Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

This paper presents the development, validation, and implementation of an innovative comprehensive project performance metric specifically developed for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) projects. The project quarterback rating (PQR) combines key performance metrics of a project into a single number to provide a basis for quantifying project success. The combined performance areas include customer relations, schedule and budget compliance, quality and safety statistics, financial metrics, and communication among the different project stakeholders. The existing literature is analyzed to identify key performance metrics. A data-collection instrument is developed and then used to gather quantitative performance data from recently completed projects. Data are collected from industry professionals across the United States, and multivariate data analysis techniques are used to validate the model. PQR can compare the overall performance for different AEC projects, in addition to the performance of various project delivery systems. In this paper, PQR scores are calculated for projects completed under different delivery systems. The results clearly show differences in performance for projects delivered with design-bid-build (DBB), construction management at risk (CMR), design-build (DB), and integrated project delivery (IPD). This paper offers three major contributions to the construction engineering and management literature: (1) it presents the development and validation of the comprehensive performance model; (2) it provides the first comparison of project delivery systems through a single comprehensive metric; and (3) it offers an evaluation of the emerging IPD system, demonstrating superior overall performance when compared with other delivery systems.

Simulation has played an important role in project-management studies of the last decades, but in order for them to produce practical results, a realistic distribution model for activity durations is indispensable. The construction industry often has needed historical records of project executions, to serve as inputs to the distribution models, but a clearly outlined calibration procedure is not always readily available, nor are their results readily interpretable. This study seeks to illustrate how data from the construction industry can be used to derive realistic input distributions. Therefore, the Parkinson simulation model with a lognormal core is applied to a large empirical dataset from the literature and the results are described. From a discussion of these results, an empirical classification of project executions is presented. Three possible uses are presented for the calibration procedure and the classification in project management simulation studies. These were validated using a case study of a construction company.

This paper discusses a novel approach for resource-based scheduling that builds upon existing analytical models to achieve practical allocation of resources that are constrained by supply and demand. The approach facilitates workface planning to allocate work to individual craft persons. The main contribution of the work is advancement of the current scheduling practice of workface planning by (1) generalizing the resource supply-demand matching problem (RSDMP); and (2) formalizing the RSDMP scheduling approach for planning resource workflows which consists of (a) the mathematical model, (b) a two-stage optimization approach, and (c) innovative use of a resource-activity interaction table. The result is an optimum resource-constrained schedule providing the shortest project duration with the leanest resource supply. The optimum resource requirement is identified between the lower and upper bounds of the resource supply limit, thus ensuring the site’s spatial and safety requirements. The optimum resource workflows of individual craft persons are presented to facilitate the project execution at the workface level. To illustrate the approach, an example adapted from a classic textbook is used. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach on a practical level, an oil refinery turnaround project including input data and relevant information prepared for workface planning is used. As a result of the RSDMP analysis, the optimum plan obtained is resource-loaded, practically feasible, and workface executable.

The dynamic nature and limited work space of roadway work zones contribute to dangerous working environments for construction workers. This environment can result in hazardous proximity situations because pedestrian workers are required to operate in close proximity to heavy construction equipment. A total of 609 work zone personnel fatalities were reported in 2012. Previous analysis of work zone fatality data found that the majority of the pedestrian worker and mobile object struck-by fatalities resulted when pedestrian workers were struck by construction equipment. These statistics indicate that current safety practices for pedestrian workers and equipment operators are inadequate. The objective of this study was to create and evaluate a proximity detection and alert system using Bluetooth sensing technology. The scope included hazardous proximity situations between pedestrian workers and construction equipment in roadway work zones at grade. Evaluation metrics were implemented to assess the tested proximity sensing systems including the cost, time and ease of calibration, required hardware, system capabilities, and many others. Commercially available radio frequency identification (RFID) and magnetic field proximity sensing systems were also evaluated to provide a basis for comparison. Various interaction scenarios between pedestrian workers and construction equipment were used in the evaluation of the system. The performance evaluation based on the statistical results showed that all the tested systems were considered reliable with minimal false alarm rates. However, the magnetic system showed a significant drop in its coverage range, while still providing reliable coverage measures, with a set of tests that were more dynamic than other sets of tests. The created Bluetooth system provided the highest level of simplicity with its minimized infrastructure, ease of calibration, and ease of installation. In sum, experimental results demonstrate that the created proximity detection and alert system (1) requires minimal infrastructure; (2) provides adequate alerts to equipment operators and pedestrian workers; and (3) provides, through an alert, an additional layer of hazard avoidance in real time during hazardous-proximity situations in roadway work zones.

Off-site transportation of construction materials is planned commonly by considering the transportation costs as the dominant decision variable. Despite the significant impact of delays in the delivery of materials on the progress of projects, there is a lack of a systematic approach to estimating the off-site transport time of materials by considering the material characteristics and logistics options. This paper uses the results of a case study to highlight the importance of accounting for off-site material transport time in the planning of an industrial megaproject where small delays in activities requiring diverse materials could significantly delay the progress of the project, leading to considerable financial loss in some cases. In addition, a framework is proposed for estimating the duration of off-site transportation in industrial megaprojects by categorizing construction materials based on their supply chain structure and accounting for the effects of the transport mode, size, and weight of consignments. The results of the case study indicate that adjusting the logistics variables based on the results of a statistical analysis on transportation monitoring data collected in the earlier stages of a project may lead to a reduced delay in off-site transportation in subsequent stages.

The Engineering News-Record (ENR) publishes the Construction Cost Index (CCI) monthly, which is a composite index of 20-city average price of construction activities in the United States. Cost estimators use this index frequently to estimate the cost of construction projects. The CCI forecast provides contractors with more accurate bids. It also helps owners with their projects’ budgeting. Previous studies have forecasted this index via multivariate and univariate techniques. Homogeneity of variance is assumed on these techniques, however the CCI shows periods of substantial volatility. So far the standard tools used to address volatility on time series have been the autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models. In this study, a seasonal historical data set of ENR Construction Cost Index is analyzed in order to extract and forecast volatilities of the CCI in the short term. Results of this study show high and persistent volatility of the CCI in the cases of economic shocks. The maximum of the conditional variances over the entire sample period (January 1987 to July 2012) occurred in October 2008. The variance equation shows that both lags of residuals and the lag of GARCH term are highly significant, implying that the volatility of risk is influenced by past square residual terms as well as current variance of the series.

Decision-makers frequently argue that municipal infrastructure is at risk. Given the current state of risk for infrastructure, municipalities face challenging decisions to plan the integrated repair/renewal of road, water, and sewer (RWS) networks. The research presented in this article identifies a methodology and framework that facilitates decision-making processes used during corridor rehabilitation project planning. A risk-based decision-making approach is developed to aid integrating repair/renewal of RWS assets. The risk model was developed using a mixed Delphi-Analytical Hierarchy Process approach. The impacts of four main consequences of failure with eighteen subfactors were considered. The RWS networks indices were amalgamated and grouped into an overall integrated risk index using K-means Clustering technique. Data provided by the City of Guelph was used in a case study in order to demonstrate the model features. Results show that pipe/road size and accessibility factors had the highest impact on the integrated risk index. The developed models can be used by researchers and practitioners (municipal engineers and consultants) to prioritize corridor rehabilitation projects thereby easing the challenge faced by stakeholders regarding the future of municipal infrastructure.

There is increasing sophistication in corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures by international construction companies (ICCs). Nevertheless, a systematic analysis of the trends and prospects is yet to appear. This study fills that knowledge gap by providing an understanding of the idiosyncrasies of CSR disclosures and by offering suggestions for future reporting exercises. By examining the top fifty ICCs’ CSR/sustainability reports using content analysis, it is found that the more negative effects a company may have, the more remedial strategies it will disclose in a CSR report. ICCs from economically more developed countries maintain a high level of CSR disclosures, while their counterparts from developing countries have caught up in this CSR cause. As a way to improve the consistency and integrity of disclosed information, ICCs are increasingly adopting CSR reporting guidance frameworks and using third-party assurances. CSR disclosures present a high degree of uniformity while they also show nuanced and intriguing diversity. This research helps understand comprehensively the trends of CSR disclosures in the international construction. It will help ICCs extrapolate their future CSR reporting exercises.

In this study, the formative roles of common goals, equal status, integrative interactions, and authority support as the optimal factors for engendering individuals’ cooperation with their proximal crossfunctional project workgroups are examined. The four factors are properties of the workgroup environment and each have been highlighted as being important in previous conceptual and critical success factors (CSFs) studies of project effectiveness. However, until now, there has been no systematic empirical test of the interactive effects of all four factors in a construction temporary multiorganization (TMO) workgroup setting. The four factors are conceptualized in this study as the reflective dimensions of a superordinate multidimensional latent construct, teamwork climate. An integrative test was undertaken of the construct validity of this multidimensional construct, its substantive utility relative to its dimensions, and of specific hypotheses connecting the multidimensional construct and its dimensions to individual’s in-role, extrarole, compliance, and deference behavior; the test was performed using two cross-cultural samples of built environment professional managers (U.K., $N=381$; and Hong Kong, $N=140$) and structural equation modeling. The results showed convergence in support of the multidimensional conceptualization of teamwork climate, and also showed that teamwork climate significantly and positively influences workgroup members’ in-role, extrarole, compliance, and deference behavior. These findings provide compelling indication that teamwork climate is an important and efficient determinant of cooperative behavior within TMO contexts and, in so doing, make an important contribution to the extant and construction engineering and management lines of literature on work climates. This study also makes an important contribution to the debate in the extant literature about how to model the four climate dimensions, in so far as it shows that a superordinate multidimensional conceptualization maximizes predictive utility, theoretical parsimony, and bandwidth. Finally, this study makes an important contribution to practice, as it focuses project managers’ attention on creating the generative project environments for the four optimal conditions for teamwork.

Electrocution is one of the four leading causes of worker deaths in the construction sector, and thus it is paramount to identify its mechanisms. This work interprets the mechanisms of an electrical accident as a chain of decision mistakes throughout the entire task process. The objective of this paper is to visualize the decision-making chains in workplace electrical safety for construction workers. Because of construction’s “one-off” nature, the researchers narrow the decision-making chain for specific “features of work” (FOW), a group of distinct activities possessing higher occupational safety and health (OSH) risks and requiring particular attention. By analyzing National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) electrocution reports, the authors identify five features of work and illustrate their decision-making chains. This work promotes electrical safety and injury prevention through the decision-making lens and contributes to the scholarly body of knowledge by introducing a comprehensive approach to the decision-making chain that is applicable to other safety research.

The construction industry experiences the greatest proportion of workplace electrical injuries globally. Much research effort has gone toward analyzing this phenomenon, yet a majority of which focused on isolated elements while ignored the work system. Modern work systems are complex, within which humans interact with technology, social structures, and environments. Outcomes (including accidents and injuries) resulting from such a complex system are not attained by any system element in isolation. As a result, effective risk management requires the control over the whole sociotechnical system (STS). This work demonstrates such an effort in investigating STSs. The work uses a triangulation approach in examining construction-fatality reports. The findings identify three typical STSs, reveal their system weaknesses, and provide remedial recommendations. The work contributes to the knowledge body of risk management, electrical safety, and research methodologies. The introduced triangulation approach in injury analysis and intervention is grounded in the broad concept of workplace safety, namely, organizational, social, political, and psychological contexts.

When selecting a building material supplier, contractors may take into consideration a large number of criteria that are often subjective and hard to measure. Including them all in the evaluation may be beneficial, yet in practice it may generate many complications. A solution is provided by one of the multicriteria analysis methods. The article describes the criteria employed in the evaluation of building material suppliers. One multicriteria analysis method, namely the analytic hierarchical process (AHP), is argued to be a useful alternative. An example of its application involving its basic and the more sophisticated variant, the fuzzy analytic hierarchical process (FAHP) with extent analysis method, is presented. As the results reveal, real decisive problems require methods resembling human reasoning, which is often characterized by uncertainty and subjectivity of evaluation. The real problem presented in the paper proves that the FAHP method may have a practical application.

Concerns about production efficiency, quality, and affordability in the residential construction indicate there may be benefits in adopting alternative production control strategies to those traditionally used. Reducing adverse effects of exogenous variability in demand and endogenous variability in process are the ultimate goals of production control strategies. For residential construction this means controlling the number of houses under construction and controlling the start rate of new house constructions. The aim of this investigation is to compare and contrast the outcomes of these two production management strategies. Production data of two volume house builders in Victoria and Queensland, Australia, were collected. Tangible performance metrics from the builders were analyzed and compared using the principles of queuing theory. Then numerous simulation experiments were designed and run to analyze different what-if scenarios in the building environment. A special purpose simulation template was developed to define a cap for production and limit the number of houses under construction based on actual demand and available capacity. The findings reveal that rate-driven construction outperforms due date–driven construction in terms of three studied performance measures. This investigation adopts an original and quantitative approach towards three production aspects of efficiency, supervision and controllability. Therefore it contributes to the body of knowledge by developing an in-depth insight into superior performance of the rate-driven control strategy with the intention of improving production output and long term sustainability of residential and other subsectors of the construction industry.