• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2007.03a
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• pp.424-432
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• 2007

The last twenty-five years have seen dramatic improvements in and widespread use of IT to describe and document the work of the many disciplines involved in construction projects. Iran is a developing country and construction is a basic factor of developing too. Hence, the country needs to a special programming for construction of buildings, structures and infrastructures. Many parts of Iran are located in highly seismic zones and structures must be constructed safe e.g., according to recent seismic codes. In this paper opportunities of IT in construction industry of Iran are investigated in three categories. Pre-construction phase, construction phase and earthquake disaster mitigation are studied. Studies show that information technology can be used in these items for reducing the losses and increasing the benefits. Both government and private sectors must contribute to this strategic project for obtaining the best result.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.117-121
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• 2015

Construction managers use scheduling methods to improve the outcome of their project. Despite the many obvious advantages of the critical path method (CPM), its use in construction has been limited. Understanding the reasons why CPM is not used as extensively as expected could improve its level of acceptance in the construction industry. The link between construction scheduling methods and the tasks expected to be performed by schedulers has been an on-going concern in the construction industry. This study proposes a task-technology fit model to understand why CPM is not used as extensively as expected in construction scheduling. A task-technology fit model that aims to measure the extent to which a construction scheduling method functionally matches the tasks expected to be performed by the scheduling staff. The model that is proposed is an answer to the lack of proper instruments for evaluating the extent to which scheduling methods are used in the industry.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.631-635
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• 2015

Construction managers use scheduling methods to improve the outcome of their project. In spite of the many obvious advantages of the critical path method (CPM), its use in construction has been limited. Understanding the reasons why CPM is not used as extensively as expected could improve its level of acceptance in the construction industry. The link between construction scheduling methods and the capabilities of the scheduling staff has been an on-going concern in the construction industry. This study proposes a staffing-technology fit model to understand why CPM is not used as extensively as expected in construction scheduling. A staffing-technology fit model that aims to measure the extent to which a construction scheduling method matches the staff's experience, know-how and capabilities. The model that is proposed is an answer to the lack of proper instruments for evaluating the extent to which scheduling methods are used in the industry.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.45-53
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• 2014

The objective of this study is to assess the requirements of tablet PC-based PMIS applications designed for use on construction sites to determine whether these new programs can play a significant role in increasing the efficiency of a project. In this research, the current market conditions of PMIS running on a tablet PC were analyzed. In addition, two industry surveys were conducted. A research team interviewed some industry experts and identified fourteen useful and desirable functions that can be incorporated into tablet PC-based applications and project management tools. Through a questionnaire survey, the most effective functions for the tablet PC-based PMIS were identified. The three top-rated functions among those suggested were Contact Information for Job-Related Personnel; Receive and Respond to Submittals, RFIs, and Notices; and Problem Solving for Design and Engineering Issues. The results of this research are expected to provide helpful information for mobile application developers and members of other interested groups in the construction industry.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.496-500
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• 2015

International construction projects are inherently more risky than domestic projects with multi-dimensional uncertainties that require complementary risk management at both the country and project levels. However, despite a growing need for systematic country evaluations, most studies have focused on project-level decisions and lack country-based approaches for firms in the construction industry. Accordingly, this study suggests data-driven approaches for evaluating countries using two quantitative models. The first is a two-stage country segmentation model that not only screens negative countries based on country attractiveness (macro-segmentation) but also identifies promising countries based on the level of past project performance in a given country (micro-segmentation). The second is a multi-criteria country segmentation model that combines a firm's business objective with the country evaluation process based on Kraljic's matrix and fuzzy preference relations (FPR). These models utilize not only secondary data from internationally reputable institutions but also performance data on Korean firms from 1990 to 2014 to evaluate 29 countries. The proposed approaches enable firms to enhance their decision-making capacity for evaluating and selecting countries at the early stage of corporate strategy development.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.304-311
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• 2022

Construction inspection is a crucial stage that ensures that all contractual requirements of a construction project are verified. The construction inspection capabilities among state highway agencies have been greatly affected due to budget reduction. As a result, efficient inspection practices such as risk-based inspection are required to optimize the use of limited resources without compromising inspection quality. Automated prioritization of textual requirements according to their criticality would be extremely helpful since contractual requirements are typically presented in an unstructured natural language in voluminous text documents. The current study introduces a novel model for predicting the risk level of requirements using machine learning (ML) algorithms. The ML algorithms tested in this study included naïve Bayes, support vector machines, logistic regression, and random forest. The training data includes sequences of requirement texts which were labeled with risk levels (such as very low, low, medium, high, very high) using the fuzzy logic systems. The fuzzy model treats the three risk factors (severity, probability, detectability) as fuzzy input variables, and implements the fuzzy inference rules to determine the labels of requirements. The performance of the model was examined on labeled dataset created by fuzzy inference rules and three different membership functions. The developed requirement risk prediction model yielded a precision, recall, and f-score of 78.18%, 77.75%, and 75.82%, respectively. The proposed model is expected to provide construction inspectors with a means for the automated prioritization of voluminous requirements by their importance, thus help to maximize the effectiveness of inspection activities under resource constraints.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.730-731
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• 2015

This study aims at giving the framework to estimate the environmental load at planning and schematic phase. With increasing awareness of environmental issues, the effort to reduce the environmental impacts caused by human activity has been increasingly enlarged. So far most of researches estimating CO₂ emissions have analyzed energy consumption based on BOQ (Bills of Quantity) acquired after detailed design. There is also lack of reliability in the estimated environmental impact using the basic unit of a facility at the planning stage, because it uses a limited specific section of historical data. Thus, this study is targeted at developing framework to assess reliable environmental loads based on information available at project early phases by making case-bases from historical design information on PSC Beam Bridge. Historical database is built on the basis of the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and in order to set input information for estimating model, the literature about information in an early project phase are reviewed. Using the information available in the planning and schematic design stage, the Framework is presented to estimate the environmental load in an early stage in the project. Developing an environmental load estimation model in accordance with the Framework presented in this study, it is expected that the environmental load in the initial project phase can be estimated more quickly and accurately.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.1231-1236
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• 2005

Global construction projects manifest more risks than do other industries. Often, firms doing business in construction markets find these risks intimidating. To secure corresponding profits, many global contractors attempt to forecast the effects of risks and establish risk management strategies. However, one key problem with present-day risk management methods is that they are basically analytical or mathematical-oriented approaches which are not easy to adopt in real business. Based on preliminary investigations and evaluations of current tools, this research elicits more practical algorithms for risk checklist by constructing risk scenarios over the whole period of project execution. For the application of the algorithms, a "SE/RF" (Source-Event/Regular-Floating) checklist is suggested, which sorts out risk sources and their subsequent events, as well as dividing various risk factors into either regular or floating categories. In addition, the "PIS" (Probability-Impact-Significance) method is introduced, in place of traditional "PI" (Probability-Impact) methods, by adding the additional criterion of "risk significance" to determine the degree of risk exposure in a more realistic way. As a result, we draw the significant finding that the "PIS" method presents a closer evaluation regarding degree of risk exposure as compared to the level of expert judgments than those from traditional methods. Finally, we provide an integrated procedure for international project risk management with all of the research achievements being incorporated.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.222-229
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• 2022

Although stochastic programming and feedback control approaches could efficiently mitigate the overdue risks caused by inherent uncertainties in ground conditions, the lack of formal representations of planners' rationales for resource allocation still prevents planners from applying these approaches due to the inability to consider comprehensive resource allocation policies for hard rock tunnel projects. To overcome the limitations, the authors developed an ontology that represents the project duration estimation rationales, considering the impacts of ground conditions, excavation methods, project states, resources (i.e., given equipment fleet), and resource allocation policies (RAPs). This ontology consists of 5 main classes with 22 subclasses. It enables planners to explicitly and comprehensively represent the necessary information to rapidly and consistently estimate the excavation durations during construction. 10 rule sets (i.e., policies) are considered and categorized into two types: non-progress-related and progress-related policies. In order to provide simplified information about the remaining durations of phases for progress-related policies, the ontology also represents encoding principles. The estimation of excavation schedules is carried out based on a hypothetical example considering two types of policies. The estimation results reveal the feasibility, potential for flexibility, and comprehensiveness of the developed ontology. Further research to improve the duration estimation methodology is warranted.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.20-28
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• 2017

In almost every construction project, delay is an inevitable yet controllable phenomenon. The Indian construction industry encounters an enormous amount of delays in projects. Delay affects both time and money in the forms of schedule and cost overruns, respectively. Due to impressive and dynamic growth in the Indian construction sector, planned efforts are essential to limit these undesirable delays. On account of the surge in the rate of residential building construction, the task of identification and analysis of the delays in residential projects in India has been attempted by the authors. A questionnaire survey was conducted involving 100 stakeholders. Further analysis included an Importance Index to rank the identified delays, Principle Component Analysis for advanced statistical analysis, and Correlation Analysis to check the extent of agreement amongst stakeholders. Conclusions drawn with reference to the analysed data eventually reflected finance-related issues, as well as labour related problems as the dominating causes of delays. The aim of the research is to provide insight to the construction stakeholders and researchers, on an international scale, with the obtained results.