Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

This study explored the construction development process of an individual case to identify and summarize the problems small- to medium-sized developers could be having with such process in Taiwan. To identify the problems, the writers used a case-based approach and interviewed the chairman of one small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME). Findings derived from the interview were validated by further interviewing four members of the construction union in Taiwan, three government officials, and four managers of mortgage banks. The theory of constraints approach was used to examine the construction development process of the SME and indicate the undesirable effects that hindered it and needed immediate attention. The study results were systemized into a conceptual model for developers’ future reference to improve management of the development process and identify the root causes of problems.

Schedule delays are common in construction projects. Although many methods have been developed for analyzing and measuring schedule delays for construction projects, each method has functional limitations and use prerequisites. No one method is acceptable for all project participants under all circumstances. This study presents the isolated collapsed but-for (ICBF) method, an innovative delay analysis method for construction projects. During analysis, the ICBF method requires as-planned and as-built schedules as well as identified liability documents with key delay events to perform its analysis approach. Based on its application to an illustrative case and comparisons with other methods, the ICBF method is effective for delay analysis. Results provided by the proposed method can be easily traced to the actual case in an as-built schedule.

This study compares the performance of design/bid/build and design/build to see if one project delivery method is superior in regards to time and cost. Similar military buildings were used to identify two samples of projects delivered with each of the two delivery methods. These projects provide a meaningful comparison because they include buildings of the same typology (i.e., U.S. Navy Bachelor Enlisted Quarters) delivered using similar design models. Project duration, project duration per bed, project time growth, cost growth and cost per bed were statistically compared. Upon completion of the analysis, the hypothesis that design/build projects are superior to design/bid/build projects in regards to time and cost was tested. Design/build projects were proven superior in performance in almost every measure. Other findings, including recommendations to practitioners and researchers, will be provided as well.

In recent years, many U.S. federal, state, and local governments have been authorized to use the design–build method of project delivery instead of the traditional design–bid–build method. Recent studies have not been definitive on the cost advantage of design–build for governmental owners. There are fewer change orders in design–build due to design errors because the designer (architect/engineer) and contractor are one entity, but there are other causes of change orders. Some literature suggests that changes requested by the owner of the facility are greater with the design–build method. This research examines the causes for construction-phase changes in 14 design–build and 20 design–bid–build projects. Total changes, expressed as number per contract, cost per contract, or percentage of original contract, were significantly lower in design–build. Fewer design errors in design–build accounted for this advantage. The number of owner-requested changes was significantly greater in design–build. The cost of owner-requested changes, averaged over all the projects, was significantly less for design–bid–build. The differences in changes due to differing site conditions were not significant. The concept that there are more owner-requested changes in design–build projects is supported by this research.

The objective of this study was to reveal the trend in highway construction costs following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Louisiana. The means of measuring highway construction cost was the Louisiana Highway Construction Index, an index made up of the cost of labor, equipment, and six major materials used in highway construction. Data from projects let by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development from the second quarter of 2003 to the second quarter of 2007 were used to track the change in construction costs. Index values from hurricane-impacted areas (GO Zones) were compared with those in Non-GO Zones. The indices revealed that two quarters after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the highway construction cost jumped about 20% statewide and 51% in GO Zone. Two years after the hurricanes, the cost has stabilized to around 30% increase over the pre-Katrina and Rita period. This study provides valuable information for the state agency to estimate cost escalation in ongoing projects and to estimate future disaster response to highway construction costs.

Highway construction often causes an additional road user cost (RUC) to motorists due to traffic flow interruption and congestion in work zones. Consequently, facility owners, such as the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), are often interested in using alternative contracting methods such as $\mathrm{A}+\mathrm{B}$ contracting to expedite construction. Although many of these contracting methods rely on the RUC to determine incentives or disincentives, no standard method for RUC calculation is available to FDOT district engineers. In addition, existing methods are neither practical nor user-friendly for determining incentives or disincentives. This study intends to develop a RUC calculation procedure for the FDOT that focuses on using data that are easily accessible to FDOT district engineers, such as drawings and maintenance of traffic plans. The procedure is developed based on traffic analysis methods published in the Highway Capacity Manual, previous studies on user benefit analysis and work zones, and empirical data specific to Florida. Case studies are used to illustrate the procedure and to compare it with two other existing models, the Arizona model and the queue and user cost evaluation of work zone model, through correlation analysis, comparison of calculation assumptions, and data input analysis. This study shows that the suggested procedure produces consistent RUC estimates.

The heuristic method is one of the methods used for the scheduling of resource-constrained projects. This method is commonly used in programming the projects with high number of activities and resources such as construction investments. This paper investigates the effectiveness of three heuristic method priority rules applied in the resource scheduling of ten Turkish housing estate projects which were scheduled according to three preselected priority rules [maximum remaining path length (MRPL), latest finish time (LFT), and minimum slack time (MNSLCK)] in resource-constrained conditions. The performance of each priority rule was evaluated in relation to the duration of the project. The results revealed that MRPL priority reduced the project duration to minimum in six projects, whereas LFT priority yielded the best duration results in three projects and MNSLCK priority in only one project.

Nighttime work-zone safety has become a concern among state transportation agencies due to an increasing number of work-zone fatalities and the high percentage of roadwork performed at night. Speed control has been determined by numerous researchers to be one of the best ways to improve safety on nighttime work zones. This paper presents an empirical analysis of speed-control strategies for nighttime interstate construction and maintenance projects in Indiana. The analysis considers the effect of various speed-control measures on the mean speed and the standard deviation of speed through nighttime work zones. Using a seemingly unrelated regression modeling approach, the present analysis revealed that the presence of police enforcement, a high percentage of semitrucks in the traffic stream, and a high traffic flow significantly reduced mean work-zone speeds. Factors found to significantly increase mean work-zone speeds included an increase in the number of open lanes, an original speed limit of the road section greater than 100 km/h (62 mi/h) an increase in the distance between the work-zone speed-limit signs and the first cone/barrel in the construction zone taper, and the progression of time through the night. The standard deviation of vehicle speeds was found to be significantly lower before midnight and as the number of vehicles queued increased. It was found to be significantly higher with an increase in the number of open lanes through the work zone, an increase in the number of worksite speed-limit signs, a high percentage of personal vehicles in the traffic, and an increase in total traffic flow. The results from this research demonstrate a useful analysis methodology (seemingly unrelated regression estimation) and provide some empirical results that can provide guidance for transportation agencies and contractors to improve speed-control strategies in nighttime work zones.

Safety is a major concern in the construction industry because fatalities and injuries from construction work bring great losses to individuals, organizations, and societies as a whole. This paper aims to understand how construction personnel perceive safety risks in China as compared with those in Australia. Postal questionnaire surveys were used to collect data on safety risk perceptions from the two nations. The safety risk factors were assessed using a risk significance index based on the likelihood of occurrences and the impacts on safety performance. The survey results revealed that in China the main perception of safety risks came from human-and/or procedure-related issues, with “low/no safety education” paramount, followed by “inadequate fire prevention and electrical prevention procedures,” etc. In contrast, the major safety risks perceived in Australia were related to the environment and physical site conditions with “contamination of land, water and air” ranked first, followed by “unforeseen excavation of soil,” etc. To minimize construction safety risks in China, this paper suggests that the government should develop collective legislation and safety protection procedures, and enforce safety education and training to all site participants. Risks related to environmental and site conditions were generally realized by the Australia construction industry, which were not highly acknowledged in China. This may also bring imminent attention in this regard to the Chinese government.

After China became a member of the World Trade Organization, Chinese architectural, engineering, and project management consulting firms faced competition from not only their domestic competitors but also from foreign firms. As most Chinese consulting firms are used to operating under a protected setting, they may face difficulties competing in the globalized environment. This research involves a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis of Chinese consulting firms based in Shenzhen; investigates how they respond to opportunities and threats; and recommends how foreign firms can respond to Chinese consulting firms’ SWOT. The case study research design is adopted. Using semistructured interview questions, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 23 Chinese consulting firms based in Shenzhen. Foreign firms’ responses are investigated through a case study of a U.S.-based consulting firm operating in China. The SWOT analysis reveals that Chinese consulting firms are lagging behind foreign firms in design and technical capability; experience in international projects; general and project management ability; and financial capacity. Industry practitioners from outside China who are contemplating entering the Chinese market can leverage on Chinese firms’ strengths by forming joint ventures with them. Foreign industry practitioners can take advantage of Chinese firms’ weaknesses by offering superior products and services which would improve their competitive advantage.

The crucial problem of construction debris is of increasing concern in Hong Kong. In the construction industry, the electrical and mechanical (E&M) installations in the infrastructure, for example, buildings, tunnels, or dams, are some of the major and usually complex components. Difficulty in coordinating the various trades affects productivity in general, and has a major impact on the quantity of construction debris. By identifying the sources of waste at each stage of E&M engineering work, some of the construction debris can be eliminated at the source during production. This paper investigates the critical production shortcomings in the E&M sector in Hong Kong. The study is based on a survey that includes a preliminary questionnaire survey, brainstorming exercises with a focus group, structured interviews with experienced frontline supervisors, and a second focus group exercise to test findings and proposed measures. The principal findings are that “poor coordination” and “design changes and/or errors” are major contributors to variations or change orders and rework, which in turn result in a high volume of construction debris. The results also indicate that construction debris can be minimized in the E&M sector of the construction industry, if the material wastes from incidental work are reduced and also controlled better in a new work process flow pattern through recommended construction project management improvements for reducing critical production shortcomings.

Environmental sustainability has become one of the key drivers for continuous growth in the construction industry. Many project practitioners face challenging circumstances in finding an effective way to prevent pollution and minimize wastes by making the best use of the increasingly scarce natural resources. However, most of these efforts are focused on planning and/or design strategies; therefore, they fail to thoroughly cover the environmental issues based on the construction execution level. Further, there is a lack of quantitative measurement system and management-level guidance. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes a new methodology that assists project managers to assess the performance level of a project in terms of waste management practice. This study is based on a two-pronged approach. One is the identification of the waste management influence factors that play an important role in decreasing waste and increasing recycled materials on construction sites. The other is the development of an assessment tool to measure the level of waste management performance for a particular project. As a result of this work, 59 factors were identified and an assessment tool was developed based on quantification of these factors. The tool has been proved to effectively measure waste management performance throughout four real-case validity tests. From the industry perspective, this paper contributes to establishing the environmentally sustainable production systems by providing the project stakeholders with an established set of influence factors and with a diagnosis tool for measuring their current performance. Additionally, project owners can use the output of the tool, especially the total index score, as a measure to benchmark the level of waste management for continuous improvement.

Lean construction research has shown that managing work flow effectively and maintaining labor flow on site can improve construction labor performance. Related research also shows that congestion on construction sites often leads to lowered efficiency. Using these findings as a point of departure, we use the agent-based modeling method to represent the construction site as a system of complex interactions and explore whether labor efficiency can be treated as an emergent property resulting from individual and crew interactions in space. This allows us to use a “bottom-up” approach to analyzing labor efficiency, which supplements existing “top-down” approaches to modeling the impacts of space congestion on labor efficiency. A pilot implementation of the agent-based model, and preliminary results illustrating the relationships between congestion and labor efficiency are presented. The empirical studies exhibit system behavior that support published principles of work-force management. The primary contribution of this paper is that it provides a method that can be used to efficiently utilize construction space, and develop plans and schedules that account for congestion arising from crew interactions in space.

Time–cost trade-off analysis is addressed as an important aspect of any construction project planning and control. Nonexistence of a unique solution makes the time–cost trade-off problems very difficult to tackle. As a combinatorial optimization problem one may apply heuristics or mathematical programming techniques to solve time–cost trade-off problems. In this paper, a new multicolony ant algorithm is developed and used to solve the time–cost multiobjective optimization problem. Pareto archiving together with innovative solution exchange strategy are introduced which are highly efficient in developing the Pareto front and set of nondominated solutions in a time–cost optimization problem. An 18-activity time–cost problem is used to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the well-known weighted method to develop the nondominated solutions in a combinatorial optimization problem. The paper is more relevant to researchers who are interested in developing new quantitative methods and/or algorithms for managing construction projects.