Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

The massive number of infrastructure intervention activities occurring in cities leads to detrimental social, environmental, and economic impacts on the community. Thus, integrating the asset intervention activities is required to minimize the community disruption and maintain an acceptable level of service throughout the assets’ lifecycle. This paper presents an integrated multiobjective asset management system for the road and water infrastructure that enables asset managers to trade off intervention alternatives and compare the outcomes of both conventional and integrated asset management systems. The multiobjective framework considers (1) physical state, (2) lifecycle costs, (3) user costs, and (4) replacement value. It revolves through three core models: (1) a database model that contains detailed asset inventory for the road and water networks; (2) key performance indicator (KPI) computational models for assessing the impact of the intervention plan on the predefined set of KPIs; and (3) an optimization model that relies on a combination of metaheuristics, dynamic programming, and goal optimization to schedule the intervention activities throughout the planning horizon. The system is applied to road and water networks in Kelowna, British Columbia, and the results show 33 and 50% savings in lifecycle costs and user costs, respectively. Moreover, it shows the potential ability to scale the framework to include other infrastructure such as sewer, electricity, gas, and telecom, provided that the information can be shared among these entities.

Private participation is the key element in forming a public-private partnership (PPP). Numerous studies have identified the factors of private participation in infrastructure projects, but the results have rarely focused on the willingness of the private sector to participate in infrastructure PPP projects. This research examines the factors of the private participation in a PPP with the consideration of the willingness to participate as a function of internal (e.g., the firm’s nature) and external factors (e.g., institutions, the government’s behavior, and project characteristics). Using the logistic regression model and the data from a questionnaire survey, this research found that nine variables have a significant coefficient, e.g., profitability, political connections, government intervention, government support, project complexity, and project experience; in particular, those companies with more project experience, more political connections, and higher profitability are more likely to be willing to participate in PPP projects. In contrast to previous studies, this research finds no support for the effect of the institutional environment and public support on a firm’s willingness to participate in PPPs. These findings can serve as a valuable reference in shaping the private sector’s motivation to participate in PPPs. The factors of private participation in PPP projects are explained and discussed in the context of the Chinese PPP experience and practice.

The construction manufacturing industry in North America has a disproportionately high number of lost-time injuries because of the high physical demand of the labor-intensive tasks it involves. It is thus essential to investigate the physical demands of body movement in the construction manufacturing workplace to proactively identify worker exposure to ergonomic risk. This paper proposes a methodology to use three-dimensional (3D) skeletal modeling to imitate human body movement in an actual construction manufacturing plant for ergonomic risk assessment of a workstation. The inputs for the creation of an accurate and reliable 3D model are also identified. Through 3D modeling, continuous human body motion data can be obtained (such as joint coordinates and joint angles) for risk assessment analysis using existing risk assessment algorithms. The presented framework enables risk evaluation by detecting awkward body postures and evaluating the handled force/load and frequency that cause ergonomic risks during manufacturing operations. The results of the analysis are expected to facilitate the development of modified work to the workstation, which will potentially reduce injuries and workers’ compensation insurance costs in the long term for construction manufacturers. The proposed framework can also be expanded to evaluate workstations in the design phase without the need for physical imitation by human subjects. In this paper, the proposed 3D visualization-based ergonomic risk assessment methodology is validated through an optical marker-based motion capture experiment for a lifting task in order to prove the feasibility and reliability of the framework. It is also compared to the traditional manual observation method. Three subjects are selected to conduct the experiment and three levels of comparison are completed: joint angles comparison, risk rating comparison for body segments, and Rapid Entire Body Assessment/Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (REBA/RULA) total risk rating and risk level comparison.

A longstanding contentious question in construction scheduling is who owns float: the owner or general contractor. Float is the ability of scheduled activities to absorb delays by their flexible timing. Zero float is considered to constitute criticality. This definition creates a fundamental but largely ignored paradox: To mitigate risk, critical activities urgently need float, but by definition are given none. Yet consuming float can reduce local delays to prevent a ripple effect of negative consequences. This research revisits the float ownership problem with inspiration from voting theory, which can provide proven approaches that apportion a limited valuable good among several participants of different sizes. Equivalent concepts in voting and scheduling were extracted and aligned to derive a functioning approach. Performance of such float apportionment was visualized and quantified by how efficiently the new method protects against delays, both in terms of counts and periods, and when saturation occurs. It was validated by simulating all combinations of a substantial benchmark schedule. The initial question was thus revised to who should use float to minimize overall risk.

Reverse auction bidding is a recent development in the auctioning of goods and services. Significant controversy exists within the construction industry as to whether reversed auction bidding is akin to bid shopping. This is a serious ethical question for the engineering and construction community and one that is worthy of research. First, in the simplest terms, the practical purpose of this paper is to outline the development of a simple web-based game that allows for a controlled study of reverse auction bidding with a standard cohort of trained construction-oriented players and to outline the statistical results of the different games played between 2004 and 2016. These studies provide the pragmatic and statistical framework within a very highly structured game to consider the truth of this paper’s hypothesis, which is that an economically efficient player exists in legal game play. In this paper, the legal game play must coincide with actual construction bidding methods and law. The hypothesis is shown to be true in this study of reverse auction bidding. An economically efficient bidder is someone wanted on a good bidding team; this simple game provides a quick and simple classification system and a good training tool. Second, the utility of the study, not as a bidding method in the real world, but as a training tool for bidding specialists is outlined and the statistical data shown to provide the definition for economically efficient players and nonefficient players is summarized and explained in terms of application to the real world and game theory. The ultimate objective is to create an artificially intelligent player who passes a Turing test for the game, and who maximizes the returns within the valid monetary and utility matrix models used by game players.

Quality control of embankment compaction is of great significance to the durability and stability of high-embankment airports. The current method of embankment quality control mainly relies on manual inspection for a limited number of designated locations after the completion of compaction, which cannot provide the information feedback simultaneously during the compaction or guarantee the compaction quality of the entire working surface. There is an urgent need to develop a new quality-control method of high-embankment airports for the full course of the compaction process. In this paper, a management platform is developed to monitor the real-time compaction process of a high-embankment airport and evaluate the compaction quality of the working surface. To mitigate the effect of human factors to a minimal extent, an optimal path algorithm to guide the real-time compaction trajectory of the impact compactor is proposed, and the unmanned vehicle control technology is implemented on the impact compactor. Furthermore, a virtual-reality tool is incorporated in the developed management platform to provide a three-dimensional interactive display for the compaction process. The feasibility and robustness of the developed management platform is validated by a case study in a pilot section of Beijing Daxing International Airport. The data collected in the case study show that the proposed optimal path algorithm and unmanned vehicle control technique enable the construction process to be faster and more efficient and improve the compaction quality of embankment.

Specialty trade contractors have increasingly invested in virtual design and construction (VDC) capabilities to virtually model the project, ensure the constructability of the model, engineer its system components, prefabricate its assemblies, and layout the virtual model on-site automatically. This paper investigates the impact of design and scope changes on the performance of VDC tasks by adopting a hybrid research methodology that depends on interviewing and survey samples of electrical contractors. Drivers of VDC cost overruns and best practices to control and recover these costs are presented. This paper provides two contributions to the body of knowledge and industry practice of the construction engineering and management community. First, the paper presents the extent and drivers of the inefficiencies and cost overruns experienced by electrical contractors in managing VDC work scopes. Second, a set of best practices is suggested to manage, plan, and control the performance of VDC tasks of electrical contractors and other specialty contractors.