Construction designs are often produced with insufficient considerations on the constructability aspects. Poor constructability has resulted in delay, cost increase, disputes, safety hazards and inconvenience to the public. Increasingly, there has been a call for more systematic input of construction knowledge in the planning and design processes of modern day's infrastructure development. In some countries, notably the US, the practice of constructability reviews is on the rise, with concomitant benefits. It is advocated that construction plans and designs be subject to constructability reviews as early as possible. It should be made part of the project management strategy driven by the client. This paper outlines the constructability review process and benefits, whilst drawing lessons from a number of case studies.

The success of a building design team is achieved as a result of a combination of multiple events/factors and interactions, and has a great impact on the quality of the building construction process. While most of previous studies have focused on quality of the construction process, the success of a design team has not been completely investigated. This paper presents the critical factors that impact the success of a building design team and describes an assessment tool to measure the successful performance of the design team with respect to the critical factors. The development of the assessment tool employs the concept of quality function deployment (QFD), a technique to measure the service quality of an organization.

This paper shares our project management experience in the 2 large-scale projects in managing a diverse international project team of consultants and managing in a foreign land. The first part introduces the two projects, second part addresses management of the projects and the last portion presents some of the challenges we experienced and highlights the importance of understanding the peculiarities of the operating environment, their norms, cultures, effectiveness and limitations of conventional project management tools while operating in a foreign country.

The demand for light-rail construction projects has recently been increasing, and they are mostly supervised by private construction companies. Therefore, a private construction company that aim to raise gains from the operation of the facilities during the contract period greater than what they invested should b able to accurately calculate the costs from the aspect of Life Cycle Cost (LCC). In particular, a light-rail transit bridge that has a heavier portion from the aspect of the cost of light-rail transit construction requires a more accurate calculation method than the conventional LCC calculation method. For this, an LCC analysis model was developed and a cost breakdown structure was suggested based on literature review. The construction costs by shape of the upper part of a light-rail transit were calculated based on the cost breakdown system presented in this paper, and the cost generation cycle and cost unit price were collected and analyzed based on records on maintenance costs, rehabilitation and replacement. In addition, after forming some hypotheses in order to perform the LCC analysis, economic evaluation was conducted from the aspect of the LCC by using performance data by item.

GS E&C had developed construction management system, PMS which is based on EVMS in 1997. Recently, TPMS has developed for effective construction management through applying daily schedule management and JIT on materials, labors, equipments focusing field work. TPMS realizes "Shielding" and "Make-Ready Process" which are the main concept of Lean construction. Through this system, it can manage and plan daily field work, support the field work related material, labor, and equipment planning, and minimizes the non-valuable process. This paper introduces the concept of TPMS, and through established system, it can lead the construction culture and raise the competitive power of construction industry

The endeavor of this paper focuses on designing a monitoring system to provide a cost-effective solution on quality assurance for construction projects. The construction site monitoring system integrates a long-range wireless network, network cameras, and a web-based collaborative platform. The users of the system could obtain the most updated status of construction sites, such as behaviors of workers, project progress, and site events anywhere with Internet connectivity. It was carefully configured in order to maintain the reliability under the reactive conditions of the construction sites. This paper reports the architecture of the monitoring system and reviews the related technologies. The system has been implemented and tested on a construction site and promising results were obtained.

There has been a lot of research on and release of commercial systems that enable evaluation and visualization of construction methods. These have enabled the selection of good construction plans. However, the process in which engineers build 3D geometry, formulate a schedule and eventually synchronize them is still a time-consuming process. Changing any aspect of the geometry or the schedule and re-linking them is also time-consuming. Therefore, the engineers may compromise on getting the best solution. This paper describes a technique to automate the generation of multiple sets of schedules, quantity takeoffs and 4D visualization from a single 3D model.

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.

An effective logistics management is necessary for successful construction projects. So, prompt and precise logistics information collecting and management is needed, but there has been no systematic and effective method for this, Therefore, in this research, a standardized plan for RFID application in logistics management that could comprehend processes in building construction projects, was developed. With the 7 generalized process types that comprehend processes in construction projects, critical factors that should be considered for RFID applications were derived, and systematic and efficient application method for building projects were developed.

In this paper, the authors discussed the overview of a method for estimating working area for development of a monitoring system for labor management using RFID technology. RSSI (Receive Signal Strength Indication) data of RFID tag was obtained from readers set around the indoor space. An estimating model of the working area was prepared. The model had a range of the percentage of correctly classified from 61% to 95%. According to the result, the possibility of the monitoring system and the factors necessary to develop for practical were proposed.

This paper presents a study on the impact of variation of construction material prices on the feasibility of building projects in Vietnam. The paper makes use of Monte-Carlo simulation for financial risk analysis of net present Value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR). To well illustrate the influencing, a case study is presented. The research results show that there is a strong correlation between steel prices, gold prices, and $US exchange rate. Outputs of statistics also reveal that the concurrent variation of prices of cement, steel, sand, brick, formwork and stone has strongly negative impact on NPV and IRR of building projects. The results also indicate that the proportion of steel cost to total construction cost is 17.95% which is the cause of risks for the feasibility of building project in Vietnam. The paper stresses that feasibility study of building project must integrate the impact of construction materials prices in order to mitigate risks in developing countries as Vietnam.

Little attention has been focussed on a precise definition and evaluation mechanism for project management risk specifically related to contractors. When bidding, contractors traditionally price risks using unsystematic approaches. The high business failure rate our industry records may indicate that the current unsystematic mechanisms contractors use for building up contingencies may be inadequate. The reluctance of some contractors to include a price for risk in their tenders when bidding for work competitively may also not be a useful approach. Here, instead, we first define the meaning of contractor contingency, and then we develop a facile quantitative technique that contractors can use to estimate a price for project risk. This model will help contractors analyse their exposure to project risks; and also help them express the risk in monetary terms for management action. When bidding for work, they can decide how to allocate contingencies strategically in a way that balances risk and reward.

In January 2005, the BTL private investment project was introduced in the Korean construction market as part of the plan to provide high-quality public service and expand the required facilities in a timely manner. Nonetheless, problems such as the low earning rate at the beginning of the business, burden of service compared to the cost of the proposed business, and limitations of the local small and medium-sized companies in relation to their participation in the project arose. The LCC analysis system for the BTL projects was developed as part of efforts toward efficiently investigating the investment eligibility. Specifically, methods for LCC analysis were selected for each stage of the BTL project in relation to the requests of experts for military residential facilities and public educational facilities. Variables were then extracted to derive an accurate analysis value, LCC for the 5 cost items (initial investment cost, operating expenses, maintenance expenses, energy cost, and disposal cost), analyzed, and system enabling comparative analysis for single and multiple initiatives by year and item, developed. Thus, we have to clearly require the accumulation of data to examine the appropriateness of the results of LCC analysis based on data and results.

This paper presents a study on risk analysis in terms of contractor's costs in construction phase in which Crystal ball (software of Decisioneering, UK) has been utilized as a main tool. To realize it, a questionnaire survey has been carried out to identify the dominant factors that strongly influence contractor costs in Vietnam. Based on results of questionnaire investigation, the survey identified three factors which were duration of each construction task, costs of reinforcing steel, and cement. Then a spreadsheet model was created in order to analyze risks. The study also indicates that the cost of reinforcing steel and cement are the cause of risks for contractors. According to the suggested model, contractors may foresee the probability of completion within the approved budget, and the possibility of earning in accordance with owner's payment conditions.

Indian construction companies have only 0.05% market share in the 3-4 trillion dollar global construction business and only two Indian construction companies figure in the ENR "Top 225 Global Contractors 2006" list. Hence, while enormous scope for growth exists, international construction experience is limited. This study explores the risks as perceived by Indian companies venturing abroad since risks in international construction differ from home market risks. Literature survey identified a number of risk factors that were evaluated by the experts, highlighting fourteen important risk factors. Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) was used to develop a hierarchical model showing the relationships between the different risk factors, thus helping to focus on the key risks for effective risk management. The study shows that poor project management is a key risk forming the hub of the system, while political instability has maximum influence. The results of the study can be used by managers to visualise the risks in perspective and prioritise the mitigation effort.

More often than not, cost claims which are legitimately due and entitled to the contractor for works done, or for loss and expense incurred arising from disruption, prolongation and delay, are surprising not successfully recovered, whether in whole or in part, or none at all. One of the main reasons attributing to such scenario, is due to either the contractor, employer or the consultants and their poor understanding of and adherence to established and proper contractual rubric that is embodied in the building construction contract for the works. This paper explores some such pitfalls that could very well spell the ultimate financial disaster for many contractors, and highlights salient and essential intimations that contractors and consultants should watch out for.

Conflicts of interest and independent agenda of the parties brought together for implementation of a construction project often leads to dispute in Contract and claim situations. Construction Industry is notorious for claim that is managed on its arising and there lacks an endeavor to minimize the breeding grounds through efficient planning and alignment to purpose, of all contract-documents. There failure of a concerted effort entails wastage of resources, delayed completion of facilities and stained relationships of parties when collide in mistrust in contract to win over the other. There needs a focus on the claim breeding issue and establish an effective mechanism to deal with disputes in urgency. Claim occurs mostly during the construction phase. But the seeds of claim and nutrients essential for development are contained in the contract documentation and the information supplied or not in pre-contract phase. Opportunity to prevent nutrients for seed of Claim comes to an end once tender-documents are finalized, the contract is awarded and established or not a mechanism for dealing with claim situation. The processes presented here would help in minimizing the breeding grounds and emergence of disputes during progression of works and dealing with eventualities in forceful manners for finding a resolution most effectively in relevant time.

This paper has investigated the cultural practices influencing business performance and integrity in selected Malaysian contractors and has discussed culture related issues to improve the management of cultural capitals in the Malaysian construction industry. Issues of current enterprise culture and applicable cultural practices, leadership styles, enterprise axiology and integrity, cultural practices and loyalty, and identification of organizational culture are discussed during the semi-structured interviews and questionnaire survey. Conclusions has been drawn that the people oriented and task oriented management style have a similar quantity of supporters in Malaysian contractors. The integrity and profit are respectively identified as the enterprise axiology in the ethical and economic perspective. The monkey culture is considered as the most applicable type for the cultural practice and the current enterprise cultures applied in the Malaysian contractors are mostly positive to both the organizations and society.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the criteria of measuring project performance in order to attain construction excellence. Previous researchers have examined the abstract concept of success for general new construction and identified its relationship with the factors of success. In fact, most buildings exist to satisfy the needs of people. With the passing of time and change in technology, buildings have to be maintained and renovated in order to continue functioning properly for the benefits of users. Therefore, criteria and factors of success have increasingly attracted the attention of both researchers and practitioners, especially in cities where buildings become ageing. However, the topic of project success for maintenance projects is less discussed in previous research, and project participants, including maintenance surveyors should be able to identify the success measurement and its associated factors for performance improvement. This study fills the research gap by investigating the criteria and factors of success for maintenance projects. It first provides a summary of the literature review on the criteria and factors of success for construction projects. An empirical study has also been carried out with ten practitioners in Hong Kong to further identify the criteria and factors critical for the success of maintenance projects in practice. While most criteria and factors of success for new construction projects are also applicable to maintenance projects, participants in maintenance projects believe that effective communication is in particular important to provide quality service to the end-users.

China power market is fast changing. The strong economic growth does make BOT power projects to be one of the focuses for investment in China due to the huge demand for energy by the Chinese government. Since late 80's,various power projects BOT studies have been carried out but appear too fragmented which fail to linked the BOT studies to the most recent government policies' changes or market movement. This study has carried out analysis on the recent changes in China power industry reform and local government authority empowerment. The impact of those changes to BOT investment has been identified and recommendations have been made on the new opportunities and new strategies especially from the Singapore's investors' point of view. A case study on BOT hydropower plant has been presented which could be a suitable model for Singapore investors.

Generally, there is confusion as to what constitutes TQM, though it can be regarded as a set of concepts and tools for getting all employees focused on continuous improvement, various schools of thought have defined or classified the critical success factors as constructs, concepts and principles. Therefore the main aim of this paper is to provide a practical approach for understanding the quality management terminology. Using the existing quality management measurement instruments available in literature, the terminology used is classified into constructs, practices and finally tools or techniques. Quality Management may then be viewed as a combination of the three sets of terminology. Drawing on the quantitative study which investigated the implementation of TQM within the SME, the critical factors of TQM as used in that study as used to demonstrate the practical approach or methodology for the understanding of the terms thus used. For the benefit of practitioners within the Construction Management field, a bit of clarity is required as regards the terminology used. This study contributes to clarifying the conflicting results being reported in the quality management literature which inevitably leads to having different levels of analysis of Quality Management. Accordingly, the strength of quality management compared with other business philosophies should then focus on the practical methodology, namely the practices and techniques.

The acceptance of unsolicited proposals (a private-initiated process) has been viewed by several governments as a means of encouraging innovative initiatives. However, the ramifications of this mechanism are still poorly understood. This paper analyzes a framework used by the Taiwanese government to evaluate unsolicited proposals. Taiwan's experience demonstrates the need for an improved framework in which key issues such as building consensus, maintaining a transparent procurement process, ensuring sufficient competition, and protecting intellectual property rights shall be addressed. In addition, the case study suggests that the roles of participants, the relationships and interfaces of activities, information flows, and decision making points should all be well defined. Some fundamental differences between solicited and unsolicited proposals are also discussed.

This paper presents a study on construction safety in the People Democratic Republic of Laos (PDRL). Fifty workers experienced certain injuries in their construction sites and 15 top managers were interviewed in twenty-six construction projects in Vientiane, the capital of PDRL. Research results show that stepping on and/or striking against objects (48%), struck by falling objects (24%), falling of persons (12%) are major types of construction injuries. The paper stresses that the ignorance of top managers about their crucial role in safety improvement, using safety incentive to raise safety performance, lack of thorough understanding about benefit from labor safety performance, and the willingness to cut off safety performance expenditures is considered as obstructions of safety improvement programs. The survey indicates that physical working conditions, relationship among workers, foremen behaviors and the monthly wage were influencing factors to worker's job satisfaction. The study also highlights afternoon as dominant time that led to a large number of injuries.

In the highly competitive construction industry, a slight inaccuracy of estimation can easily cause the loss of a project. Erroneous experience-based cost estimates or allocations of on-site supervisory manpower often offset the profit gained from the project and may jeopardize the management processes. To counter these types of problems, we develop a model using mathematical analysis and case-based reasoning to automate the allocation of on-site supervisory manpower and estimate construction site costs. The method is founded upon laborious data collection processes and analysis by matching statistical assumptions, and is applicable to construction projects. In the modeling the costs and allocation of on-site supervisory manpower are quantified for both owners and contractors before initiating or bidding on the projects. The findings confirm that the degree of variation of the model predictions has an accuracy rate at 88.47%. Single-site construction projects can be accurately predicted and the assignment of supervisory manpower feasibly automated.

Recently orders of projects in the field of oil and gas plants have increased due to rising oil prices and consumption. The markets of oil and gas plants are expanding into the Middle East area and all over the world. Because the oil and gas markets have a lot of overseas construction operations, competition among advanced companies is more important. However, companies in the period of growth have not had enough competitive powers of license in the design phase. Therefore, they are faced with difficulty of adopting the technology which is maximizing the effect of investments, and scheduling of a long-range plan. In order to achieve adequate technology management and competitive power, this study considers a long-range plan through an analysis of an appropriate introduction and the strategic planning process of technology management.

In a very competitive construction business environment there is a need to measure and manage business performance across a wider spectrum of business success criteria. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and Triple Bottom Line (TBL) reporting concepts are emerging as champions in the race for sustainable business success. The construction business organisations are often judged based on their financial performance as well as wider performance. This paper aims at developing a universally accepted tool for assessing contractors' wider business performance in the construction industry. A prototype of web-based business performance measurement system has been developed to help contractors assess their own performance aimed at uplifting their performance. The consultants/clients can also use the tool to measure contractors' performance in a value-based contractor selection. The system was developed based on the research conducted among 63 senior construction professionals and therefore further research with the participation of a large number of managers across different countries and also an upgrade of the system will be required.

Nighttime construction is being adopted by many state DOT's as a way to mitigate the impact of construction operations on the traveling public. Although a number of states have developed standard specifications for nighttime lighting, these standards are usually in the form of generic requirement statements that only specify minimum illuminance levels. The lighting standards do not include specific ways to achieve this illuminance level such as lighting arrangements and configurations for various work zone plans and construction operations. This leaves confusion between the traffic engineers and the contractors and does not guarantee consistency in those plans, thus affecting productivity and safety (lighting conditions account for 18% to 28% of work zone accidents). The main objective of this study is to utilize three dimensional animation and lighting analysis software to study and model lighting conditions of a construction site. This is expected to increase the safety and productivity of construction operations by achieving consistency in work zone lighting schemes. A computerized model was developed, called Nitelite. Various lighting schemes can be studied using the software to provide for typical applications including lighting fixture's locations, luminance, mounting height, tilt angle, and fixture type. The results from the developed software tool were validated through comparisons with previous research conducted using field measurements.

Attempts to achieve a higher productivity have led studies to focus on process improvement. Information has been found as an essential element for process improvement. This research has introduced and focused on two types of information, namely: related jobsite information along the process and feedback information. Related jobsite information along the process which needs to be processed and delivered in a timely manner, accurate, and real time is required to streamline the decision making process. Whereas feedback information about process' current practices which have to be captured and stored is a useful for continuous improvement in identifying the problem origin and determining corrective action. In the current practices, although these two types of information are essential for process improvement, construction process has faced barriers in obtaining that information. Therefore, this research will propose a new information system to overcome the aforementioned barriers. The new information system consists of RFID as an automatic identification and data collection device integrated with database to support construction processes. The new system attempts to provide related jobsite information along the process and feedback information to support decision making process and continuous process improvement respectively. A case study of prefabrication installation process in housing projects has been selected to be implemented in conceptual model of RFID application in construction industry. Conceptual model will be presented in this paper as an initial stage of this ongoing research. Expected outcomes of the new system and future works will be discussed briefly.

The development of construction industry has led to the increase in the number of criteria imposed by project clients for selecting contractors. For example, clients often request tenderers to satisfy various conditions such as tight programme, financial strength, managerial ability, relevant work experiences, technical strength, high workmanship standard, safety requirement, quality specification, and yet others. This trend has attracted research interests of devising various methods for helping project clients to assess contractors' bids. For example, in recent development, the Works Bureau of the Hong Kong Government has introduced two mechanisms in tender evaluation for various public work contracts, namely, the Marking Scheme effective from June 2002 and the Formula Approach effective from November 2002 [1], [2]. These approaches evaluate a contractor's tender by considering collectively its tender price and performance attributes, the latter including contractor experience, past performance, technical resources and technical content of his proposal. The tender with the highest combined price and performance score (CPPS) will be normally recommended for acceptance. It appears, however, that there is little existing research in helping contractors to identify a competition strategy that enables the contractor to offer his most competitive bid collectively taking into account his resource capacities and project client's multiple performance criteria. This paper examines the factors affecting contractor's competition strategy to compete for works in Hong Kong. The understanding about the factors will contribute to identifying effective competition strategy. The data used for the analysis were collected from Hong Kong construction industry. The research findings may provide valuable references for investigating effective competition strategies in other construction industries outside the region.

When it comes to construction, the UAE leads the way. The UAE's construction industry is valued at US$ 221 billion (about AED 811.73 billion) - the highest in the region. The construction boom has caused a shortage of both manpower and materials, leading to rise in input prices not only in UAE but in the entire region. The prices of materials have reportedly increased more than manpower. Consequently, there has been an escalation in project costs, which have increased by 10-20 per cent since last three years. This paper examines the opportunities and challenges faced by the developers, consultants, contractors and suppliers due to the construction boom at UAE for the last five years. The paper summarizes that inspite of challenges faced, UAE expects the construction and real estate sectors to remain upbeat for the next ten years.

"Environmentally Sound and Sustainable Development (ESSD)" is a key word in recent years. The construction industry, have put a great influence on ergonomic and sustainable environment. Recently, "green building certifications", such as Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and eco-friendly material regulation have been established. With this regard, new construction and aged-housing remodeling projects are required to meet these certification criteria. Multi-housing residents have great concern on eco-product, since many cases are reported that Sick Building Syndrome is caused by toxic substance from building materials. Aged-housing remodeling project is very unique in that building residents are selected prior to design phase. Therefore, the analysis of resident's need for building materials in aged-housing remodeling is relatively easy compared to new building construction. As such, it is very important to analyze their preferences for eco-friendly materials prior to project execution. The purpose of this study is to find the needs of residents and priority of their needs. Based on their needs and priority, this paper provides a new strategy in using environment-friendly materials and maximizing their satisfaction level when aged housing remodeling is constructed. In addition, this paper provide new criteria in selecting new developed environmental materials in remodeling projects for the purpose of improving the safety and health level in construction industry.

This research aims to investigate into Official Development Assistance (ODA), which may be regarded as assistance or aid to increase competitiveness in the overseas construction field through presenting, in the initial step of construction projects, schemes to secure financial resources to those who place orders. In this research, the present author analyzes ODA of advanced countries and S.Korea and distributes and collects questionnaires to experts in related fields in order to investigate into the current state and problems of overseas construction and ODA.

Construction activities are characterized as hazardous work. Therefore, it is very imperative to explore comprehensively fatal accidents and safety performance in both developed and developing countries. The goal of this study was to look at the reasons behind fatal accidents in HCMC, Vietnam's largest city. The survey sample consists of 91 fatal accident cases in total that occurred in construction sites during the years 1996-2005 and were reported to the Department of Labor-Invalids-Social Affairs in HCMC. The study was conducted by means of field surveys with relevant individuals working in construction sites and statistical analyses. The research resulted in failing to wear/use PPE as unsafe acts and in poor safety management procedures/methods in sites as insecurely working conditions behind serious accidents in the construction. The paper stresses that accidents tended to occur more in state-owned companies than in others and involved more with masonry/welding people and workers without labor contracts than with other workers.

Nowadays, it is convenient to use 3D modeling tools for general planning before construction. Normally, a 3D model is built with 3D CAD such as 3D Studio Max, Maya, etc. or simply with AutoCAD. All these software packages are effective in building 3D models but difficult to use, because many provided functions and tools require prior knowledge to build both 2D and 3D designs. Moreover, the traditional method of building 3D models is most time-consuming as experienced operators and manual input are required. Therefore, how to minimize the building time of 3D models and provide easy-to-use functions for users who are not familiar with 3D modeling becomes important. In this paper, the VisualLISP programming language is used to create a convenient tool for efficient generation of 3D components for the AutoCAD environment. This tool will be demonstrated with the generation of a 3D sluice, an artificial passage for water fitted with a valve or gate to stop or regulate water flow. With the tool, users only need to enter the parameters of a sluice in the edit box and the 3D model will be automatically generated in a few seconds. By changing parameters in the edit box and pressing the "OK" button, a new 3D sluice model will be generated in a short while.

Employability is a critical issue in construction education. Employability is more than students obtaining employment upon graduation. The concept is far more ranging, and should encompass enabling students to acquire the knowledge, personal and professional skills and encouraging attitudes that will support their future development and employment. This paper describes two case studies relating to how the true concept of employability can be incorporated into the construction higher education curriculum. Case study 1 was a collaborative venture with contributions from a higher education provider, employers, students and a professional body (Association of Building Engineers). It outlines the whole process from course inception through to graduation and feedback. Thus it presents a valid model for other higher education providers of construction courses to adapt or adopt. Case study 2 outlines how the opportunity of a degree programme revalidation process was utilized to introduce modules which would enhance students' employability on graduation.

The development in the design process is usually based on the choice of a method for designing the system, in which this method is frequently faced with tightening environmental requirements, reducing development cycle times and growing complexity. To tackle such factors, the paper proposes a comprehensive approach focusing on applying systems engineering approach to the building design support. In particular, this paper addresses all capabilities of using some available systems engineering standards (like EIA-632) in the design process. Then, a methodological approach is proposed for the practice of requirements engineering by applying quality assessment and control to design in early phase. The paradigm used, here is to extend and particularly to adapt the work carried out in military and space systems to modern building services by taking into account the semantics of buildings in terms of different engineering fields and architecture issues.

Our nation has a problem with discrimination of income distribution and inefficient of resources distribution caused by real estate price rising from a sudden economy growth and industrialization. Specially, in recent years, there is a great disparity of condominium price between the north and south of the Han river. Because the housing price is deciede by the immanent value of a house and neighborhood effects of the regional where the house is situated, the housing price is occurred difference. In this study, I analyzed the differences of housing price determinants about condominium developments in the old and new residential areas, and found the important factors that affect the condominium price using Structural Equation Modeling(SEM) The purpose of study is to analyze the influence of various factors of housing price. Also, this study tried to predict real estate market and to establish previous effective real estate policy.

Construction project is necessary element for human life to upgrade the quality and convenience. However, due to its contradictory nature to the environment preservation, environmental pollution and damage, deterioration of natural scenery, noise/vibration, water quality pollution, etc. caused in the process of construction greatly affect the environment. For the building or construction project, its possible impact on environment during construction work and after completion must be predicted at its design phase, which will result in the completion of the architecture convenient for human being with its environmental pollution reduced to minimum level. In this study, the checklist of environmental factors was suggested, which should be taken into account at its design phase in conducting the construction work. Proposed checklist was linked with the developed web-based system for the convenience of users like designer and construction manager, etc. It is expected that the checklist suggested by this study will help the designer and construction manager to continue the steady development from the environmental viewpoint during the design phase.

One major development in bridge life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) in recent years is to develop deterioration model for bridge components so that the times of repair/replacement throughout a component's life span can be properly determined. Taiwan also developed her own bridge LCCA model in 2003, integrating with the bridge inspection database in the local bridge management system (T-BMS). Under the framework of the local LCCA model, this study employs the reliability method in developing a deterioration model of bridge components. A component deteriorates through time in its reliability, which represents the probability of a component's condition index exceeds a user specified threshold. Model assumptions and rationale are described in the paper. The steps for applying the developed model are explained in detail. Results and findings are reported.

Constructing high buildings is a global trend, and skyscrapers for residing are also increasing. But a period of works for finish construction is different depending on a company while a period of works for frame construction of skyscrapers for residing in the country is regular when considering a difference of a method of construction, and the increase of repeated construction for high buildings and number of related process for finish construction are stressing the importance of improving productivity through construction management and plan for works. Because there are many compositive factors affecting productivity other than technical factors, we should intensively study the way of improvement and prevention preferentially through analyzing factors affecting productivity. So in this study, we present important management factors for making systematic strategy and plan for improvement of productivity by finding factors affecting productivity depending on the degree of importance unifying factors affecting productivity of plan factor(internal factor of construction process) and management factor(outer factor of construction process).

The construction industry in South Korea is experiencing great changes: it is becoming developed on a larger scale, specialized to a high degree and rapidly incorporating with other industries. This development has resulted in higher demand of construction industry. Accordingly, the transparency and an objective method of evaluation in the process of projects in the construction industry are gaining more importance. Clients' and customers' needs also require more specific objective evaluation to find whether their projects are successfully performed or not. This study aims to discuss problems on the current post-evaluation items including the qualitative item analysis such as customer satisfaction. Moreover, this paper suggests the improved ways in which enable the application of the effective evaluation system to the construction industry.

This paper describes how using the XPS Document technologies of Windows Vista support and enhances interactions with the structural design and construction process. It illustrates the document workflows and the document life cycle in a typical construction base knowledge system. It provides engineers and decision makers and implementers with information about this new technology and how they can apply it to their design and construction models. The paper also highlights opportunities for the new format of data exchange in the recent efforts to develop National Management System Standards for Transportation Applications to benefit from these emerging technologies.

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.

A ubiquitous environment in construction requires integrating hardware and software systems. Currently the Construction System Integration Lab (CSIL) at Pusan National University is currently studying the application of ubiquitous technology for better communication in the construction process. In this paper, a pilot of Ubiquitous Concrete Pour System (u-CPS) has been presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of data exchange in the concrete pour process. The u-CPS environment takes advantage of the RFID technology for collecting construction data. The pilot can automatically generate the data for concrete pour work such as departure time, arrival time, concrete pour time. Construction managers can keep track of the progress of concrete pour work using the information. A case study was done for a building construction using the pilot system, the result of which demonstrated that the RFID-base system can help improve the effectiveness of data communication during the concrete pour process.

This paper describes the efforts in developing several versions of bridge management system (BMS) in Taiwan. There were several versions of stand-alone BMS developed in Taiwan prior to the Ji-Ji earthquake that occurred in year 1999. Since many bridges were seriously damaged by this earthquake, the Ministry of Transportation and Communication determined to develop a nationwide BMS to have a better by control on the status of bridge maintenance. Implemented in year 2000, the Taiwan Bridge Management system (T-BMS) is now the dominating and mandatory system used by all the government agencies that are responsible for bridge maintenance. Having more then 25,000 bridges in its inventory, T-BMS has thousands of logins per month to update data in the relevant database. The experiences and difficulties of using such a nationwide bridge management system are discussed. Finally, future plans for BMS development are also proposed in this paper.

This paper presents the results of a statistical analysis and its research findings focusing on the learning aspect in the process of international joint ventures (IJVs). The contents of this paper is derived from a sample of 96 field cases based on a proposed conceptual model of effective learning for international construction joint ventures (ICJVs). The paper presents a brief review on the conceptual model with hypotheses and summarized the key results of statistical analysis including factor and multiple regression analysis for the testing of the validity of the proposed conceptual model and its associated research hypotheses. Among other research findings, the research confirms that ICJVs provides an excellent platform of in-action learning for construction organization and suggests that good outcomes in learning could be reaped by a company who has a clear learning intent from the beginning and subsequently take corresponding learning actions during the full process of the joint venture.

The u-City construction project has become a hot topic in the construction market because it seems economic value-added field for construction firms. However, construction firms don't willingly participate in the u-City construction market because environments of the future business for the u-City are very uncertain. Scenario planning is a very powerful method in managing this uncertain planning situation and is based on scenarios that help each enterprise appropriately adapt itself to its own business environments. Therefore it is based on the main principles of systems thinking and multiple futures. For the purpose of dealing with such uncertainties, this paper attempts to develop the possible market scenarios of the u-City construction market in S.Korea through a scenario planning approach. From this perspective, we considered various aspects of the u-City construction such as market demands, technology development, policy level and management environment. After considering the relevant issues, we identified the main trends and key uncertainties. Finally, we developed three coherent u-City construction market scenarios. Construction firms can use these scenarios as a basic reference for market analysis and business strategy. Therefore, this paper is able to enhance the participation of construction firms in the u-City construction market.

This paper introduces the result of performing research analysis on awareness and demand on economic aspect of dwellers toward remodeling by aiming at the fact that there are existing dwellers which is the biggest feature of remodeling. Providing services that are suitable for economic conditions and demands of owners or dwellers of Apartment House could be seen as something that must be considered first above all things in remodeling in which consumers have to pay for expenses are specified.

Program management is a concept to deal with huge and complex business activities from social, economical, cultural and environmental points of view and increase their value for client and society. The aim of this study is to establish a framework of program management process and develop a supporting system for program management. In this paper we propose a framework and a proto type supporting system based on case studies and report the result of application to an urban redevelopment using partially implemented software.

Since the foreign currency crisis, Korean economy has suffered recession and the government launches residence and real estate policy in order to increase the demand and trade of real estate and to help the economy revitalization. 1 As a result, the rate of economy growth is shown the high increase with the figure of 10.9% in 1999 and 8.8% in 2000. However, it brings overheating market as a negative effect. Although, the government established the policy for the control of speculation, the policy causes instability of economy. This study is to analyze the effect between the residence policy and the housing cost since the foreign currency crisis through housing sale price estimation and housing lease price estimation and is to apply the basis data of the next residence policy.

The Build-Transfer-Lease (BTL) projects have rapidly increased under the Government support during recent years. This paper presents the risk analysis of factors affecting BTL projects in the initial phase. This study resulted in 10 significant risk factors influencing on each phase of BTL projects and then factors were grouped into each phase. The sensitivity analysis was also performed to identify risk factors with more significant influence on BTL projects. The results may useful to practitioners in order to cope with risks in initial phase of BTL projects. The paper resulted in the distribution of risks to project parties, thus it can be used as standards for risk assignment to competent authorities and private enterprises of BTL projects.

Private financing is playing an increasing role in public infrastructure construction projects worldwide. However, private investors/operators are exposed to the financial risk of low profitability due to the inaccurate estimation of facility demand, operation income, maintenance costs, etc. From the operator's perspective, a sound and thorough financial feasibility study is required to establish the appropriate capital structure of a project. Operators tend to reduce the equity amount to minimize the level of risk exposure, while creditors persist to raise it, in an attempt to secure a sufficient level of financial involvement from the operators. Therefore, it is important for creditors and operators to reach an agreement for a balanced capital structure that synthetically considers both profitability and repayment capacity. This paper presents an optimal capital structure model for successful private infrastructure investment. This model finds the optimized point where the profitability is balanced with the repayment capacity, with the use of the concept of utility function and multi-objective GA (Generic Algorithm)-based optimization. A case study is presented to show the validity of the model and its verification. The research conclusions provide a proper capital structure for privately-financed infrastructure projects through a proposed multi-objective model.

Apportioning responsibilities of concurrent delay to the owner and the contractor is a difficult task, due to the sophisticate nature both in the schedule and in the factors that cause the delay. This research attempts to develop a simplified yet systematic approach that can be used for a fair apportionment of concurrent delay. A concurrent delay is defined herein as when the contractor and the owner have both caused independent critical path delays during the same approximate time period. Incorporating the concepts of windows analysis and critical path method (CPM), the developed approach has three "windowing of delay" steps to quickly apportion the delay in each of these windows, and a fourth step to sum up those apportioned delays to obtain each party's final responsibilities. This developed approach is found to be simple and effective at this stage; it will be tested against real cases in the near future.

Many construction projects such as highways, pipelines, tunnels, and high-rise buildings typically contain repetitive activities. Research has shown that the Critical Path Method (CPM) is not efficient in scheduling linear construction projects that involve repetitive tasks. Linear Scheduling Method (LSM) is one of the techniques that have been developed since 1960s to handle projects with repetitive characteristics. Although LSM has been regarded as a technique that provides significant advantages over CPM in linear construction projects, it has been mainly viewed as a graphical complement to the CPM. Studies of scheduling linear construction projects with resource consideration are rare, especially with multiple resource constraints. The objective of this proposed research is to explore a resource assignment mechanism, which assigns multiple critical resources to all activities to minimize the project duration while satisfying the activities precedence relationship and resource limitations. Resources assigned to an activity are allowed to vary within a range at different stations, which is a combinatorial optimization problem in nature. A heuristic multiple resource allocation algorithm is explored to obtain a feasible initial solution. The Simulated Annealing search algorithm is then utilized to improve the initial solution for obtaining near-optimum solutions. A housing example is studied to demonstrate the resource assignment mechanism.

Strategic management of changes is very significant for all types of construction projects. Project management teams must have the ability to respond to changes effectively in order to minimize their adverse impact on the project. The study focuses on the causes, their frequent effects and effective controls for changes in educational building projects. To achieve the study objectives, a questionnaire survey was carried out to collect relevant information. Through the literature review, 53 causes, 16 effects and 30 potential controls for change orders were identified. These provided the basis for the formulation of the questionnaire. Responses from 92 professionals who were involved in the educational projects in Singapore were analyzed. They included 28 developers, 33 consultants and 31 contractors. From the survey findings, the most important causes of changes were identified. The study revealed the most frequent effects and most effective controls for each cause of change order. Arising therefrom, a comprehensive tabulation of the 53 causes and their frequent effects and effective controls was also developed. A timeline for implementing the controls was developed through in-depth interviews with the professionals. The study would assist building professionals in taking proactive measures for reducing change orders for educational buildings; furthermore, the timeline would also be helpful for them to implement controlling strategies at the appropriate time. Recommendations were suggested based on the research findings.

This study determined tact process paths by separating the finish works according to the properties of work areas and work relations in order to apply the tact schedule management to the finish works. In addition, by suggesting preparing and sharing the workflow charts, the experiments can be shared between the executors and any possible frictions between the specialist works can be identified in advance. In addition, any errors on the plan can be reviewed and modified through the measurement stage of tact plan attainment rate. The process of tact schedule management is improved with such tools and methods and the efficiency of the process through the application of cases was verified.

Transportation infrastructure is critical to economic growth of a country such as China. Careful evaluation of investments in traffic infrastructure projects is therefore pertinent. As traditional evaluation methods do not consider the uncertainty of future cash flows and mobility during project execution, the real option approach is gradually gaining recognition in the context of valuing construction and infrastructure projects. However, many of the cases only evaluate individual options separately although multiple options often exist in a typical large infrastructure project. Using a highway project in China as a case study, this paper first evaluates a deferment option and a growth option embedded in the project. Subsequently, the values are combined using the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process. It is found that the combined value is less than the sum of the two option values. This finding is consistent with the theoretical observations given in past real option literature despite the use of a different approach.

Working spaces in the construction site are much more complicated than completed spaces in the building. There are many researches focus on partition of building spaces. However, few discussed partition sequencing in building construction sites. Space syntax is a set of techniques for analyzing spatial configurations. It has become a useful tool in a variety of researches. Partition sequencing of working spaces should be related to the working direction. However, with convex space and axial line, the partition sequencing became unrelated to the working direction. When critical space is blocked, the partition sequencing with axial line will be changed. It is significant to reveal the impact of the entire spatial structure when some of the working spaces are blocked. This paper discussed the improved partition sequencing theory and highlighted the importance of critical space and analyzed the spatial structure of working space. A real case project was demonstrated in this paper.

Entrepreneurship scholars have defined Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE) in many ways. Generally, works from these scholars had discussed on the common aspects of CE, benefits of CE, types of CE and ways to cultivate and design CE for companies. These scholars also developed models of CE to construct a framework for mapping CE research. From here, the present writers have presented a proposed framework to see how far the factors of CE, their business strategy and external environment influenced the developers' firm performance in housing development industry. However, this is just the initial stage of the study and the model needs to be revised before it can be tested in the field.

This paper presents the preliminary observations of an ongoing study that is looking into organisational changes that are externally imposed using the institutional theory. The study population are the government-linked companies involved in housing development (GLCHD) in Malaysia. For the purpose of this paper, only two are highlighted. From secondary sources, elements of changes that have exerted on these two GLCHD over the last six years and the internal changes that have taken place during the same time period were identified. The tentative conclusion is that external environment contributed to organisational change in the two GLCHD.

Responding to the fierce market competition and trying to cut personnel costs, the construction industry in Taiwan is adopting atypical employment in human resource. To discover this trend, this study employed a questionnaire survey to investigate the current use of atypical employment by domestic contractors and its possible impacts on the industry. According to the 103 returned valid questionnaires, 40.8% of the respondent contractors have applied some atypical employment types in recent three years and most of them used fixed-term employment. The major reasons the contractors used atypical employees are to reduce personnel costs, to deal with business fluctuations and to streamline personnel. According to the respondents, there is no significant difference between the advantages and disadvantages of using a large number of atypical employees in the short term. However, in the long term, atypical employment is generally more disadvantageous than advantageous.

Every construction project expects a success. In order to attain success for every project involved, issues that are related to the success of a construction project must be identified. This paper identifies those key factors, which contribute to the success of construction projects. The main factors crucial to project success were identified from a literature review and through a questionnaire survey administered to local contractors. A follow-up interview was conducted to validate the first survey and to evaluate the perception of the local contractors. An Analytical Hierarchy Model was used to obtain the final Critical Success Factors. The identification of the critical factors related to the success of construction projects will contribute to the achievement of a particular objective which will accomplish the success of the project. Aspects that affect the success of the project are the project characteristic, contractual arrangement, parties involved in a construction project and finally, and the aspect of the project interactive processes.

Energy-saving is one of important issues in multi-family housing projects in South Korea. According to the study by Yu et al. (2002), the balcony conversion causes energy loss approximately one and a half times. Therefore, it is important to select the economical glass type in the balcony window. In order to identify the most economical glass type of balcony conversion in multi-family housing projects, the most typical type of the multifamily housing projects in the metropolitan area was selected as a candidate project. The selected candidate project has been simulated using ENERGY-10 program to estimate the heat load by the different five types of glasses as well as their life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) using present worth method. Finally, sensitivity analysis has been conducted to determine the most economical glass types under a different discount rate (interest rate) and service life of building.

The construction starts its business by receiving the order from client and owner. The client presents requirements and related information so that the desired result can come out while the designer and the builder express and implement the building according to set objectives and goals of project based on information on project environment and presented requirements. Because the construction project makes decisions on such objectives at its early stage and previous stage becomes the situation for decision making of next stage as the computation to implement decisions get performed. Accordingly, this study has mentioned necessity of requirement analysis and systematization of construction project, analyzed the work of construction's early stage and resented a plan for objective of construction project requirement definition model in which requirements engineering has been applied and using it while making decisions on designing.

Many contracting firms and project managers in the construction industry have started to utilize multi objective optimization methods to handle multiple conflicting goals for completing the project within the stipulated time and budget with required quality and safety. These optimization methods have increased the pressure on decision makers to search for an optimal resources utilization plan that optimizes simultaneously the total project cost, completion time, and crashing cost by considering indirect cost, contractual penalty cost etc., practically charging them in terms of direct cost of the project which is fuzzy in nature. This paper presents a multiple fuzzy goal programming model (MFGP) that supports decision makers in performing the challenging task. The model incorporates the fuzziness which stems from the imprecise aspiration levels attained by the decision maker to these objectives that are quantified through fuzzy linear membership function. The membership values of these objectives are then maximized which forms the fuzzy decision. The problem is solved using LINGO 8 optimization solver and the best compromise solution is identified. Comparison between solutions of MFGP, fuzzy multi objective linear programming (FMOLP) and multiple goal programming (MGP) are also presented. Additionally, an interactive decision making process is developed to enable the decision maker to interact with the system in modifying the fuzzy data and model parameters until a satisfactory solution is obtained. A case study is considered to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed model for optimization of project network parameters in the construction industry.

Overseas construction projects tend to be more complex than domestic projects, being exposed to more external risks, such as politics, economy, society, and culture, as well as more internal risks from the project itself. It is crucial to have an early understanding of the project condition, in order to be well prepared in various phases of the project. This study compares a structural equation model and multiple regression analysis, in their capacity to predict cost performance of international construction projects. The structural equation model shows a more accurate prediction of cost performance than does regression analysis, due to its intrinsic capability of considering various cost factors in a systematic way.

Since variety of construction projects with their individual specifications could be handled through different procurement systems, selection of the most appropriate project delivery system is a vital step towards more efficient project execution. The appropriate selection of project delivery system may also ensure more competent management of the project. Its impacts are not only limited to the first stages of the project, as it could also influence pre-construction, construction and operational phases of the project. Among different approaches exerted for this purpose, none has taken uncertainty into account, despite the fact that during first stages of the project most of the selection factors are still uncertain and not clearly defined. This paper, hence, aims to provide a fuzzy insight into the project delivery system selection. Through this approach more tangible model of the evaluation process may be presented. Proposed fuzzy method is indeed a multi criteria decision making model, based on the group of criteria, assigned for the evaluation procedure. A case study is also conducted, based on the opinion of an invented group of the experts.

The rapid development of Kuala Lumpur has seen numerous new and high-rise buildings introducing Building Automation System (BAS). Whilst effective application of Knowledge Management (KM) within BAS is the pre-requisite for the achievement of optimum BAS performance, there has been little research undertaken to investigate if have been the case. This paper presents a research undertaken to get a view of how KM applies in BAS in six (6) selected case-study buildings in Kuala Lumpur, all operating with the 'one-system' M&E workstation control BAS. The emergent findings positively suggest that adequate KM approaches were employed within their BAS management processes, but further studies would be necessary to determine the extent of their application and effectiveness.

The construction industry is a significant component of many economies and typically contains a high proportion of small and medium enterprises. However, it is generally understood that this industry is fragmented, adversarial, not highly innovative and not quick to respond to change. At the same time, the industry is under pressure to continue to embrace new technologies and methods, and to adapt better to current and emerging global issues such as sustainability. In order to meet these challenges, firms in the industry need to understand the issues involved and manage their practices accordingly. This paper describes exploratory research into the role of innovative and environmentally sustainable design and construction practices in one group of construction firms, viz., smaller residential building firms in Queensland, Australia.

This paper stems from information accumulated from extensive literature review, a pilot study and a formal interview for an ongoing research on housing privatization implemented by the government-linked companies in Malaysia. Through extensive literature review, issues pertaining to housing privatisation were identified. Expectations of public sector, outcome of housing privatisation and factors influencing such outcome have also been tentatively confirmed through pilot study and an ongoing postal survey. A formal interview with a project director of independent Public-private partnerships (PPP) organization in UK has also inspired some useful lessons for the local housing industry. Different modalities of PPP from various countries show that while housing privatization pose several problems, mitigating them is possible through appropriate strategies.

This paper examines the operations of private housing developers (PHDs) based on Social Network Theory. PHDs need to choose the best consultants, contractors and suppliers (CCS) to make sure the project run and complete successfully. PHDs gather the scarce resources from the external environment through personal network. This research used the social network method which relies on alliances based on network, social, tie and trust. The more people/firm PHDs network with, the better chances of finding the right CCS.

Apartment housing in the Korean domestic construction industry has had various and high-quality finishing work since the enforcement of price deregulation in 1998. Before the enforcement of price deregulation, feasibility studies of housing projects have not had particular difficulties as uniform description of finishing work items were reflected and finishing work cost also was equalized. However, the recent distinction of finishing work based on the same floor plan brings about project cost variation, along with many effects on construction management due to project cost increment. Accordingly, this paper suggests the improved plan of cost management to control the feasibility study result consistently during the life cycle of a project through an analysis based on cost management phase due to cost blackout, appearing at the commencement of a project, cost gradation caused by high-quality finishing work item, and cost reduction due to the degradation of finishing work after analysis of current apartment construction process focused on finishing work using the IDEF process analysis technique.

The prediction of quality characteristics during the design phase of a construction project was fragmented, because no particular method exists. One of the most important key responses is the total displacements (horizontal and vertical). A brainstorming session produces the quality parameters i.e. the control factors which here are identified as: the steel joint, the pile's length, the excavation depth and angle, the distance between the piles, the anchor stretch and length to name just some of the most engaging in the design. The purpose of this study is to optimise these parameters to minimize the total displacements following a methodology based on Taguchi method. For this reason, a 2-level, L₈ orthogonal array has been employed to organize the experimentation. Data is obtained from a real-life excavation project designed on the Plaxis v.8 CAE package. Taguchi analysis is performed in the statistical package Minitab.

The Public Private Partnership/Private Finance Initiative (PPP/PFI) schemes have made the private sector become a major participant involved in the development of infrastructure systems along with the government. Due to more integrated efforts among project participants and longer concession period, PPP/PFI projects are inherently more complex and risky. It is therefore very important to proactively manage the risks involved throughout the project life cycle. Conventional risk management strategies sometimes ignore managerial flexibility in the planning and execution process. This paper starts with a revised risk management framework which incorporates the real option concept. Following the presentation of the framework, a new risk classification is proposed which leads to different ways of structuring options in a project according to the stage of the project life cycle. Finally, the paper closes by discussing other issues concerning option modeling and negotiation.

The objective of this research study is to develop the permutation-based genetic algorithm for solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem in construction engineering by incorporating elitism into genetic algorithm. A key aspect of the algorithm was the development of the elitist roulette selection operator to preserve the best individual solution for the next generation so the improved solution can be obtained. Another notable characteristic is the application of the parallel schedule generation scheme to generate a feasible solution to the problem. Case studies with a standard test problem were presented to demonstrate the performance and accuracy of the algorithm. The computational results indicate that the proposed algorithm produces reasonably good solutions for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem.

Learning has become an important aspect for any organization to stay relevant and competitive in the corporate world of survival. In construction industry, the international construction joint ventures (ICJVs) provide an excellent platform with opportunity of learning among partners seeking to develop new area of competency and improve their overall competitiveness for their next project endeavor. This paper discusses the development of a conceptual model of effective learning in ICJVs using four major stages of development in a typical joint venture (JV) 's process. The study identified that there are three key constructs that contribute to effective learning comprising learning conditions in the JV's pre-inception stage, success factors of JV for learning in the forming & organizing stage, and learning actions in the implementation & adjustment stage. The effective learning outcomes are measured by the characteristics of learning organization during the JV's completion & evaluation stage. Details and issues of each stage and the methodology of research will be presented and discussed.

Construction is one of the most hazardous industries due to its unique nature. Recent occurrences of highly publicised and criticized construction site accidents have highlighted the immediate need for the construction industry to address safety hazards. Safety used to be addressed as an isolated issue in the past, but the problem of safety is an emergent property of a system. In general, it seems that both industrial practitioners and government officials have tended to address safety by focusing on technical aspects and looking for immediate causes of accidents after they have taken place. The objective of this paper is to examine issues and critical factors that affect the safety standards from a holistic point of view. The job of making worksites safe should not just fall squarely on the contractors but should be shared by all parties in the value chain of construction activities.

The comprehensive Topic of Total Quality Management (TQM) has been put forward since the 6^th decade in industrial countries. The serious attention to it in developing countries goes back to recent years. Unfortunately serious attention is not paid to quality issues in building industry. Therefore, the construction of buildings is highly vulnerable against natural events while having low effective lifetime. Wide-range destruction of the residential buildings in the earthquake of Bam ( in IRAN ) is a clear proof for this claim. In this paper we tried to present the corresponding effects between quality issues and other aspects of a building project (such as costs) and proposed general solutions to improve quality indices in construction industry.

This paper presents a modified simulated annealing algorithm to optimize linear scheduling projects with multiple resource constraints and its effectiveness is verified with a proposed problem. A two-stage solution-finding procedure is used to model the problem. Then the simulated annealing and the modified simulated annealing are compared in the same condition. The comparison results and the reasons of improvement by the modified simulated annealing are presented at the end.

The Singapore construction market has just recovered from the decline of the last seven years. Past annual construction volume remains around S$10 to 12 billion and the market is saturated with local and international contractors. This study examined the competitiveness of the construction market from the perspective of a Chinese contractor. The case company in this study is China Construction (SP) Development Co Pte Ltd. The purpose of this study is to use strategic research and management methods to analyze the case company's internal and external environment and development strategies, so as to bring about the approaches and measures to achieve its strategic targets.

Current payment methods have many faults which are detrimental to the formation and completion of a project. This includes the use of unfair payment terms, pricing strategies and payment mechanisms between the contracting parties. This resulted in being criticised and remain in doubt, the use of current payment methods to reward good contractors and to distinguish poorly performed construction firms. In order to have an insight into this issue, a structured survey was conducted amongst UK construction practitioners. It was found that traditional pricing methods (i.e. lump sum and unit price), payment methods (i.e. interim valuation) and retention still dominate current practice. The empirical findings show that there are significant differences in the use of pricing and payment methods (when making and receiving payments) in construction. Significant differences also found in the factors affecting the choice of pricing methods when making (and receiving) construction payments. The paper concludes with analysis of the findings and future direction of research in payment systems is also provided.

Usually the status of a bridge is determined by its structural capability and material strength. Consequently a lot of researchers have studied the failure, the fatigue, and the deterioration of the structure in terms of the structural function of a bridge. However, the overall performance of a bridge may be affected simply by the damage of one of its components. Therefore this study utilized a systematic classification and statistical analysis based on the existing bridge inspection data collected in Taiwan to reach the following goals: (1) assess the performance distribution and deterioration rate for bearing and expansion joint of bridge; (2) find out the right time to do the preventive and essential maintenance for the component of bridge with an empirical method, and to decide what time and which component of a bridge will receive preventive maintenance or regular maintenance.

This paper presents an evaluation of feasibility studies conducted to justify investments in infrastructure projects. An analysis of a previous feasibility study for a highway construction project is presented in this paper with an emphasis on the estimates and forecasts presented in that study in order to weigh expected benefits from the project against expected costs. The forecasted numbers are compared with actual data collected during the operation phase about the usage of the facility. The comparison reveals a huge difference between estimated numbers and actual numbers. Based on the lessons learned from the analyzed case study, recommendations are presented to improve feasibility studies for infrastructure projects including: peer review of feasibility studies; before-and-after feasibility studies; and defined scope and methodology for feasibility studies. Decision makers are advised to take outcomes of feasibility studies for infrastructure projects with extreme caution as some studies may provide erroneous and misleading input to their decisions regarding investment in infrastructure projects.

This paper is concerned with identifying the importance of the pre-qualification factors used in selecting contractors and also in determining the importance of various criteria used for the award of contract. The study was carried out through questionnaire survey administered to a population of 60 respondents in consultancy and client's organisation. The data analysis included a statistical comparison of means and interpretation. The result of this study showed that experience of the contractor is the most important prequalification factor while technical expertise is the most important criteria in the award of contract. The result of this study will enable clients, consultants and contractors to lay emphasis on the influencing factors in terms of pre-qualification and award of contract.

The study focused on the evaluation of maintenance management strategies used in public hospital buildings in Lagos state. It also assessed the labour composition for maintenance operations. In achieving these objectives, opinions of maintenance officers of ten (10) different hospitals in different local government areas of the state were sampled through well structured questionnaires. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. From the analysis, the study revealed that majority of those public hospitals do not have specific budget for maintenance programmes, maintenance policies, maintenance log book and maintenance manual to guide the operatives. About 98% of them do not understand the type of maintenance strategy being used for their maintenance operations. 78% of the maintenance work are only executed when there is a breakdown or in response to user's request. For labour composition, the cleaning of interior and exterior of the building, inspection of building elements, repairs and replacements of building elements are mainly carried out by in-house staff, while the repair and replacement of equipment is by outsourcing. The study also revealed that using in- house staff, reduces costs and provides a higher security while outsourcing provides more flexibility in staffing reduces equipment expenditures and provide better access to special skills. The study recommended proactive measures to provide necessary training and support for maintenance staff and users of these facilities and a means of securing sufficient funds for maintenance programmes.