Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

Forecasting the likely cost of construction work before tendering is known as to be a hazardous task. Both underestimates and overestimates may present problems to clients and contractors. Not surprisingly, cost-engineering activities can be stressful for those responsible. Coping with the stresses requires action on the part of the individuals affected and the organizations to which they belong. This paper examines the effect of organizational supports in the process of project estimation through a survey of construction estimation participants in Hong Kong. Using correlation analysis and regression analysis, it is found that: (1) the stressors of autonomy and feedback are directly related to the stress experienced by cost engineers; (2) informal organizational supports (particularly concerning relationship conflict, Type A behavior, work underload, lack of autonomy, and unfair rewards and treatment) are far more effective than formal supports in reducing stress; and (3) lack of autonomy and lack of feedback are predictable variables affecting stress. Cost-engineering managers and supervisors need to carefully distinguish between those who prefer hands-on support and those who prefer hands-off support. A good communication and team decision-making process and a fair reward and treatment system may help establish close relationships among cost engineers in a company and ensure sufficient autonomy to cost engineers and the participants in the estimation process.

From case studies, it was found that the practices of infrastructure development can be abstracted into development patterns. Based on the findings, this paper first investigated possible task allocations between the public and private sectors to build a development decision tree of infrastructure projects, and then constructed a development pattern matrix with five valid development patterns, according to the time frame and fund sources of payment to private firms. The five development patterns were systematically studied and the findings showed that various procurement models can be derived through changing task allocation and the way to pay private firms. Some key procurement models derived from the five development patterns were illustrated by examples. Moreover, the procurement method of build-transfer-lend was devised to demonstrate that new procurement models can be derived from the development pattern matrix. Finally, a case study showed that the five basic development patterns can be combined to form mixed procurement models. The development decision tree and the development pattern matrix provide a thinking tool in the formulation of procurement strategies.

Client-contractor relationships are often criticized for being competitive and adversarial, rather than cooperative. The main purpose of this paper is to examine how construction clients’ procurement procedures affect the balance between cooperation and competition (i.e., coopetition) in client-contractor relationships. The empirical results, based on a survey to 87 Swedish construction clients, show that clients’ procurement procedures facilitate a focus on competition. It was also found that clients’ earlier experience of a certain procedure heavily affects their procurement choices, thereby preserving old behaviors. Although two-thirds of the clients wish to increase cooperation with contractors, this does not affect their procurement decisions. This study therefore concludes that the theoretical framework, based on transaction cost economics, is correct in prescribing more cooperation than is empirically observed in the construction sector. The theoretical framework can increase clients’ awareness of how procurement affects cooperation and competition, thereby serving as a basis for more unbiased and systematic procurement decisions, facilitating cooperation-based coopetition.

Information flow in precast concrete supply chains should be streamlined to simplify complexities in tracking highly customized components and related information. Currently, information created, exchanged, accessed, updated, and stored in a precast supply chain is not formalized. Consequently, even though various advanced technologies are available to streamline information flow, there is no formal way to identify the requirements and appropriate mechanisms for utilizing these technologies. This paper describes some major patterns in information flow related to precast components through postdesign phases in precast supply chains, based on observations made in the United States. It specifically proposes several propositions that characterize the information flow and tests those propositions in descriptive case studies. It also depicts an information flow framework for formalizing information flow patterns in supply chains. The results include a list of information groups and major patterns of information flow observed in precast supply chains. It is expected that these results will enable researchers to develop formalisms and automated approaches to streamline information flow and help practitioners identify information flow patterns in their companies and corresponding supply chains to develop approaches and technologies to streamline the flow accordingly.

Briefing is the process by which client requirements are identified, clarified, and articulated in the early design stage of construction projects. It is crucial to the successful delivery of construction projects. Considerable research has been conducted in briefing during the past two decades. However, researchers consider many current briefing practices to be inadequate, and little research has been done in sufficient depth to explore briefing variables in the construction industry. This paper introduces a comprehensive framework of the variables that have an impact on construction project briefing. A questionnaire survey was conducted to validate these variables among project managers and architects in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The results indicate that although no significant differences existed between the samples in the United Kingdom and the United States on the variables for construction project briefing, the views of the samples in Hong Kong deviated from the two Western countries. The Western professionals have more positive answers to most statements in the questionnaire. The findings have significant implications for industry practitioners in producing their guidelines for the briefing process and for writers in drafting how-to briefing guide for construction projects.

Because of the fragmented nature of project information, decisions on changes in construction projects are usually based on project design instead of project requirements. This research proposes a new approach for coping with changes in construction projects: A change control tool (CCT) that will identify implications of a change as soon as it is proposed. The tool will ensure that the stakeholders involved in the decision process in which change proposals are evaluated will know in advance if a change could cause the project to stray from its original goals, as expressed in the requirements. The proposed CCT uses the building program as a link between client requirements and the building design and traces the different relationships that exist between the requirements in the project. The relationships are traced using requirement traceability capabilities on the level of a specific space in the project and on the level of the entire project. A preliminary CCT model was developed and pilot studies implementing the model have been conducted. The pilot studies have given positive results, indicating that the CCT could identify the scope of the proposed changes’ implications.

This paper compares the performance of three different decision-tree-based methods of assigning attribute weights to be used in a case-based reasoning (CBR) prediction model. The generation of the attribute weights is performed by considering the presence, absence, and the positions of the attributes in the decision tree. This process and the development of the CBR simulation model are described in the paper. The model was tested by using data pertaining to the early design parameters and unit cost of the structural system of residential building projects. The CBR results indicate that the attribute weights generated by taking into account the information gain of all the attributes performed better than the attribute weights generated by considering only the appearance of attributes in the tree. The study is of benefit primarily to researchers, as it compares the impact of attribute weights generated by three different methods and, hence, highlights the fact that the prediction rate of models such as CBR largely depends on the data associated with the parameters used in the model.

The time–cost trade-off is one of the most crucial aspects of construction project planning, which in fact is a combinatorial optimization problem. This technical note employed an evolutionary algorithm—ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm to deal with the time–cost trade-off problems. Combining with the modified adaptive weight approach, the ACO algorithm can find out the optimal solutions, and define the Pareto front as well. The development of the ACO-based multiobjective approach in this technical note provides an attractive alternative to solving construction time–cost optimization.