Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

Off-site manufacturing (OSM) has attracted much attention in the construction industry. OSM stakeholders are crucial in its implementation and are distinct in regard to their management. However, an in-depth understanding of OSM stakeholders and their coordination is still lacking. The paper intends to (1) provide a critical review and analysis of OSM stakeholders based on prior studies, and (2) develop a research framework for their future practice and improvement. A qualitative content analysis was adopted to analyze 149 journal papers. The results indicated an increased interest in exploring OSM stakeholders’ issues since 2007. In addition, prior studies focused on the two research themes of stakeholder perceptions and behaviors and stakeholder management. Eleven specific research topics were identified within the two themes, with perceived drivers of and barriers to OSM adoption being the most popular. A research framework was also proposed for systemically articulating developments and gaps for OSM stakeholders. The research contributes to an in-depth understanding of OSM stakeholders and their future practice and improvement in the industry.

Off-site construction methods have been suggested as a necessity for improving the efficiency and productivity of the construction industry through implementation of automation and lean principles in a controlled factory environment, known as modern methods of construction (MMC). The products and the project delivery and management strategies of off-site construction were studied through a multifaceted qualitative exploration of the off-site timber management strategies of 10 manufacturers, including three UK panel, three UK volumetric, and four European (EU) volumetric timber manufacturers. A comparative productivity analysis was carried out and its sensitivities were analyzed, which led to the conclusion that the labor productivity of the surveyed UK panelized and EU volumetric manufacturers was comparable, but the UK volumetric manufacturers’ productivity was lower. As a result, the level of automation and the lean and Design for risassembly (DfD) applications of the manufacturers were all explored to understand these productivity differences within the context of current market trends.

Historical bid items from previous projects are an important source of data for project cost estimation. State highway agencies have widely used this data source for budget planning of highway projects. Current practices on using the data are, however, not efficient and fail to provide a reliable estimate. The estimate is simply based on the mean value, which is then manually adjusted by professionals using their knowledge and experience. A highway project is unique, and its price is highly dependent on various factors including location and the type of construction activities. A geospatial analytic method for project cost estimates would be highly useful for automated assessment of these influencing factors. The state of the art has applied interpolation methods to location cost-adjustment factors to adjust the total costs of two similar projects in two different cities. However, existing methods are mostly beneficial to conceptual cost estimation without considering variances between two projects in the same city and various effects of location on different work activities. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by proposing a geographic information system–based framework that leverages historical bid data for unit-price estimation and visualization with consideration of the effects of project-specific location on different bid items. Apart from applying established spatial interpolation methods to unit-price estimation, various strategies such as the use of quantity in interpolation models are proposed to improve the accuracy of the estimates. Temporal changes in unit prices and relationships between quantities and unit prices are also explored.

Knowledge discontinuity can be a significant obstacle to knowledge growth and accumulation, resulting primarily from the excessive tailoring of borrowed concepts, theories, and approaches. Research in the construction industry is prone to knowledge discontinuity because often after adopting a concept originally developed in another field of study, the link to the original trunk is gradually severed, thus inhibiting research progress. In fact, knowledge discontinuity slows advancement in the construction industry because it is an obstacle to the realization of the benefits achieved in other disciplines by means of the concept, theory, or approach. The research presented in this paper proposes a novel approach to overcoming the discontinuity in knowledge in construction-related research. It uses value-adding practice in the construction industry as a case study, establishing a common understanding of the predominant value-adding frameworks used in the construction industry and providing a measure for the similarity between the selected value-adding frameworks along with the shortcomings of the value-adding practice that need to be addressed. The paper concludes with defining the requirements for a unified framework for value adding in the construction industry.

Although a plethora of studies on building information modeling (BIM) have been conducted in the last decade, none of the previous studies collate and/or prioritize the benefits, risks, and challenges of BIM based on the data collected from a comprehensive literature review and subject matter experts (SMEs). In order to allow architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) professionals and academics see the true potential of BIM in a wider context and help them understand its multiorganizational and multidisciplinary functions, there is an obvious necessity for identifying, classifying, and prioritizing the pros and cons of BIM; however, such a study is still currently absent in the AEC literature. The aim of this study is to identify, classify, and rank the pros and cons of BIM that address the benefits, challenges, and risks of BIM in the transition from computer-aided design (CAD). A literature review was performed and face-to-face semistructured interviews with SMEs on BIM were conducted for identification and classification purposes. A total of 41 types of benefits, 11 types of risks, and 13 types of challenges of BIM were identified via triangulation of literature review and face-to-face semistructured interviews with SMEs. The Delphi method was performed for prioritizing the benefits of BIM in terms of time, cost, and sustainability as well as the risks and challenges of BIM encountered in the transition process from CAD to BIM. The interrater agreement and significance-level statistics were performed to analyze and validate the consensus reached by the Delphi panel experts. This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge on BIM by providing comprehensive identification and classification of the benefits, challenges, and risks of BIM, and prioritization of the benefits for BIM in terms of time, cost, and sustainability as well as the risks and challenges of BIM. The priority rankings of benefits, risks, and challenges of BIM ensure successful completion of projects and create additional value by allowing professionals to make well-informed decisions that support decreasing time and cost-related waste in the transition process from CAD to BIM.

Noise due to construction is recognized as a crucial source of harm to the surroundings of a site. A number of noise-related problems can cause significant risk to an ongoing project. As a first step toward coping with noise, this paper presents a model developed for estimating the noise-related compensation cost through case-based reasoning (CBR). An experiment was performed with 20 randomly selected test cases. The compensation costs were estimated based on damage days and excessive noise level of similar cases. A Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) was adopted to deal with limited and uncertain data. The results showed that the cases had a similarity of 91.8% on average, and the mean absolute error ratio (MAER) of the estimated cost based on data revised by MCS was approximately 11.8%. This indicates that the estimated and actual costs were similar, which validates the applicability of the model. This research contributes to the field of construction noise management by providing environmental managers with a systematic approach for estimating noise-related compensation during the preconstruction phase.

Maintenance of traffic (MOT) is the process of providing transportation management and traffic control at highway work zones. MOT work is an essential part of any construction project and can constitute a significant fraction of overall project cost. It is hypothesized that MOT costs can be reduced significantly through project bundling (consolidation of several separate projects into a single contract). However, no existing study has quantified the impact of bundling on MOT costs. In addressing the issue, this paper develops statistical models that take into account the effects of bundling and other influential factors. Six construction work categories that involve 36 different project types were considered. Several significant variables were identified including the project cost, bundle size, geographical proximity, functional class, traffic volume, and letting season; It was found that the impacts of these variables on MOT cost varies significantly by project type. The study results can provide construction managers with knowledge on projects of specific attributes for which MOT cost could be reduced significantly by project bundling, and those for which bundling would have no such effect.

This study aims to address research questions related to the evolution of academic research in the field of construction engineering and management (CEM): (1) what are the mainstream research topics since 2000? (2) what are the emerging topics or techniques in CEM within the recent decades? and (3) what are potential CEM research areas in the near future? A scientometric analysis was conducted to review articles published in Journal of Construction Engineering and Management since 2000, follow by a qualitative discussion. This study revealed that project performance indicator–related topics (e.g., cost, scheduling, safety, productivity, and risk management) have been the ongoing mainstream issues over the last decades. Labor and personnel issues gained even more research attention in the last 10 years. Information and communication technologies [e.g., building information modeling (BIM)] applied in CEM has been gaining the momentum since 2009. A variety of quantitative methods have gained popularity in the CEM discipline, such as algorithms, statistics, fuzzy sets, and neural networks. The follow-up qualitative analysis led to the contributions of this review-based study in terms that (1) it provided an overview of the research topics in CEM since 2000 through a text-mining approach; and (2) it offered insights into emerging and near-future research areas, including BIM and data analytics applied in various construction issues (e.g., safety), as well as integrations of research themes (e.g., risk assessment in newly emerging project delivery methods).