Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

While the infrastructure in the United States is in need of large and immediate investment, the funds provided by public agencies are not nearly sufficient to face such a challenge. Build-operate-transfer (BOT) is a delivery/financing system that can be a solution to this problem. In this system, a private sponsor finances the design, construction, maintenance, and operation of a public project for a specified concession period, at the end of which it transfers ownership to the government agency, hopefully after recouping its costs and achieving profits. A questionnaire survey of large municipalities and state departments of transportation was conducted to determine the extent to which they are using BOT in their large projects, to investigate the implementation of BOT, and the reasons why some government agencies avoid using BOT. The findings indicate that very few agencies use BOT. The reasons why most do not use BOT were reported by the respondents to be the availability of proven alternatives and enough funds, the existence of political barriers, and resistance to change both on the part of government agencies and private sponsors. When government agencies and private sponsors explore the use of BOT, they should avoid the pitfalls perceived by the respondents in this study.

The context of delays significantly affects delay responsibility. Among other things, recoverable damages for a delay should be related to the timing of the corresponding delay and its effect on indirect costs. This paper presents an alternative and integrated approach for quantifying and apportioning delay responsibility. It considers the context of a delay in terms of its timing and the degree of suspension during the course of a project. The proposed approach allocates project-site overhead costs onto schedule activities. It then helps track site overhead damages in a “real-time” manner while schedule-window analysis is employed to analyze the delay. A case study is used to illustrate its application. Results infer that the conventional daily overhead rate-based method can cause double payments because conventional recovery possibly covers parts of field overhead already paid from the original contract. This new approach also enables the application of the comparative negligence doctrine when concurrent delays occur by fairly sharing delay damages between the project parties. Practitioners can employ the proposed approach for reasonably quantifying and apportioning delay damages while researchers may further explore its applications in the industry.

Trenchless technology (TT) includes a large family of methods utilized for installing and rehabilitating underground utility systems with minimal surface disruption and destruction resulting from conventional excavation. Productivity of TT techniques is affected by a number of subjective factors that need to be evaluated. A productivity index (PI) model is developed in order to represent this subjective effect in refining productivity assessment. The analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy logic are used to develop the proposed PI model that relies on the actual performance of 12 subfactors under three main categories: management, environmental, and physical conditions. The developed PI model resulted in PI equal to 0.7323 and 0.7251 for microtunneling and horizontal directional drilling (HDD) projects, respectively. Multiattribute decision support system software is developed to determine the PI for a specific TT technique using Visual Basic. The PI model is tested, which shows reasonable results. This research is relevant to both industry practitioners and researchers. It provides practitioners with a model that justifies their productivity calculation by quantifying subjective factors effect, which will affect their schedule and cost estimation for trenchless projects. In addition, it provides researchers with the development methodology for the PI model.

This paper raises the issue of “soft” considerations in the selection of equipment for building construction projects. The paper aims at increasing the awareness: (1) to the nature, variety, and richness of soft factors; (2) to their significant role and potential impact on the outcome of decision making; and (3) to the inherent difficulty of evaluating them and integrating them within a comprehensive selection process. Existing state-of-the-art equipment selection models were analyzed and found to be inadequate in terms of both considering soft factors and providing mechanisms for their systematic evaluation. Six cases of large-size, complex construction projects were investigated to obtain an extensive list of typical soft factors. This investigation revealed that the consideration of soft factors in current practices is essentially unstructured and is not integrated within the selection process in a systematic manner. A desirable selection process is outlined that generally responds to the needs identified in the study. The proposition of a specific method for the quantitative treatment of soft factors and their tradeoff with cost factors is the subject of another paper.

This paper presents a hybrid framework that integrates value analysis and decision making for eliciting and evaluating design alternatives. Value analysis approach relies on the integration of the functional analysis through the systematic use of the functional analysis system technique and quality function deployment. This value analysis methodology enables customer requirements to be linked to specific design alternatives during the project design stage. The degree of project complexity will affect the number of design alternatives to be evaluated. As such, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) is incorporated as a decision support tool to evaluate the degree to which each design alternative satisfies the customer requirements. DEA is used to calculate a customer requirement efficiency index for each alternative. This index is a measure of how well a particular alternative achieves the requirements taking into account its overall cost. The framework was successfully used on a high-tech research facility construction project.

Research and practice show that construction joint venture (JV) activities in China are opportunities that can bring potential benefits but at the same time may generate many risks. While research has studied these risks and presented useful advice for managing individual risks, the methodologies used to analyze the risks were mainly qualitatively based, and there is a gap in using the quantitative method that can integrate a risk expert’s knowledge to assess the risks associated with JV projects. This paper sets up a hierarchy structure of the risks and then develops a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) model for the appraisal of the risk environment pertaining to the JVs to support the rational decision making of project stakeholders. An empirical case study is used to demonstrate the application of the proposed fuzzy AHP model. It is concluded that the fuzzy AHP model is effective in tackling the risks involved in JV projects. The information presented in this paper should be shown to all parties considering JV business opportunities in China, and the proposed approach should be applicable to the research and analysis of risks associated with any type of construction projects.

The results of a survey conducted by the ASCE Wireless Construction Committee are presented. The goal of the effort is to better understand how much construction contractors have advanced in adopting information technologies in general and wireless communications in particular. Responses were collected from 152 U.S. and 31 Korean firms. It was found that, overall, the strongest interest among the responding contractors is in document and content management applications. Differences between Korean and U.S. contractors are discussed. The data indicate that the use of information technology by contractors is generally higher in Korea than in the United States. Both practitioners and scientists will be able to use the presented study because the data reveal the managers’ perceptions of the most promising opportunities for and highest barriers to implementation of advanced communication systems in construction. With the information provided, interested readers of this journal will be able to focus their attention on pursuing specific opportunities and removing barriers to future adoptions.

Bar bending is the process of bending reinforcement bars to required angles in civil and construction engineering. Manual bar bending involves strenuous physical activity, which is usually performed in a poor ergonomic environment at a construction worksite. This could lead to chronic musculoskeletal disorders such as low back pain among bar benders. The aim of this study is to assess the ergonomics of manual bar bending and thereby develop a customized optimal workplace for bar bending. Biomechanical analysis was done using a three-dimensional Schultz–Andersson model to determine the influence of the diameter of the bar on the compressive force $\left(F_c\right)$ at $L_5∕S_1$ . The effect of table height, grip arm distance, and back bend angle on $F_c$ were also evaluated. $F_c$ decreased up to 53%, with an increase of table height by $400\mathrm{mm}$ , and up to 41%, with an increase of grip arm distance by $500\mathrm{mm}$ ; however it increased with back bend angle. $F_c$ was higher than the NIOSH safety limit of $\left(3.4\mathrm{kN}\right)$ in all cases except when bending $8\mathrm{mm}$ bars. A quick field reference for optimal table height and grip arm distance was prepared based on subjects’ anthropometry and diameter, using Nash bargaining principles.

Over the last $5\text{years}$ the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has completed three experimental long-life urban freeway rehabilitation projects by utilizing a fast-track (accelerated) construction approach of around-the-clock operations under extended closure. This paper presents the fast-track rehabilitation approaches and the as-built production rates of major rehabilitation operations monitored at the three experimental projects. The monitoring results show that the contractor’s production rates varied considerably depending upon the construction logistics, material delivery and hauling methods, lane-closure tactics, and/or pavement designs being implemented. A higher production rate and a noticeable “learning-curve effect” were observed when full-width rehabilitation was compared with partial-width rehabilitation, when continuous lane reconstruction was compared with random slab replacements, and when full roadbed closures were compared with partial lane closures. Findings in this study suggest that Caltrans should evaluate project-specific conditions and constraints, which might restrict use of a preferred rehabilitation scheme, by taking production rate variances into account when establishing schedule baselines of construction staging plans and incentive/disincentive contracts for urban freeway rehabilitation projects.

Work-life conflict has a damaging effect on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, productivity turnover, and absenteeism. On an individual level, work-life conflict is associated with employee burnout, mental health issues, substance abuse, and diminished family functioning. Thus, work-life balance is an important issue to the construction industry, in terms of both organizational effectiveness and occupational health. Long and inflexible work hours are the most consistent predictor of work-life conflict among construction employees, particularly those working on-site or in a project office. There is considerable resistance to the adoption of new ways of scheduling work within the industry. This paper describes the post hoc evaluation of a compressed work week (reducing the length of the working week, but increasing the length of the working day) in a case study project alliance in Queensland, Australia. Quantitative and qualitative data are presented to demonstrate the beneficial impact of the initiative on employees’ work-life balance. The evaluation provides prima facie evidence that alternative work schedules can improve construction employees’ work-life balance, creating benefits for construction employees and organizations. The paper concludes that project alliances provide an ideal environment in which work-life balance initiatives can help to create high-performance work systems in the construction sector.

Value management (VM) has been widely used to meet challenges arising from the construction industry. However, it has also encountered some problems such as passive participation in VM workshops and a lack of time and information to complete all tasks in the workshops. A group decision support system (GDSS), entitled interactive value management system (IVMS), has been developed by the writers to overcome these problems. This paper starts with an introduction to GDSS and a critical review of technologies used in the process of idea generation in VM workshops. This is followed by findings of a laboratory experiment designed to compare the productivity of traditional brainstorming and brainstorming with IVMS support in VM workshops. The results of the experiment showed that IVMS has a positive influence on idea generation in VM workshops. Finally, the implications of the study and directions for future research are discussed.