Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

Dispute persists in all building and construction projects. Alternative dispute resolution methods are now commonly used as a means to resolve construction disputes. Mediation, interalia, is the popular choice in Hong Kong due to its cost-saving, flexible, speedy, confidential, and voluntary attributes. In mediation, tactics used by a mediator is central in driving desired outcomes. This paper reports a study that employs logistic regression (LR) to predict mediation outcomes respective to the tactics used. To achieve this, three main stages of work are involved. First, taxonomies of mediator tactics and mediation outcomes were developed. With these, the second stage included the development of logistic regression models each with a mediation outcome taxonomy as dependent variables and the taxonomies of tactics as independent variables. In the third stage of the study, the LR models were validated using an independent set of testing data. The LR models suggested that “win-win settlement,” “progress,” “improvement,” and “time advantage” are responsive to mediator tactics of “ice-breaking,” “trust building,” “encourage for self-improve,” and “process control,” respectively. In addition, it is observed that these relationships are positively correlated.

Most open tendering procedures in the real world are highly complex, uncertain, and costly. With an increasing emphasis on the quality and value of procurement, economically most advantageous tender (EMAT) has been widely adopted as an alternative contract-awarding criteria, which has changed competitive strategies in the construction industry. A conceptual model of competitive bidding in EMAT is first established to reflect the credibility of the bidding situation. A bidding game for EMAT projects is performed by 24 participants to partially test the conceptual model. The result reveals that the game has the potential to reveal important factors in the bidding situation, simulate competitive bidding behaviors, and explore competitive advantages in the EMAT bidding process. The learning effect from the game should be useful for contractors who are preparing to deliver optimal tenders in EMAT projects.

A formal approach is presented for systematically resolving construction conflicts. Using an actual case study, a decision support system based on the graph model for conflict resolution (GMCR II), is employed to effectively investigate the strategic interactions that took place between an owner and a general contractor concerning the financing of a construction project. The conflict analysis process considers the decision participants, their decision options, and their relative preferences when modeling the dispute. GMCR II is then used to perform an in-depth stability analysis in order to ascertain the possible compromise resolutions or equilibria. In the case study, GMCR II correctly predicts the sequence of decisions that took place in the dispute and furnishes an array of useful strategic insights about the conflict. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis is executed to determine how changes in preferences can affect the equilibrium results. This conflict resolution procedure is useful for both researchers and practitioners to better deal with the dispute-prone nature of the construction industry.

This paper briefly characterizes today’s United States (U.S.) construction workforce, and attempts to provide evidence for what the construction industry most values in its workers. It presents the social and demographic characteristics of a sample of 862 construction workers, from 19 project sites that were interviewed in 2002, as part of a research effort at the University of Texas at Austin, and compares them with broader-based Bureau of Labor Statistics data to establish the degree to which they represent the U.S. construction workforce. Via statistical analysis, the paper explores the relationships between workers’ attributes and how the industry compensates them as reflected in both hourly wages and average annual incomes. The statistical results reinforce what is known about the importance of years of experience; however, it also provides evidence of the importance of number of crafts each worker possessed, and computer knowledge. Less, but significant, evidence was obtained for the importance of the number of years spent with his/her current firm, craft training hours, age, or self-assessed performance.

Adoption of the Washington State Ergonomics Rule in 2000 initiated seven different demonstration projects in nine high-risk construction trades. The Ergonomics Rule was repealed in 2003, however valuable cooperative field research was conducted in construction prior to rule dissolution. This paper presents summaries and results of each project with the aim of providing the results to construction professionals and researchers seeking to identify and reduce injury risks and building costs. The projects were organized independently but each with the specific aims of conducting work in conjunction with industry, identifying “hazard zone” risk factors as defined by the rule, and identifying feasible solutions in agreement with company partners to mitigate these risk factors. Musculoskeletal injury risk factors were evaluated by ergonomist field observation and working group analysis. Solutions were developed through field work and consensus agreement with industry and labor representatives. Identified injury risk factors and technically feasible interventions are presented for the following trades: Roofing, residential framing, residential carpet and floor installation, commercial carpentry, commercial laborers, commercial concrete reinforcement, commercial concrete finishing, drywalling, and masonry.

This paper examines the national approach to the stimulation of innovation in construction. Based on a qualitative systems thinking approach, a model of the National System of Innovation (NSI) is structured with five main NSI actors: local contractors; suppliers; national research institutions; government; and foreign contractors. This model, established by the assumption that local contractors’ key motivation for innovation is based on profit maximization, highlights two main driving forces of construction innovation within the NSI: profit incentives and the social desirability of higher construction productivity and quality. The research findings indicate that high profit levels provide a higher number of growth momentums compared to the social desirability of innovation. Additionally, although social desirability of construction innovation is associated with a number of obstacles, high profit levels do not impose any significant hindrances. Based on the research findings, it is concluded that innovation policies should be focused on sustaining higher profit levels of contractors. The social desirability of innovation can be more efficiently utilized by regular reviews of national policies as the industry develops.

Facility owners and project teams often struggle to engage “green” or “sustainable” requirements on building projects and can incur additional project costs as a result. Although “investments” in high performance building features can be paid back through operational savings, the project delivery methods currently adopted by most teams are laden with process waste. Lean production principles have been proven to reduce waste and improve process performance in highly complex development and production environments. Adopting these lean principles, this paper reports a study that identified the presence of value and waste in a sustainable building project. Through an empirical investigation of the Real Estate and Facilities Division of Toyota Motor Sales, Toyota’s capital facility delivery process was mapped to identify both the steps in project delivery critical for success (value) and those that are waste. The investigation focused on the South Campus Facility, which received U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification at a project cost equivalent to a conventional facility. Through post hoc process-based analysis, insight about what added value and waste in sustainable project delivery at Toyota was obtained. The results also identify further improvement opportunities to Toyota’s delivery process. For corporate facility owners and the Architecture Engineering Construction industry, the results unearth insights about how to successfully and economically deliver sustainable facilities.

This paper compares the performance of three optimization techniques, namely feature counting, gradient descent, and genetic algorithms (GA) in generating attribute weights that were used in a spreadsheet-based case based reasoning (CBR) prediction model. The generation of the attribute weights by using the three optimization techniques and the development of the procedure used in the CBR model are described in this paper in detail. The model was tested by using data pertaining to the early design parameters and unit cost of the structural system of 29 residential building projects. The results indicated that GA-augmented CBR performed better than CBR used in association with the other two optimization techniques. The study is of benefit primarily to researchers as it compares the impact attribute weights generated by three different optimization techniques on the performance of a CBR prediction tool.

In financial decision-making processes, the adopted weights of the objective functions have significant impacts on the final decision outcome. However, conventional rating and weighting methods exhibit difficulty in deriving appropriate weights for complex decision-making problems with imprecise information. Entropy is a quantitative measure of uncertainty and has been useful in exploring weights of attributes in decision making. A fuzzy and entropy-based mathematical approach is employed to solve the weighting problem of the objective functions in an overall cash-flow model. The multiproject being undertaken by a medium-size construction firm in Hong Kong was used as a real case study to demonstrate the application of entropy. Its application in multiproject cash flow situations is demonstrated. The results indicate that the overall before-tax profit was HK$ 0.11 millions lower after the introduction of appropriate weights. In addition, the best time to invest in new projects arising from positive cash flow was identified to be two working months earlier than the nonweight system.

The importance of information systems (IS) implementation in construction management has grown rapidly, and therefore, a more practical method for IS planning is required. Prioritizing the construction management processes in which IS will be implemented is one of the key processes in IS planning, and for the prioritization purpose, the benefits of IS implementation must be examined. This research suggests an evaluation model for IS benefits in construction management processes. The model is based on the evaluation of IS implementation benefits at the construction management task level, and it is postulated that the benefits are composed of the effect and possibility of IS implementation. The research suggests four basic measures as the fundamental evaluation criteria and represents an overall evaluation process in the model. A case study is performed to validate this model via a statistical analysis, and the result shows that the four measures can explain at least 58% of the variance of expected benefit from IS implementation. The contributions of this paper can be summarized in two aspects. First, researchers may further enrich the understanding of IS benefits realization mechanism with the factors. Second, industry practitioners may use the model in their IS planning task.

A highway construction site was monitored to determine the effectiveness of a temporary sediment control (rock-filter dam) that was part of the pollution prevention plan that protected storm water from leaving the site. Selected water quality parameters were monitored along with solids-specific parameters. The results were compared in a before-during-after approach and an upstream-downstream approach using a two-sample $t$ test for differences in the mean values during the different construction phases or locations. Construction activity caused a six-fold increase in total solids leaving the construction site during construction, as compared to preconstruction values. Construction activity had an effect on the distribution of particles in a suspension leaving the construction site. The solids control device, a rock-filter dam, had an effect on the particle-size distribution of suspended particles, but—in upstream-downstream analysis—did not produce a significant difference in solids leaving the construction site.