• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.1-9
• /
• 2015

Project cost is an important concern in any construction project. Although there has been a lot of studies on factors affecting the cost of construction projects, there seems no consensus as what cost factors have direct influence on the cost of civil engineering projects. This study therefore aims to bridge the current knowledge gap by examining quantity surveyors' perception of the factor structure among nineteen costing attributes identified based on literature review. Questionnaire was used to elicit responses from quantity surveyors working in the Hong Kong construction industry. Principal component analysis is conducted to extract the factor structure of the cost attributes and the attributes are grouped into three factor components, namely the contract management factor, the project management factor and the monetary value factor. Understanding these cost impact factors could be crucial in managing civil engineering projects, since it allows the project stakeholders and quantity surveyors to take precautionary steps to identify the cost management problems and areas for improvement and could even help to avoid cost deviations in engineering projects.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2009.05a
• /
• pp.1318-1323
• /
• 2009

In recent years, dramatic advances in information technology have motivated the construction industry to improve its productivity. Computer-based information technology includes Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE), Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Digital Mock-Up (DMU) and Product Data Management (PDM). Most construction industries are trying to apply these technologies for quality improvement, reduction of construction time and cost. PDM is very useful for managing data and process related to product design and manufacturing. PDM system has various functions such as drawing and engineering document management, product structure and structure modification management, part classification management, workflow management, and project management. In this paper, PDM system was applied to the design of steel-concrete composite girder bridge. To make a practical guidance for PDM implementation to bridge design, the procedure for its implementation was presented. Consequently, this paper could be useful to enhance the efficiency of bridge design.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2005.10a
• /
• pp.1250-1255
• /
• 2005

Application of radio frequency Identification (RFID) technology in construction industry is not that progressive compared with other industries, because of it's high price experimental research. This research focus on potential application of RFID which eliminate manual data entry and introduce the potential for automated processes to increase project productivity, construction safety, and project cost efficiency. This paper suggest an invoiceless system using RFID technology, Process productivity and efficiency for material management is observed through WebCYCLONE and is compared with other processes.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2017.10a
• /
• pp.291-296
• /
• 2017

Infrastructure development as national project suffers from social conflict which is one of main risk to be managed. Social conflicts have a negative impact on not only the social integration but also the national economy as they require enormous social costs to be solved. Against this backdrop, this study analyzes social conflict using articles published by online news media based on web-crawling and natural language processing (NLP) techniques. As an illustrative case, the Jeju Naval Base (JNB) project which is one of representative conflict case in South Korea is analyzed. Total of 21,788 articles and representative keywords are identified annually. Additionally, comparative analysis is conducted between the extracted keywords and actual events occurred during the project. The authors explain actual events in the JNB project based on the extracted words by the year. This study contributes to analyze social conflict and to extract meaningful information from unstructured data.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
• /
• v.4 no.3
• /
• pp.13-20
• /
• 2014

Estimating time and cost is an important mission in the early phase of a construction project, especially in feasibility study. It provides a foundation for making decision whether or not the project is performed on schedule and within budget. Thus, reliability of this estimate plays a key role in measuring the success of a project. This study was carried out to investigate the time-cost relationship in building construction projects in Bangladesh. The mathematical equation used in this study is based on Bromilow's equation. The research data were collected from sixty-three completed building projects through questionnaire survey. Type of clients, type of projects, and tender methods are the project characteristics considered in this study. The results of analysis indicated that the Bromilow's time-cost (BTC) models developed for each project characteristic are appropriate due to quite high coefficient of determination and relatively small mean percent errors. Among them, the forecasted model for time and cost according to tender methods is the best fit model. It is concluded that the BTC model could be applied in building construction project to predict its time and cost in Bangladesh. Four different regression models were also developed in this study. The results of BTC model between some selected countries were compared to gain the comprehensive view.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2013.01a
• /
• pp.509-512
• /
• 2013

An inappropriate space zoning plan causes the unnecessary transportation of construction material and equipment among work areas and increases the disorder of work space. Space zoning is an essential operation management technique which contributes to reduce the process and/or operation idle-time. This paper introduces a method that computes the idle-times between construction operations (or processes) by using Web-CYCLONE. It allows computing with idle-times that affect the construction productivity. Using the idle time between operations and between processes, it computes the optimal number of zones and finds the optimal combination of zones that minimize the idle times. The method contributes to minimize the idle times relative to the operation schedule using complete enumeration. This paper presents the system prototype in detail. A case study is presented to demonstrate the system and verifies the validity of the model. It allows a project manager to establish space zoning plan that effectively segregates a project into optimal number of construction zones and to assign the constrained resources (e.g., laborer, equipment).

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2009.05a
• /
• pp.747-753
• /
• 2009

Planning the construction for a system of bored piles in building foundation engineering is (1) to predict the time duration required to complete all the bored piles with due consideration of relevant engineering factors and site constraints; then (2) to predict the total project time generally by aggregating the predicted working duration for construction of each bored pile. The duration for construction of an individual bored pile results from analyzing various working sequences and different activity duration (such as predrilling, excavation, steelfixing, air-lifting, and concreting, etc.), which is informed by experiences and site records of previous projects. However, determining the project duration for constructing many bored piles on one site is much more complicated than adding up the time duration for individual piles. In practice, project schedules are often found to be unrealistic and incorrect during the construction stage. This is because construction planning is not based on a exhaustive and comprehensive evaluation of site factors, such as site layout plan, site constraints, quality control, environmental control, safety control and logical relationships between different trades. In this paper, we identify those factors based on a foundation engineering site in Hong Kong with ninety-seven bored piles and address their effects on uncertainties in activity time and project time.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2013.01a
• /
• pp.141-144
• /
• 2013

This paper presents a system called a Cash-flow based Construction Schedule Optimization system(CfSO). The existing CPM effectively handles schedule and cost management. However, funding strategy should be considered to obtain maximum profit and to progress a project favorably. One of measures is to coordinate the contract terms between owner and subcontractors (or suppliers). Contractor may decrease the interest cost attributed to project financing by adjusting the timing of cash-inflows and cash-outflows. It is an excellent method maximizing profits. This paper presents a method to estimate the amount of a cash-flow occurred periodically by integrating the terms of contract into scheduling. The proposed method is implemented as a system prototype in Microsoft Excel. This system provides a user an automated tool that identifies an optimal schedule that secures maximum profit by adjusting start and finish times of non-critical activities' free-floats without affecting on the project completion time. This system supports a project manager to establish an optimum project schedule and identifies profitable contractual conditions against to a construction owner.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2017.10a
• /
• pp.245-251
• /
• 2017

Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is a procurement method that has been proved to improve construction project performance. However, in China implementation of IPD practices in construction projects is unknown though some researchers have studied the problems and constraints in adoption IPD. The purpose of this study was to explore IPD adoption in Chinese construction industry. Critical components of IPD implementation were reviewed, and questionnaires were distributed to collect industry views. The results revealed that IPD uptake is still low. In particular, the liability waiver and shared risks and rewards have been rarely used. In addition, co-location, value engineering method and the new compensation approach have also been hardly adopted. Some practices related to early involvement of key parties were adopted. Surprisingly, the findings indicate that the client has been continuously involved in the projects. The findings may imply that the legal issues and problems of contractual frameworks are still constraining IPD implementation in Chinese construction industry.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2007.03a
• /
• pp.69-78
• /
• 2007

In real world, the project managers handle conflicting goals that govern the use of resources within the stipulated time and budget with required quality and safety. These conflicting goals are required to be optimized simultaneously by the project managers in the framework of fuzzy aspiration levels. The fuzzy linear programming model proposed herein helps project managers to minimize total project costs, completion time, and crashing costs considering indirect costs, contractual penalty costs etc by practically charging them in terms of direct cost of the project. A case study of bituminous pavement under construction is considered to demonstrate the feasibility of applying the proposed model for optimization of project parameters. Consequently, the proposed model yields an efficient compromise solution and the decision maker's overall degree of satisfaction with multiple fuzzy goal values. Additionally, the proposed model provides a systematic decision-making framework, enabling decision maker to interactively modify the fuzzy data and model parameters until a satisfactory solution is obtained. The significant characteristics that differentiate the proposed model with other models include, flexible decision-making process, multiple objective functions, and wide-ranging decision information.