structural behavior of the central opening strut system is examined. A full-scale structural testing of the joint subassemblage is also performed to examine the ultimate strength of the joint. A construction site with five excavation stages and four layers of strut systems is chosen as the case study. The ABAQUS finite-element program is employed in the study of the behavior of this system during various construction stages. From these studies, it is found that the proposed central opening strut system is able to provide a large working space and greatly increases the efficiency of the construction work. Through proper design of the member and the joints, this system provides a better safety factor as compared with the traditional strut system.

Many researchers agree that smoother construction would result from better communication between designers and constructors about specific requirements and constraints for construction that can be incorporated into the design. The same principle can be generalized to apply to all the phases of a construction project (design, equipment procurement, transport, delivery, installation, and testing, as well as hand-over activities), to the different partners (main contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers), and even internally to the teams working on different parts of a system for the same contractor. Specific requirements and constraints at work interfaces that are technical, organizational, temporal, and geographical in nature have to be made transparent so that they can be managed and resolved to avoid unnecessary reworks and delays. This paper proposes to use the work breakdown structure (WBS) concept to improve work interface management. In the manufacturing industry, the WBS concept is well exploited by crossing a horizontal breakdown of production activities with a vertical breakdown of final products, thus obtaining a WBS matrix, which is more complete and useful than the classical WBS tree. In this paper, the WBS and interface management concepts are first clarified. Then, it is proposed to transpose the WBS matrix concept into the construction industry and to analyze, in a case study, how it may be used to improve interface management. The case study involves the construction of a segment of a mass rapid transit system comprising many specialty trades spanning track works, power supply, signaling, passenger vehicles, and control.

This paper presents the results of an empirical study conducted to refine the writers’ previous findings on potential factors that may influence performance of commercial Web-based project management systems (WPMSs) and potential measures that might be used to assess performance of such systems. Data used in this study were obtained from 39 professionals who had practical experience with WPMSs in construction projects. The results of the study confirm 42 factors that can potentially affect performance of WPMSs and 36 measures that can be used to evaluate such performance. These 42 factors are categorized into four distinct groups: characteristics of the project, the project team, the service provider, and the specific WPMS system used in the project. The 36 measures reflect performance of WPMSs in six different perspectives: strategic, schedule/time, cost, quality, risk, and communication. Findings presented in this paper can be used by researchers as a starting point for future research in the area of WPMS implementation and performance evaluation and may be used by practitioners in the industry as a useful guide to increase the likelihood of a successful WPMS adoption.

This paper introduces a system prototype, the construction business automation system, for modeling and automating construction business processes by using workflow and object technologies. Construction management tasks are developed as distributed internet applications for supporting reusability of software components, simplifying process modeling, and automating business processes. The development of the prototype has resulted in the following technologies: (1) the object-oriented reusable component technology for modeling construction management tasks; (2) the construction business process modeler based on the task based modeling methodology; (3) the request driving methodology for raising business requests and instantiating corresponding process instances; and (4) the supporting technology for interacting with a commercial workflow engine (e.g., i-Flow) for executing business process instances. A purchasing process is used as an example to illustrate these related topics and the applicability of the methodologies in construction business automation.

This paper was written to fill a void created by the absence of fundamental principles of site construction management. Efficient workforce utilization is essential to managing a productive and cost efficient site. For more than $25\text{years}$ , the senior author has been observing and writing about inefficient labor productivity practices resulting from poor site management practices. Using deductive reasoning, fundamental principles were developed to avoid poor practices. General and fundamental principles related to performance measures and daily work schedules are cited. Additional principles are cited in the categories of work assignments, crew structure, disruptions, multiskilling, preassemblies and modules, and symbiotic crew relationships. The principles have been intentionally left general so as to apply to a broad range of situations.