• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.7 no.3 s.31
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• pp.130-137
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• 2006

Since Lean Construction has been introduced in 1992, much research is in progress to popularize lean concepts and principles. Most research focuses on developing lean concepts and tools and strengthening the limited domain of instrumental rationality and technical efficiency. However, the basic concepts of human resource management seem to be ignored by those who advocate lean production. Thus, the lean construction research related to human resource management must be once considered for popularization and activation of lean construction at the beginning stage in the domestic construction industry. Because human resources have a major influence on lean implementation and its success, especially at the beginning stage of lean construction. This paper considers the human resource requirements for the implementation of lean construction in the USA construction industry. The results from the study will provide the foundations to adapt lean construction into the domestic construction industry. Consequently, the study found that lean construction could improve the capability of human resource and human motivation if effectively implemented in the construction sites. Since lean construction emphasizes and focuses on improvement of relationships among project participants, constant application to human resource management is crucial for successful lean implementation.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2013.01a
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• pp.133-140
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is identifying the relationship among the business strategy, order receiving capability and leverage variables of a construction company using industry characteristic variables, in addition to the explanation variables used in the previous studies. The samples of this study were limited to the construction companies listed in Korean stock market. This study built multiple regression analysis models, which have been frequently used in traditional previous studies, in the explanation of company capital structure. Empirical analysis on Static Trade-off Theory and Pecking Order Theory was done by the built model. The study results suggested that the capital structure determination behavior of a construction company generally follows Static Trade-off Theory; however, profitability was found to follow Pecking Order Theory. The explanation variables used in the previous capital structure studies mostly produced significant results; however, the variables, which this study experimentally used, did not produce significant results. It is believed that it implies that additional studies are required in the selection of variables and study methodology. Consequently, a case that unconditionally supports a particular theory is scarce. It has been also found that a case can support both theories at the same time. Therefore, it is believed that development study methodology or introduction of new study methodology that can identify the dynamic characteristic of construction company capital structure formation is required.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.105-116
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• 2017

In recent years, large Korean construction companies have suffered serious losses in their overseas business. Many practitioners and researchers have analyzed causes of cost overrun in these projects. However, these arguments have not been empirically verified based on acutal project cases. This study investigated cost overrun rate, contingency, allowance, predicted risk before bidding, and actual and residual risk after award in the 67 international infrastructure projects conducted by 13 large construction companies. The causes of cost overruns are derived as follows. First, they identified the possibility of cost overrun to some extent before the bidding, but did not reflect the enough risk money to bid price. In particular, this behavior was more severe in badly cost-overrun projects. Second, the causes of cost overrun were more influenced by external environmental risk than internal capability risk. However, the internal risk in badly cost-overrun projects was relatively high compared to cost-underrun projects. Third, badly cost-overrun projects failed to mitigate risk. However, cost underrun projects were affected more by low exterior risk conditions than by well mitigated risk. This study provides more informed knowledge in controlling project costs in international infrastructure projects.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.5D
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• pp.655-664
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• 2008

Lean Construction recommends implementing site production management by measuring the reliability of daily production tasks, collecting the causes for failure of incomplete tasks, and identifying problems in the existing process based on the collected data. Although many research projects have been performed to introduce Lean Construction in Korea, there are not many cases in which day-to-day site production operations has been stringently evaluated based on such methods. This paper introduces three cases in which such techniques were implemented on a residential, civil infrastructure and plant project. On each project, process maps were created with the superintendents and daily production meetings were held for two weeks. Consequently, the average PPC for the three projects was 79% for PPC and 16% for PAT. In addition, the majority of the failures were due to 'Directive/Plan' and 'Prerequisites.' The results show that project stakeholders (owners, contractors, etc.) lack the ability to plan ahead and keep to their plans, and also lack the capability to synchronize workflow between themselves. The results also reveal that project participants need to be more proactive in solving process problems on site and also need to be better educated in Lean concepts and methodologies.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.23-30
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• 2014

Overseas construction orders of domestic companies had been increased significantly in a short period from $10.9 billion in 2005 to $64.9 billion in 2012. However experts are concerned that quality of growth will not support quantitative growth. This study suggest concentrate competencies for not only winning in bid but also successful execution of domestic companies. 4 Steps which are Pre-Marketing, Bid-Preparation, Bidding, Contract Phase are defined for competency assessment. After drawing specific tasks by phase, survey asking importance and capability of the tasks to the person in charge of bidding and site was conducted by utilizing Likert 7 point scale. According to the result of IPA analysis, domestic construction companies need to ensure internal competencies; Project risk review, Bid team organization, and external competencies; Client needs grasp, Localization strategy, Cooperation establishment. Hearafter domestic construction companies will be able to utilize the result of the study for setting bidding strategy for winning in bid and improving earning rate.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.47-58
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• 2020

The ICEC (Index of Construction Engineer's Competency) quantifies the competence of construction engineers using such parameters as experience, education, and qualifications and assigns four technical grades (expert, advanced, intermediate, and beginners) to construction engineers according to their scores for the efficient management and loading of technical personnel. However, as of 2020, the seventh year since its implementation, ICEC has shown many problems in its application, unlike its intended purpose. So institutional supplementation is required to provide improvement measures that can cope with the changing labor market environment and complement the current ICEC. Therefore, this study examined the current status of the career management system after the introduction of the ICEC, suggested a career index proportional to the competence of construction engineers from the beginner to the expert level, and developed an effective capability evaluation model I²CEC. The improved model presented in this study provides a means to comprehensively judge the performance, experience, and the professional work abilities of construction management engineers. Furthermore, the results of this study are expected to contribute to the development of efficient manpower and career management systems for enhancing the competitiveness of the domestic construction industry.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.316-322
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• 2009

The more repetitive, complex and objective the work, the more effective automation is. Code checking is an example of this. Checking building codes through a thick set of drawings is error-prone and time-consuming. In order to overcome this problem, several organizations have initiated efforts to automate building-code checking. Initiated study mainly focused on checking codes for invalidation, required size and crash, and then area of checkable codes have been expanding. But, it has not been considered for codes regarding anti-disaster/egress, which is also issued these days. This study is about how to automatically check codes for anti-disaster and egress based on Korea building codes. The codes can be categorized as five sections: egress way, material/capability, principals of evacuation, evacuation stairway and fire protection partition. To check automatically, there are problems, such as expression of codes for egress and limitation of extractable information from the BIM model. This paper shows what problems exist and assignments to be resolved. Also, current developing processes are presented, and suggestions are made about the direction for the work that remains.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.19-27
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• 2011

The capital of investment of SOC projects is too large to be taken charge of a country. The government introduces the private investment like a BTL project because of the limited national resources. However, even the company which wants order constructions, do not consider the fundamentals such as accurate estimation, capability of construction company and construction period. The purpose of the research is to suggest the basic influential factors for obtaining a BTL project and offers the concludes for the successful operation after the contract. The result of the research is followed. 54 effect successful factors are compressed into 11 principle factors by analysis on those 54 factors, CSFs of BTL business are constructed. Regression analysis is induced by variable of primary success factors and success degree, and derives the influence degree of effect successful factors in business. Regression analysis that is mentioned above showed considerable issues from importance of primary factors, prime cost fluctuation factors and comparison of management-level. So this study could suggest the effective operate plan of BTL business.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.941-951
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• 2015

In the recent years, Korean construction companies have been awarded 680 billion USD in the oversea projects which lead to a successful quantitative growth. However, due to the lack of capability in the core technology and project management compared to the leading companies, in addition to low-price bidding, massive deficit projects have caused problems to the companies. In order to overcome the limitations of the lack of capabilities, the term constructability has been researched recently by developed countries to apply in the practical use. The concept of constructability must be applied for Korean companies to compete in the EPC construction projects. The term constructability is defined as the factor that affect the overall construction process of a project which is defined by the ease of construction and to secure the project quality. Therefore, this study aims to develop a constructability assessment model using the structural equation to assess the factors that affect the constructability in the design and construction stage. The purpose of using the structural equation is to analyze the direct and indirect correlation between each factor that affects the international construction projects. Total of 8 latent variables and 34 measured variables are derived through literature review, corporate reports, experts' interview and surveys. The result of the model suggests the constructability factors that are to be managed the most efficiently to reduce cost, time and improve the quality as well as a countermeasure strategy to successfully execute the target international construction projects.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.118-126
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• 2016

International construction market have quantitatively increased and have reached up to 700 Bil. US$ through active effort of construction firms and government. In spite of this increase, substantiality issue has been constantly disputed due to qualitative problems such as lack of capability and technical shortage. To overcome these problems, many methods in performing quantitative growth and qualitative substantiality of overseas construction are being researched which showed that selection of subcontractors in general contractor is regarded as a very important success factor. However, it is difficult to make a reasonable decision for selecting the subcontractors due to the lack of evaluation standards and reliability. This study proposes an improved evaluation system through adjustment of the evaluation indicators using correlations analysis and multiple regression analysis with pre-qualification and performance evaluation of 121 firms in 6 countries.