As large-scale building projects have recently increased for the residential, commercial and office facilities, construction costs for these projects have become a matter of great concern, due to their significant construction cost implications, as well as unpredictable market conditions and fluctuations in the rate of inflation during the projects' long-term construction periods. In particular, recent volatile fluctuations of construction material prices fueled such problems as cost forecasting. This research develops a time series model using the Box-Jenkins approach and material price time series data in Korea in order to forecast trends in the unit prices of required materials. Building information modeling (BIM) approaches are also used to analyze injection times of construction resources and to conduct quantity take-off so that total material prices can be forecast. To determine an optimal time series model for forecasting price trends, comparative analysis of predictability of tentative autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models is conducted. The proposed BIM-based time series forecasting model can help to deal with sudden changes in economic conditions by estimating material prices that correspond to resource injection times.

Quantity take-off (QT) is one of the most important tasks for determining the total cost of a construction project, and it requires accuracy and reliability for the result. Accuracy and reliability in BIM-based QT are also required to assure the completeness of the result. However, there has been no basis to measure the completeness of the BIM-based QT result. As BIM is increasingly being adopted in the construction industry with a wide variety of purposes, it becomes more important to have a method to improve the completeness of BIM-based QT and criteria to measure it. This research focuses on the hypothesis that the completeness of BIM-based QT relies on the accuracy and reliability of BIM and the BIM-based QT process. As a basic research to determine the completeness of BIM-based QT, this research analyzes and derives factors that affect the completeness of BIM-based QT.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is being widely spread in AEC industry worldwide and also in South Korea. Although the creation of digital model is better to be started at design stage, it can also improve the productivity of construction by simulating the actual construction process and environment. This paper presents application of BIM-based simulations related with design changes to transfer floors in 58-storey reinforced concrete office building. Transfer floor is not only a structurally important part of the building but also a challenging part of the actual construction in terms of sequence and period due to the complexity of the work. Preconstruction of rebar, mechanical, and plumbing is performed to review the construction drawings and to perform clash detection. Each item of application is evaluated for its effectiveness on actual construction and for the development potential.

A considerable number of construction disasters occur on pathways. Safety management is usually performed on construction sites to prevent accidents in activity areas. This means that the safety management level of hazards on pathways is relatively minimized. Many researchers have noted that hazard identification is fundamental to safety management. Thus, algorithms for helping safety managers to identify hazardous areas are developed using automated data collection technology. These algorithms primarily search for potential hazardous areas by comparing workers' location logs based on a real-time location system and optimal routes based on BIM. Potential hazardous areas are filtered by identified hazardous areas and activity areas. After that, safety managers are provided with information about potential hazardous areas and can establish proper safety countermeasures. This can help to improve safety on construction sites.

The people in the AEC industry have acknowledged and long struggled to solve the critical low productivity issue of the entire construction industry. Integrated Project Delivery has been suggested as a solution to this problem and to take this into practice many countries have come up with BIM guidelines. In order to make this a success, BIM design process and LOD must be dealt in advance. The following research has selected 3 out of 16 guidelines that specifically describes BIM process and LOD, and intends to fully acknowledge its concept by comparing the approach and definition of LOD in the BIM Design Process.

Construction automation is yet to be improved since construction site still faces a lot of high risks and difficulties. This research focuses on applying robotic beam assembly system in place of construction workers. This system consists of CF (Construction Factory) structure to provide adequate working environment to robot automation. The CF structure not only gives automation environment for a robot but also houses the equipments to protect from outside effects. The robotic beam assembly system also consists of robotic bolting system and robot transport mechanism. It utilizes various tools to insert and join the bolts and nuts. Visual servoing helps precise robot motion by sensing bolt hole and tail of the bolt. ITA system helps non skilled workers to easily perform the assembly work with the robot system. The robot transport mechanism includes sliding rail and cross-wired lift. It carries the robot to a desired position for assembly work.

Studies have shown that infrastructure projects have continued to experience significant delays and cost overrun over an extended period of time and no evidence of learning ever have happened [1] [2]. Various causes contribute to the bias towards overrun [3]. This study contributes to literature by developing and subsequently validating a set of hypothesized relationships between project complexity and project performance. The results show that project complexity is associated with both the magnitude and variance of overrun. Further, the extent and magnitude of the positive bias towards overrun are moderated by project complexity.

High-rise buildings are widely being constructed in the Middle-East, South-East, and East Asia. These buildings are usually willing to stand for the landmark of the region and, therefore, exhibit some extraordinary features such as super-tall height, elevation set-backs, overhangs, or free-form exterior surface, all of which makes the construction difficult, complex, and even unsafe at some construction stages. In addition to the elaborately planned construction sequence, prediction and monitoring of building's movement during construction and after completion are required for precise and safe construction. This is often called the Building Movement Control during construction. This study describes Building Movement Control of the KLCC Tower, a 58-story office building currently being built right next to the famous PETRONAS Twin Towers. The main items of the Building Movement Control for the KLCC Tower are axial shortening and verticality. Preliminary prediction of these items are already carried out by the structural design team but more accurate prediction based on construction stage analysis and combined with time-dependent material testing, field monitoring, and site survey is done by the main contractor. As of September 2010, the Tower is under construction at level 30, where the plan abruptly changes from rectangle to triangle. Findings and troubleshooting until the current construction stage are explained in detail and implementations are suggested for future applications.

Bridges are essential and valuable elements in road and rail transportation networks. Bridge remediation is a top priority for asset managers, but identifying the nature of true defect deterioration and associated remediation treatments remains a complex task. Nowadays Decision Support Systems (DSS) are used extensively to assist in decision-making across a wide spectrum of unstructured decision environments. In this paper a requirements-driven framework is used to develop a risk based decision support model which has the ability to quantify the bridge condition and find the best remediation treatments using Multi Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT), with the aim of maintaining a bridge within acceptable limits of safety, serviceability and sustainability.

Construction Productivity is one of the most important elements in construction management. It is used in construction process scheduling and cost management, which are significant sector in construction management. It is important to make appropriate schedule and monitor how works are done within schedule. But construction project contains uncertainty and inexactitude, modifying construction schedule is being an issue to manage construction works well. Even though prediction and monitoring of productivity can be principal activity, it is hard to predict productivity with manager's experience and a standard of estimate. A large number of factors influencing productivity, such as drawing, construction method, weather, labor, material, equipment, etc. But current calculation of productivity depends on empirical probability, not consider difference of each influencing factor. In this research, the aim is to present a productivity predicting regression model of form work, which includes effectiveness of influences factors. 5 variables existed inside form work are selected by interview and site research based on literature review of existed various productivity influencing factors. The effectiveness and correlation of productivity influencing factors are analyzed by statistical approach, and it is used to make productivity regression model. The finding of this research will improves monitoring and controlling of project schedule in construction phase.

With rapid industrialization, electric power consumption has been increasing every year in Korea and in other countries. The provision of additional power stations to produce more electricity is one possible response to this steady increase in consumption. Another alternative is to improve the efficiency of existing stations through timely and effective maintenance works. Since the construction of a new power plant involves a large amount of capital as well as difficulties in the selection of sites, the improvement of existing power stations' efficiencies is often a preferred solution. Therefore, this paper focuses on maintenance project management to address this issue. Among several types of maintenance works, this paper concentrates on planned outage maintenance (POM). This focus arises from the critical impact of POM on other maintenance work, as well as the entire process of electricity production. Unlike other maintenance work, POM is done on the basis of mid and long-term plans. In addition, only POM works are conducted during the outage of all power plants. To evaluate the efficiency of POM works, budget data relating to 164 POM projects between 2001 and 2008 was collected from 7 sites in South Korea. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was selected as a methodology for evaluation. From this analysis, comparative study was used to determine the categories of projects that had performed well, and those with the most optimized budget structures. Moreover, through discussion with industry, this research develops a feasible proposed method by which to enhance the efficiency of POM projects.

This paper recognized a need in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry for new programs and methods of producing reliable energy simulations using BIM (Building Information Modeling) technology. Current methods and programs for running energy simulations are not very timely, difficult to understand, and lack high interoperability between the BIM software and energy simulation software. It is necessary to improve on these drawbacks as design decision are often made without the aid of energy modeling leading to the design and construction of non-optimized buildings with respect to energy efficiency. The goal of this research project is to develop a new methodology to produce energy estimates from a BIM model in a more timely fashion and to improve interoperability between the simulation engine and BIM software. In the proposed methodology, the extracted information from a BIM model is compiled into an INP file and run in a popular energy simulation program, DOE-2, on an hourly basis for a desired time period. Case study showed that the application of this methodology could be used to expediently provide energy simulations while at the same time reproducing the BIM in a more readably three dimensional modeling program. With the aid of an easy to run and easily understood energy simulation methodology, designers will be able to make more energy conscious decisions during the design phase and as changes in design requirements arise.

This paper describes the application of the three sustainable design elements for a residential project in the county of Los Angeles, USA. The first design element is the green building design in which a base model will be created using the Autodesk REVIT MEP program for the analysis by Building Information Modeling (BIM) for the energy analysis modeling process to determine the energy savings for each of the recommended design features. The second element is the Low Impact Development design for the site design using specialty material and structural devices for infiltration and recycling of storm water for reuse. The third element is the application of drought tolerant plant species in the site's landscaping design as a means to conserve water. The construction cost associated with the application of these three elements will be reviewed to determine the practicality and effectiveness of this sustainable design approach.

Even though attempts are made to transform from 2D CAD to BIM representation for building design and construction, it were not so successful for practical implementation until recently in construction industry in Korea. However, there is a dramatic change for the use of BIM by collaboration among government, independent organizations as well as industry itself. Government reckons that BIM is an important tool for environment friendly construction and industry competitiveness. The government not only makes national BIM standards and push policies in order to make market environment. Independent organizations such as BuildingSMART Korea does active role to stimulate the transformation process successfully. They act as opinion leaders for the Government to consider BIM implementation for industry competitiveness issue. They make roadmap as well as technical standards and guidelines. It also leads technical developments and supports for its implementation. Government supports researches for the implementation of BIM. The research includes BIM standards, guidelines, linking with existing Architectural Administrative Information Systems, making libraries as well as education. Government makes policy for BIM as a compulsory data for bidding process of newly designed government buildings. Private sector not only agrees BIM as a tool to adapt but also essential methods for its survival in domestic and foreign construction market. Architectural design companies and constructions companies currently develop technical skills and implement BIM for new projects such as Dongdaemoon Plaza that cannot be successfully drawn by conventional methods.

The application of knowledge management concepts as a way to improve project success is an emerging topic for project management researches around the world. The Construction Extension to the PMBOK^® Guide Third Edition documents the knowledge and practices that are generally recognized as good practices for managing engineering and construction projects. However, it is not unusual to see that engineering and construction projects suffer from poor performance. Based on a critical literature review, a theoretical framework is developed for the application of knowledge management in engineering and construction projects. This framework is subsequently applied as a lens to examine the construction extension to the PMBOK^® Guide, aiming to identify the key characteristics of knowledge management in this standard. This research also aims to highlight those aspects of the construction extension to the PMBOK^® Guide that can be improved from the knowledge management perspective. Recommendations are made to improve this standard by means of applying knowledge management concept so that better project outcomes can be achieved.

Recent demands from construction industry have emphasized the capability for graduates to have improved skills both technical and non-technical such as problem solving, interpersonal communication. To satisfy these demands, problem-based learning that is an instructional method characterized by the use of real world problem has been adopted and has proven its effectiveness various disciplines. However, in spite of the importance of field senses and dealing with real problem, construction engineering education has generally focused on traditional lecture-oriented course. In order to improve limitations of current construction education and to satisfy recent demands from construction industry, this paper proposes a new educational approach that is Failure-Based Learning for using combination of the procedural characteristics of the problem-based learning theory in construction technology education utilizing failure information that has the educational value in the construction area by reinterpreting characteristics of construction industry and construction failure information. The major results of this study are summarized as follows. 1) Educational effect of problem-based learning methodology and limitation of application in construction area 2) The educational value of the information on construction failure and limitation in application of the information in construction sector 3) Anticipated effect from application of the failure-based learning 4) Development and application of the failure-based learning model

The key role in safety management is to identify any possible hazard before it occurs by identifying any possible risk factors which are critical to risk assessment. This planning/assessment process is considered to be tedious and requires a lot of attention due to the following reasons: firstly, falsework (temporary structures) in construction projects is fundamentally important. However, the installation and dismantling of those facilities are one of the high risk activities in the job sites. Secondly, temporary facilities are generally not clearly delineated on the building drawings. It is our strong belief that safety tools have to be simple and convenient enough for the jobsite people to manage them easily and be flexible for any occasions to be occurred at various degrees. In order to develop the safety assessment system, this research utilizes the BIM technology and collects important information by importing data from BIM models and use it in the planning stage.

Consumers demand an increasing variety of requirements for the residential space as the quality of life improves. However, many apartment buildings with the bearing wall structure cannot meet such demands in Korea. A lot of construction resources are squandered and wastes are created as this type of residential buildings is reconstructed. The life of apartment buildings needs to be extended on the basis of easy remodeling of internal space in order to overcome the limits of the bearing wall structure. This research project aims to propose the Rahmen composite frame concept for the long life of apartment buildings. The Rahmen composite frame is expected to have better structural performance, constructability and economic feasibility than the bearing wall structure.

The Australian construction industry is characterized as being a competitive and risky business environment due to lack of cooperation, insufficient trust, ineffective communication and adversarial relationships which are likely lead to poor project performance. Relational contracting (RC) is advocated by literature as an innovative approach to improve the procurement process in the construction industry. Various studies have collectively added to the current knowledge of known RC norms, but there seem to be little effort on investigating the determinants of RC and its impact on project outcomes. In such circumstances, there is lack of evidence and explanation on the manner on how these issues lead to different performance. Simultaneously, the New Engineering Contract (NEC) that embraced the concept of RC is seen as a modern way of contracting and also considered as one of the best approaches to the perennial problem of improving adversarial relationships within the industry. The reality of practice of RC in Australia is investigated through the lens of the NEC. A synthesis of literature views on the concept, processes and tools of RC is first conducted to develop the framework of RC. A case study approach is proposed for an in-depth analysis to explore the critical issues addressed by RC in relation to project performance. Understanding the realities of RC will assist stakeholders in the construction industry with their investment in RC.

Public infrastructure is crucial to promote and sustain a sustainable economic growth and a health community. A large amount of capital investment is generally required in infrastructure projects that motivate the involvement of the private sector in the delivery process. Various relationship-based procurement methods have been attempted to maximize value-for-money. In this paper, the problems and challenges that relationship-based procurement methods have been facing are explored. A particular focus is placed on the challenges for the public-private partnership (PPP) model. Possible strategies for adapting the PPP models in the post-Global Financial Crisis era are proposed and discussed. In addition, the challenges facing alliancing, which is one of the other important relationship-based procurement methods, are also examined. Views on infrastructure procurement in the future were sought from industry professionals via interviews and are reported in this paper as well.

Australia has joined many governments to adopt public-private partnership (PPP) as a major strategy for procuring infrastructure for decades. However, failures have occurred although the market has been considered to be a mature and sophisticated one. Failures have typically been traced back to inappropriate economic evaluation and a lack of value-for-money. In particular, a literature review has identified that there was no holistic consideration on the evaluation of procurement transactions of PPP projects. The transaction costs of PPPs were not handled properly. In this paper, theories of transaction cost economics are proposed for the purpose of such a holistic institutional economic evaluation. These theories are analysed in order to identify potential critical success factors for a strategic infrastructure procurement framework. The potential critical success factors are identified and grouped into a number of categories that match the theories of transaction cost economics. These categories include (1) Asset Specificity, (2) Organizational Capability, (3) Transaction Frequency, (4) Behavioural Uncertainty, and (5) Environmental Uncertainty. These potential critical success factors may be subject to an empirical test in the future. The proposed framework will offer decision makers with an insight into project life cycle economic outcomes needed to successfully deliver PPPs.

Recently, much attention has been increasingly paid to the efficiency of the delivery system in order to manage construction project in a smooth and effective way. The integrated plan in consideration of the life cycle of building is required for the effective and integrated management of information in a huge amount. To this end, collaboration between each field is indispensable from the beginning of project. But there is a limitation that the designer and the constructor sign the contract separately in the conventional delivery system. In the US, the recent trend is that the Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) has been introduced to improve the effectiveness of project management in an increasing number of the cases where project is implemented by utilizing the IPD. In Korea, there is also an increasing need to introduce the IPD for the integrated project management. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to examine and analyze the laws and the contracts that are applied to domestic cases of placing order and signing contract based on the concept and principle of the IPD before the actual introduction of the IPD. Based on such examination and analysis, this study intends to figure out the constraints to the introduction of the IPD. It is expected that the results of this study will be used as basic data for IPD-related study in the future.

The performance measurement of construction firms is considered as a competitive advantage to develop and improve their performance to have place in the market and stay able to face the continuous challenge. Egyptian construction firms (ECF) started recently to adopt quality management system (QMS) as a way to develop and improve their performance as previous studies showed. However, measuring that performance to include all the firm's aspects in a competitive way is a crucial process for the ECF's culture. The research is trying to indicate the role of the QMS implementation in measuring performance (MP) through developing a model for measuring performance on the organization level, and explore its impact on the organization that adopt quality management system. This model is based on specific elements and their related indicators which have been derived from national approaches and models of measuring performance (benchmarking, quality awards and six sigma).Elements determination and the status of their real practice has been investigated through a questionnaire to a representative sample of ECF. This model determines the performance level (PL) of the organization that measured by a mean of a point system. Weights of the elements in the point system considered both the elements' importance in the international models and its real practice in the Egyptian construction firms. So, the final outcome of the model reveals the level of firm performance that helps the firm to identify the weak points against the strong ones, Confirm the priorities and identify new opportunities for developing, and Check the position of the company in the market among the others. Another questionnaire has been developed to be distributed on a group of Experts on measuring performance for the purpose of model validation. The majority of surveyed experts agreed that the proposed model can be applied effectively.

BIM having started from architecture is being used in civil structure, but there are very few examples despite its effectiveness. In this paper, based on BIM technology, it is presented the method and result of developing web-based 5D system connecting cost, schedule and 3D model from the cable-stayed bridge. Through the system, the user can understand easily schedule on specific time and during some period and extract cost directly. This system also can manage various data types such as drawings, 3D models, documents and photos, for enhanced communication between stakeholders.

Construction projects are full of risks. This is particularly the case in civil construction projects that are often featured with large scale, complexity and involving a large number of participating parties. The eventuation of risks typically results in extended project durations leading to an increase in the total project budget. The consequence can be amplified considering the significant impacts of civil construction projects on the society, from economical, environmental and social perspectives. This research investigates the significance of risks within civil construction projects and approaches to deal with risks. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with local industry practitioners in South Australia on this matter. It is found that the industry is fairly aware of risks associated with civil construction projects and subsequently has procedures in place to attempt to minimize the impacts of these risks on the project outcomes. The interview results also indicate that there is limited utilization of software for the risk management purpose from the cost estimation perspective.

Construction accidents are major problem in Turkish Construction industry and especially fatally rates are very high. Current legislative system on occupational safety in Turkey enforces employers to implement safety measures as well as safety management systems. However level of consciousness in the industry is unsatisfactory and safety are perceived as extra cost and unnecessary expenditure. Moreover, especially in small residential building constructions which have a big share in the industry and unfortunately safety measures to mitigate or abate construction risks do not exist. The study focuses on small residential building construction sites and in the scope of this study, thirty building projects are examined. For each building project, project cost including labour and material costs, service and consultancy costs for mechanical, electrical systems as well as architectural and structural services, costs for supervision and finally general expenditures for construction site facilities were calculated. On the other hand, occupational safety costs for personal protective equipment, collective protective measures, consultancy and training were determined. Work breakdown structures were established and for each work item firstly occupational risks were evaluated and furthermore according to risk scores safety measures to be implemented were defined and related costs were calculated. The study gave results for total safety cost on average, in terms of percentage of total project cost (3.73% of total project cost), safety cost per man-hour (0.40 USD) and safety cost in terms of unit construction area (11.60 USD per square meter). Since safety management is a part of whole project management process, study gives suggestions and techniques to calculate safety costs and implement safety measures as a part of project management service for professionals. Authors believe that suggested approach may easily developed by the usage of more data to establish a model for estimation not only for building construction sites but also for all construction projects.

A role of cost modeler is that of facilitating design process by the systematic application of cost factors so as to maintain sensible and economic relationships between cost, quantity, utility and appearance. These relationships help to achieve the client's requirements within an agreed budget. The purpose of this study is to develop a parametric cost estimating model for the early design stage by using the multi-dimensional system of OLAP (On-line Analytical Processing) based on the case of quantity data related to architectural design features. The parametric cost estimating models have been adopted to support decision making in the early design stage. These models typically use a similar instance or a pattern of historical case. In order to effectively use this type of data model, it is required to set data classification and prediction methods. One of the methods is to find the similar class in line with attribute selection measure in the multi-dimensional data model. Therefore, this research is to analyze the relevance attribute influenced by architectural design features with the subject of case-based quantity data used for the parametric cost estimating model. The relevance attributes can be analyzed by Analytical Characterization. It helps determine what attributes to be included in the OLAP multi-dimension.

Early cost estimates are important to decision-making for a construction project. Moreover, the possibility of reducing the project cost is getting less as the project is progressed. Case-based reasoning (CBR), which can be viewed as an effective method for early cost estimating, is widely utilized recently. Early cost estimates using CBR have advantages over the traditional ones as they produce reasonable outputs and self-studying is possible by simply adding new cases. Case-based reasoning is composed of a cycle of retrieve, reuse, revise, and retain process. However, in the majority of research cases, they are focused on how to retrieve the similar cases, instead of revising the cases which is expected to increase accuracy results of cost estimation. This research suggests a method of revising retrieved similar cases in a GA-CBR cost model which is widely studied and utilized for early cost estimating recently. To validate the proposed method, case study is conducted based on Korean public apartment projects.

Optimizing truck dispatching-intervals is imperative in ready mixed concrete (RMC) delivery process. Intervals shorter than optimal may induce queuing of idle trucks at a construction site, resulting in a long delivery cycle time. On the other hand, intervals longer than optimal can trigger work discontinuity due to a lack of available trucks where required. Therefore, the RMC delivery process should be systematically scheduled in order to minimize the occurrence of waiting trucks as well as guarantee work continuity. However, it is challenging to find optimal intervals, particularly in urban areas, due to variations in both traffic conditions and concrete placement rates at the site. Truck dispatching intervals are usually determined based on the concrete plant managers' intuitive judgments, without sufficient and reliable information regarding traffic and site conditions. Accordingly, the RMC delivery process often experiences inefficiency and/or work discontinuity. Automatic data collection (ADC) techniques (e.g., RFID or GPS) can be effective tools to assist plant managers in finding optimal dispatching intervals, thereby enhancing delivery performance. However, quantitative evidence of the extent of performance improvement has rarely been reported to data, and this is a central reason for a general reluctance within the industry to embrace these techniques, despite their potential benefits. To address this issue, this research reports on the development of a discrete event simulation model and its application to a large-scale building project in Abu Dhabi. The simulation results indicate that ADC techniques can reduce the truck idle time at site by 57% and also enhance the pouring continuity in the RMC delivery process.

Construction materials usually constitute a major portion of the total cost in a building construction project. Despite the potential benefit of ICT, convincing construction organisations to embrace its use and implementation has proved a difficult task. This study seeks to identify the implementation of ICT for materials management processes in construction projects. The findings from the interviews reveal that the implementation of ICT in the materials management processes for construction projects in Malaysia is at early stage. Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet and handheld devices are found to be the common ICT tools adopted in the materials management processes. The main barrier is found to be the cost involvement at the initial stage or overall implementation of ICT in the materials management processes. Finally, this paper concludes the finding from interviews towards the ICT implementation of materials management in the construction projects.

Today's highly competitive construction scenario forces all the major players in the field to take up multiple projects which have put an undue pressure on the resources available within the organization. Under such a situation, there are many instances where in the resource requirement exceeds its availability due to multiple activities (with same resource requirement) which are scheduled to start simultaneously and thus results in the constrained resource becoming a bottleneck of the project. As a consequence of sharing resources, this paper studies the impact on the completion date of two similar projects under two different conditions, the first one resulting in a postponed end date and the second without any postponement. The resource utilization, the possibility of substitution of a resource and its subsequent impact on the deadline of the project is analyzed under these two circumstances. The study is done on a Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) platform instead of leaving the schedule with a traditional Critical Path Method (CPM) finish, which gives an added advantage of validating the robustness of the emerging CCPM trend in the field of resource management.

Selection of finishing materials in the design stage is an important management factor in terms of use safety and satisfaction, and work cost and process. However, selection of materials in the design stage is usually conducted without related guidelines or a set process, but depends on the experience of the architect or advice of materials company employees. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a finishing materials selection process that can be used by a architect. Materials selection related rules collected through interview with experts and five office building cases were used as knowledge. In addition, another aim of the study was to propose a prototype system interface for use in the field.

In the current construction industry where various stakeholders take part, BIM Data exchange using standard format can provide a more efficient working environment for related staffs during the life-cycle of the building. Currently, the formats used to exchange the data from 3D-CAD application to structure energy analysis at the design stages are IFC, the international standard format provided by IAI, and gbXML, developed by Autodesk. However, because of insufficient data compatibility, the BIM data produced in the 3D-CAD application cannot be directly used in the energy analysis, thus there needs to be additional data entry. The reasons for this are as follows: First, an IFC file cannot contain all the data required for energy simulation. Second, architects sometimes write material names on the drawings that are not matching to those in the standard material library used in energy analysis tools. DOE-2.2 and Energy Plus are the most popular energy analysis engines. And both engines have their own material libraries. However, our investigation revealed that the two libraries are not compatible. First, the types and unit of properties were different. Second, material names used in the library and the codes of the materials were different. Furthermore, there is no material library in Korean language. Thus, by comparing the basic library of DOE-2, the most commonly used energy analysis engine worldwide, and EnergyPlus regarding construction materials; this study will analyze the material data required for energy analysis and propose a way to effectively enter these using semantic web's ontology. This study is meaningful as it enhances the objective credibility of the analysis result when analyzing the energy, and as a conceptual study on the usage of ontology in the construction industry.

As construction works have become larger and more complex, improving productivity by introducing Information Technology (IT) is pursued and more effective construction management is needed in construction industry. In this circumstance, many different kinds of project management system is being introduced, and various IT technologies are applied such as Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), Bar Code, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Web Camera, and so on. However, these kinds of technologies might cause re-processing of information and ineffectiveness of project because of lack of real time information processing technology or separation between construction sites and management offices. Meanwhile, these technologies rather decrease the construction productivity except for the data saving and database function. Therefore, this research aims to develop Application that can be applied efficiently for construction material management, by understanding problems of former management system with questionnaires and extracting functions with analysis of requirements. In virtue of the construction material management Application which will be developed in this study, it will be possible to input information automatically, to process and check material information in real time, and to identify the location of necessary material. Then, the problem of separation between construction sites and management offices are solved, and as a result, more efficient management of materials in construction sites will become possible. At the same time, this study will investigate the possibility and applicability of new IT device, Smart Phone to construction sites.

Recently, the scale of buildings has been increasing because of the high-rise trend and complexity of underground spaces. A significant number of steel structures have therefore been adopted for building construction. Since workers need to work in high places to install steel beams, many industrial accidents easily occur during steel-frame work. Furthermore, considering the increasing trend of building steel structures, the safety of the workers during the steel beam erection work is of concern. To improve the safety, a new type of joint, located between the steel column and beam, which can eliminate the need for working at the elevated height during steel beam erection has been developed in Korea. Using the newly developed technology in the construction field, the safety performance needs to be evaluated. This study presented the safety evaluation approach for the newly developed technology from the literature review, and applied the method to a self-supported steel joint. The result showed that applying the self-supported steel joint improved the safety of the steel erection work in terms of working posture, working environment, and risk exposure time.

Preventing incidents occurred in construction process is important for safe implementation of construction projects. Due to the complexity and magnitude of the project and moreover, poor safe planning and management, construction incidents in Korea have been increasing. Reducing construction incidents effectively, appropriate safety management program in consideration of the incident rate of each facility is to be adapted. This study analyzes incident frequency and severity rate of each facility based on the data of construction sites(about 1,560 thousand cases) recorded by Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency for 3 years from 2007 to 2009, and the incident related data (about 40 thousand cases) of Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service. The results of this study revealed that construction incident rates of 'cold refrigeration storage facilities' are the highest among building types, followed by traditional building religious building, arcade department store and shopping center. In case of other facilities, the incident rate and the rate of intensity of 'pipelining project' are the highest, followed by 'tunneling project'. These results would be used in providing safety programs beneficial for preventing construction incidents.

Past theories on construction price formation have been shown to be inadequate in terms of their ability to represent real-life industry practice and price formation predictability. In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework on construction price formation that integrates four theories within the domains of marketing, learning, resource management and economics. These are: (i) marketing pricing theory; (ii) experiential and organisational learning theory; (iii) resourced based theory and (iv) microeconomic theory. Utilising pricing theory from marketing, a foundation is able to be created for the procedure of construction price formation, namely: (i) identifying the objectives; (ii) assessing the tendering environment; and (iii) formation of the price. However, understanding contractors' decision making process in tender pricing as such can be attributed to theories of experiential learning and consequently organisational learning. It is argued that contractors do learn from past experience and history and are able to adapt to different market conditions. In formation of the price, neoclassical microeconomics is able to provide additional insight in terms of the supply and demand model and consideration of the market conditions. Interrelated with the microeconomic concept of scarcity, we appreciate that contractors do have limited resources that affect their tender pricing decisions and resource based theory is used to substantiate this. Integrating the various theories as a unity allows the broader reality to be visualised and add to our theoretical understanding of construction price formation.

Poor safety management in construction management may adversely affect cost, schedule and quality of a project. Heavy fines upon safety offence becomes a burden to the budget; losing working hours as a result of safety incident impacts on the schedule, and compromising quality is always an indirect consequence when workers perform duties in an unsafe site environment. Therefore, promotion of safety management becomes the top priority in any construction manager's agenda. Working safely will benefit construction project and lead to a "real" success. This paper is a case study, based upon "Geller's 10 principles for achieving a total safety culture", reviewing how a Hong Kong leading construction company fosters the safety culture and possesses a pleasant safety record over years. Its safety performance is not only well ahead the local industry, but also ranges top within the Asia Pacific region and comparable to those mature Western industries. The review concluded that safety culture is one of the major components in construction management and collaboration is the essence to realize this positive culture within an organization. Safety management is not merely a "top down" approach, but requires the positive "bottom up" actions from the other end. The successful story of this company can demonstrate the contribution of safety management in construction management.

Labor productivity is a significant factor related to control time, cost, and quality. Many researchers have developed models to define method of measuring the relationship between productivity and various constraints such as the size of working area, maximum working hours, and the crew composition. Most of the previous research has focused on estimating productivity; however, this research concentrates on estimating labor productivity and developing time and cost data for repetitive concrete pouring activity. In Korea, "Standard Estimating" only contains the average productivity data of the construction industry, and it is difficult to predict the time and cost of any particular project; hence, there are some errors in estimating duration and cost for individual activity and project. To address these issues, this research collects data, measures productivity, and develops time and cost data using labor productivity based on field conditions from the collected data. A probabilistic approach is also proposed to develop data. A case study is performed to validate this process using actual data collected from construction sites and it is possible that the result will be used as the EVMS baseline of cost management and schedule management.

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), many countries around the world have been concerned with reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Reducing the level of building energy consumption is particularly important in bringing GHG down. Because of this, many countries including the US and the EU are enforcing energy-related policies. However, these policies are focused on management of single types of buildings such as public buildings and office buildings, instead of management on a national level. Thus, although various policies have been enforced in many countries, CO₂ management on a national level is still not an area of focus. Therefore, this study proposed a community-based CO₂ management process that allows government-led GHG management. The minimum unit of the community in this study is a plot, and the process consists of three steps. First, the current condition of the GHG emission was identified by plot. Second, based on the identified results, the GHG emission reduction target was distributed per plot by reflecting the weighted value according to (i) the target CO₂ reduction in the buildings in the standard year, (ii) region, and (iii) building usage and size. Finally, to achieve the allocated target reduction, building energy management was executed according to the properties of the building located on each plot. It can be expected that the proposed community-based CO₂ management process will enable government-level GHG management, through which environment-friendly building construction can be promoted.

The impact of a new stadium on the urban context and regional development is significant. Especially where several new stadiums are built for single mega events like the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games or the Soccer World Cup the impact is even higher. Objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the key drivers for sustainable integration of stadiums within the existing context. The level of sustainability is analyzed based on four different categories: urban, social, environmental and economics. Particular focus is on the project management strategy for implementation of the key drivers during pre-design, design and execution. In conclusion key elements of the project management strategy for sustainable integration of a stadium within the urban, environmental, social and economic context are summarized.

Concerns over the environment have spawned a number of research studies in the construction industry, as the construction of built environments and large infrastructures involves diverse environmental impacts and loads of hazardous emissions. Many researchers have attempted to quantify these environmental loads, including greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide, to name a few. However, little research has been conducted regarding integrating the life-cycle assessment (LCA) of environmental loads with the current life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) approach. This study aims to estimate the environmental loads as a monetary value using the European Climate Exchange (ECX) rate and, then, to integrate those impacts with the pure construction cost. Toward this end, this study suggests an integrated approach that takes into account the environmental effect on the evaluation of the life-cycle cost (LCC). The bill of quantity (BOQ) data of a real highway project are collected and analyzed for this purpose. As a result, considering the environmental loads in the pavement process, the total LCC increased 16% from the traditional LCC cost. This study suggests an integrated approach that will account the environmental effect on the LCC. Additionally, this study is expected to contribute to better decision-making, from the perspective of more sustainable development, for government as well as for contractors.

This study aims to propose an assessment model on environmental economics which will provide useful information in making a decision for the implementation of pro-environmental and economical construction projects. To meet the objective, this study suggests a procedure to estimate environmental cost of construction projects. The model combines environmental load assessment and environmental value assessment. The environmental cost of pollutant generated from the construction project was estimated utilizing the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) which is a value assessment method borrowed from economic science. The devised model is expected to provide a useful methodology that will scientifically support the planning and management of sustainable construction not only in the environmental aspect but also in the economical aspect.

Onsite usage of construction equipment accounts for a 6.8% of air pollution in Korea. The high concentration of carbon dioxide in such emissions impact not only climate change, but also people's health. However, greenhouse gas emissions from onsite equipment usage have not yet been fully investigated. This study presents a comparative analysis on how much greenhouse gas is generated by various equipment types used in different construction activities. Two ongoing cases which involve a typical road construction project in Korea were selected for the comparison purpose. Greenhouse gas emissions from each onsite equipment usage of the different activities were estimated on the ground of design documents. The estimates were compared and analyzed to derive the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The result showed that earthwork constituted the largest part-more than 90%-among work types. Dump truck, bulldozer, and loader were major sources for such emissions. The study results are expected to be used as a basis for reduction of greenhouse gas emission from onsite equipment usage.

In this study we examine Taiwan's overall performance in accordance with sustainable construction by developing an appraisal indicator framework. The framework consists of five layers, from bottom to top: the indicator; the indicator category; the core cluster; the theme; and the overall performance. The procedure for the development of a sustainable construction indicator system is outlined. Finally, a framework consists of 3 themes, 10 core clusters, and 33 indicator categories are established. Following the established framework, 67 proper indicators are selected for each category in the framework, and data of the 53 indicators are collected respectively from a nation's statistical databank in Taiwan. Sustainable construction index aggregated step-by-step from the indicators, the indicator categories, the core clusters and the themes is computed to assess Taiwan's progress in sustainable construction. The preliminary results and the discussion are reported.

Congestion is a growing concern of many global cities and the demands on Infrastructure services within a locale coupled by the rising expectations from the growing population places stress on these cities. This entails the ability to build a sustainable community that requires an understanding and recognition of Population growth, changing demographics and the ever changing urban development on both a macro and micro level. Infrastructure is an integral part of Australian economy, particularly the 'Infrastructure Assets Management' which highlights the importance towards the development of sustainable communities for Melbourne's future. Melbourne 2030 is a comprehensive representation of government's response to a wide-ranging population growth within Melbourne metropolitan and surrounding areas. Urban plan and specific Infrastructure Assets Planning needs not only to provide sufficient Infrastructure to a community, but it must also be efficient and innovative so that it produces an optimised management system. A system that incorporates engineering techniques that will be sustainable for decades to come by maintaining an acceptable level of services to its intended community in an effective manner, which also strengthens service delivery. The fundamental challenges for optimization of Infrastructure with the Melbourne urban plan is, the ability to manage and sustain maintenance of Infrastructure to provide the acceptable level of service required by the community in a most effective manner which also strengthens service delivery to contribute towards Melbourne 2030. This paper particularly investigates some of the fundamental issues within the Melbourne urban plan such as Infrastructure Asset Management, AusLink and the Australian Road Management Act 2004, which the Governments at all levels must deal with to provide an economically viable solution to the changing Infrastructure so it may suits the needs and services the strategies of a metropolis.

The populations of major cities in Australia are increasing rapidly and facing an acute housing shortage. Traditional apartment procurement techniques involve lengthy lead-times and factory-based, or offsite manufactured (OSM) multi-storey apartment buildings may offer the opportunity to help fulfill the need by significantly reducing build times. Other advantages of OSM may include superior quality, low weight ratios, economies of scale achieved through repetition of prefabricated units, use on infill sites, sustainable design standards and better occupational health and safety. There are also positive labour and training implications, which may help to alleviate an industry-wide shortage of skills through use of semi-skilled labour. Previous uncertainties about the adoption of offsite due to the high capital costs and perception issues were generally based on pre-cast concrete structures, which are quite a different building type in terms of flexibility, construction, delivery and finishes. Identification of drivers and constraints assists in the determination of current industry status, allows for a benchmark to be established and future opportunities and directions for OSM to be determined.

There is a growing concern in reducing greenhouse gas emissions all over the world. The U.K. has set 34% target reduction of emission before 2020 and 80% before 2050 compared to 1990 recently in Post Copenhagen Report on Climate Change. In practise, Life Cycle Cost (LCC) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools have been introduced to construction industry in order to achieve this such as. However, there is clear a disconnection between costs and environmental impacts over the life cycle of a built asset when using these two tools. Besides, the changes in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) lead to a change in the way information is represented, in particular, information is being fed more easily and distributed more quickly to different stakeholders by the use of tool such as the Building Information Modelling (BIM), with little consideration on incorporating LCC and LCA and their maximised usage within the BIM environment. The aim of this paper is to propose the development of a model-based LCC and LCA tool in order to provide sustainable building design decisions for clients, architects and quantity surveyors, by then an optimal investment decision can be made by studying the trade-off between costs and environmental impacts. An application framework is also proposed finally as the future work that shows how the proposed model can be incorporated into the BIM environment in practise.

Illegal and unethical behaviors of the construction industry affect people's lives and health more than the same problems of the other industries. Among these behaviors, the construction industry is mostly criticized for bribery scandals. According to the survey of the Ministry of Justice in Taiwan over the past years, bribery cases involving public engineering projects and governmental procurements account for a rather large portion of the indicted corruption cases. Transparency International's "Bribe Payer Index" indicates people in construction-related industries are the most likely to pay bribes. Poor construction quality directly and indirectly caused by bribery poses a great threat to public safety, organizational reputation and economic development. However, there is a limited number of existing research on the bribery problem of the construction industry. This study is an empirical attempt to explore bribery intention and its affecting factors among the construction organizations in Taiwan by conducting a questionnaire survey. The theory of planned behavior was used in this study to build its research model (covering elements of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavior control, and intention). Totally 431 valid samples were returned. To explore the factors affecting bribery intention, this study adopted Pearson's correlation analysis to discuss about the connections among the questionnaire respondents' attitudes to bribery, subjective norms, perceived behavior control, and bribery intention. A multi-regression analysis was then conducted to test if the planned behavior theory can effectively predict bribery intention. The research found (1) according to the results of Pearson's correlation analysis, the respondents' bribery intention, attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control are positively correlated with one another; (2) according to the results of the multi-regression analysis, bribery intention can be explained through attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control with an adjusted R² value of 0.591, meaning 59.1% of the bribery intention's variances can be explained through the three dimensions. In addition, each of the three dimensions has a significant influence on the respondents' behavior intentions.

Significant decisions are made by the project team during the early planning phase of capital facility project developments. The preproject planning phase begins after a decision is made to proceed with a project concept and continues until the detail design stage. Many of the industry practitioners and researchers have recognized the importance of preproject planning and that inadequate early planning is one of the key factors affecting project success. Nevertheless, the preproject planning practices vary significantly for the construction industry in Taiwan and the quality of preproject planning relies heavily on individual project team's experience. This research sets out to benchmark the preproject planning practice for the building construction industry in Taiwan. From late 2007 to early 2010, the researchers collected information from a total of 92 building construction projects using questionnaire survey. The analysis results show that the surveyed projects with better preproject planning have better cost and schedule performances on average. It is recommended that project team spend more efforts in the preproject planning stage to have a better chance of achieving project success.

Build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects are privatized infrastructure undertakings that face long-term investment risks and uncertainties. To ensure these projects can be completed on time and operated according to performance specifications, governments usually require BOT concessionaires to furnish performance bonds as a security. However, in order to attract investment, governments often provide abandonment rights for concessionaires to deal with investment risks and uncertainties. In the context of real options, these abandonment rights will increase project value, but the furnish of performance bonds will reduce this value. Currently in the BOT context, there is no real option model that can handle explicitly the impact of performance bonds on project value. In this paper, a real option valuation model is derived to deal with this important issue. The Taiwan high-speed rail project is used as a case study to show the applicability of the proposed model.

The unique characteristics of the construction industry - such as the fragmentation of its processes, varied scope of works and diversity of its participants - are contributory factors to poor project performance. Several issues are unresolved due to the lack of a comprehensive technique to measure project outcomes including: inefficient decision making, insufficient communication, uncertain site conditions, a continuously changing environment, inharmonious working relationships, mismatched objectives within the project team and a blame culture. One approach to overcoming these problems appears to be to measure performance by gauging contractor satisfaction (Co-S) levels, but this has not been widely investigated as yet. Additionally, the key Co-S dimensions at the project level are still not fully identified. This paper concerns a study of satisfaction dimensions, primarily by a postal questionnaire survey of construction contractors registered by the Malaysian Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB). Eight satisfaction dimensions are identified that are significantly and substantially relate to these contractors - comprising: project cost performance, schedule performance, product performance, design satisfaction, site safety, project profitability, business performance and relationships between participants. -Each of these dimensions is accorded different priority levels of satisfaction by different contractors. The output of this study will be useful in raising the awareness and understanding of project teams regarding contractors' needs, mutual objectives and open communication to help to deliver a successful project.

During the negotiation and resolution of delay and disruption disputes on construction projects, the use and misappropriation of float, and the question of float ownership, are considered to be a major concern to those involved. Most practitioners and authors are of the opinion that it is an issue that should be clearly defined and addressed within the provisions of the contract. However, the terms "float" or "ownership of float" are rarely mentioned (if at all) in most of the standard forms of Australian construction contracts, giving little guidance to those involved as to how this issue should be addressed. In October 2002 the United Kingdoms Society of Construction Law (SCL) published a Delay and Disruption Protocol (the Protocol) that contains a suggested approach to the issue. The aim of this research was to obtain an Australian opinion of the suitability of the SCL's Delay and Disruption Protocols suggested approach to the issue of float and ownership of float for use by the Australian construction industry. Qualitative interviews were carried out with Australian construction industry experts experienced in the administration, negotiation, and resolution of delay and disruption disputes to obtain their opinions of the suitability of the SCL's proposed approach. Results indicate general confusion and uncertainty as to how the issue of float and float ownership should be addressed in general, with the SCL's approach adding further to that confusion.

Early neutral evaluation (ENE) is a fairly recent form of alternative dispute resolution procedure used in the construction industry. In the UK, ENE is usually carried out on an entirely without prejudice basis, however the parties may agree that any or part of it may be referred to at trial or any subsequent hearing. The early neutral evaluation consists of a preliminary assessment of the issues in dispute for use as a basis for negotiations which may result in a settlement of the dispute. An independent person is appointed by the parties who reviews the case and provides an opinion, in written form and in some detail, with reasons on the merits of the matters in dispute. The opinion is non-binding but provides the parties with what in the opinion of the independent person a formal tribunal may decide whether a court or an arbitrator, if the dispute is not resolved. However, ENE has yet to take off in the construction industry in the UK. This paper will explain this procedure and explore the use of it in the UK and internationally, considering the benefits and drawbacks of its use. It will consider whether or not it is more effective than other early resolution forms such as mediation and adjudication. It will argue and conclude that it is a very useful cost effective procedure, particularly in the resolution of complex disputes, whether local or international.

Mediation has long been praised as one of effective dispute resolution methods in the area of construction law. Article 85-1 of the Taiwan Government Procurement Act was amended and promulgated by presidential decree on July 4, 2007. The second paragraph of the Article elaborates explicitly, "In the event that the application for mediation referred to in the preceding paragraph is made by the supplier, the agency may not object to such application." Beyond that, if an unsuccessful mediation of a construction dispute is due to the agency's disagreeing with the proposal or resolution for mediation proposed by the Complaint Review Board for Government Procurement ("CRBGP"), the agency may not object to the arbitration filed by the supplier. It undoubtedly reinforces the importance of the mediation-arbitration procedure. Accordingly, this paper elaborates on the mediation mechanism in Taiwan in the framework of construction disputes first. After that, dispute resolution of a local public work case is provided to demonstrate the practice of construction mediation in Taiwan. Lastly, this study proposes suggestions on applying mediation to ease similar subsequent cases.

The levels of unemployment and poverty are extremely high and two of South Africa's most pressing problems. There is also a widely acknowledged need for housing and municipal infrastructure (water supply, sewerage, streets, storm water drainage, and electricity, refuse collection). From a theoretical perspective supported by experience elsewhere in Africa, there are reasons for considering that properly formulated employment creation programmes based on the use of labour-intensive methods could be established to construct and maintain the required physical infrastructure, thus creating employment, skills and institutional capacities. Over the past 30 years several projects have been initiated in South Africa to counter unemployment and poverty. Given the socio-economic conditions and political objectives (regarding development, employment creation and alleviation of poverty), it is anticipated that future large-scale construction projects will be proposed by the public sector (National, Provincial and Local Government). The paper will first examine the main tenets of the implementation of development projects through the use of labour-intensive construction and a description of progress elsewhere in Africa and their potential contribution which public works programmes could make to alleviate the poverty and unemployment problems. The research will then analyse the successes and challenges that have been experienced in South Africa in relation to the implementation of development projects over the past 30 years. The paper closes with recommendations and lessons for the future.

Along with the growing interest in greenhouse gas reduction, the effect of energy reduction from green buildings is gaining interest as well. However, green buildings may have difficulties in financing due to their high initial construction costs. With this in mind, the objective of this study is to suggest a financing model for green building projects with a governmental guarantee based on CER (Certified Emission Reduction). In other words, in the financing model, the government provides a guarantee for the increased costs of a green building project in return for CER. The suggested financing model was tested and found feasible for implementing green building projects. In addition, the model in this study is applicable to private projects because guarantee has its return. To utilize CER as a return for a financial guarantee, however, certification of CDMs (Clean Development Mechanism) for green buildings must be vitalized.

In Korea Water Resources Corporation (K-Water) has seen four problems rising in four aspects of property management of approximately 1,300 buildings scattered through put to country. To solve these, ground data for repair and replacement works to be conducted for prevention will be prepared and building maintenance system (hereinafter referred to as PBMS) intended to record related repair and replacement work histories and calculate LCC of the related these items will be developed. PBMS, a web-based system, will be developed for users' convenience and data monitoring in real time. To sum up, PBMS are expected to maximize efficiency in four aspects including the establishment of repair and replacement work plans for prevention, history management, DB for predicting future work to be occurred and enable the determination of priorities by being developing into facility condition assessment systems through the results of analysis of repair and replacement histories and LCC.

Being aware of the risk in advance necessitates intricate processes but is feasible. Although previous studies have demonstrated high accuracy, their performance still leaves room for improvement. A self-organizing feature map (SOM) based neurofuzzy model is developed in this study to provide another alternative for forecasting corporate financial distress. The model is designed to yield high prediction accuracy, as well as reference rules for evaluating corporate financial status. As a database, the study collects all financial reports from listed construction companies during the latest decade, resulting in over 1000 effective samples. The proportion of "failed" and "non-failed" companies is approximately 1:2. Each financial report is comprised of 25 ratios which are set as the input variable s. The proposed model integrates the concepts of pattern classification, fuzzy modeling and SOM-based optimization to predict corporate financial distress. The results exhibit a high accuracy rate at 85.1%. This model outperforms previous tools. A total of 97 rules are extracted from the proposed model which can be also used as reference for construction practitioners. Users may easily identify their corporate financial status by using these rules.

In many parts of the world, low cost housing used to be built and maintained by the governments, based on designs and detail specifications prepared by the public sector with construction carried out by contractors. Results vary due to differences in design standards, workmanship and property management, depending also on the neighbourhood's care of the estates and their pattern of usage. In the UK, where Private Finance Initiative (PFI) has been used for infrastructure projects, there have been successful cases of city estate being transformed by PFI. These PFI housing schemes involve new-build, refurbishment as well as facility management. Unlike traditional construction, which is based on prescriptive specifications, PFI housing is based on output specifications. A study has been undertaken to compare the two specification approaches as they are applied to housing estate. Results are enlightening and serve as good reference to cities such as Hong Kong SAR and Singapore, where public housing provisions have been a major concern of their citizens as the building stock gets older.

This paper introduces stochastic cash-flow modeling integrated with simulation based scheduling. The system makes use of CPM schedule data exported from commercial scheduling software, computes the best fit probability distribution functions (PDFs) of historical activity durations, assigns the PDFs identified to respective activities, simulates the schedule network, computes the deterministic and stochastic project cash-flows, plots the corresponding cash flow diagrams, and estimates the best fit PDFs of overdraft and net profit of a project. It analyzes the effect of different distributions of activity durations on the distribution of overdrafts and net profits, and improves reliability compared to deterministic cash flow analysis.

Various construction bonds and warranties critically burden the general contractor. Also, sporadic or cumulative delays of progress payment by the owner can further trap the contractor in a financial quagmire. Facing the possibility of cash flow deficiency and callous response from the banks, most construction firms may become financially incapable of market competition, and attractive project tenders become a bidding game among few deep-pocket players. The downside of such market environment is that the depth of pocket, rather than that of professional competency dictates the choice of market winners. In Taiwan, this has been a potential crisis to the construction industry after the financial crisis which started out since 2008. To encounter this problem, this research will examine the means to better manage the construction industry. Essentially, a credit guarantee system (CGS) is the prime solution to strengthen a bank's confidence in any particular construction firm. Thus establishing a national platform which evaluates and rewards a construction firm's overall credibility is pivotal, and this third-party rated credit can help a bank to render a loan more wisely. Finally, this paper will propose the ideal operating schemes of construction-specific CGS in Taiwan and a credit scoring prototype model for construction industry, as reference for the government and banks, respectively.

Recently, the Malaysian government had been developing new technologies to the construction industry and one of them is the Industrialised Building System (IBS). The government urged that IBS is 100% utilized in all construction projects. It is believed that the application of IBS helps in reducing construction duration and cost, solving the problems of overflow of foreign workers in the site and improving performance and appearance of a structure. However, there are some parties like the contractor who feel reluctant to utilize this system because there are risks. They worry that their trades will be affected as IBS construct a structure using components which are manufactured in a factory and assemble on site. Therefore, this research is to find out whether IBS benefits the country's economy by focusing on the business created by investing in IBS. A comprehensive supply chain for IBS will be developed to compare with the traditional construction supply chain as to determine businesses or trades created and eliminated. This paper is looking at the theoretical framework about business opportunities due to the Government policy on embarking IBS.

Corporate governance is a system articulating the division of responsibilities among different company members, and defining the running rules and procedures for making decisions on corporate affairs. The separation of ownership and management in modern enterprises brings agency problems to the company shareholders, and it is wildly believed that good practice on corporate governance is essential to prevent managers from taking actions by which profiteering their own benefits but compromising the interests of shareholders. This research investigates the level of companies' compliance with the corporate governance codes to find whether significant differences in corporate governance practice exist between the listed construction companies and the national leading companies in Taiwan. Further exploration focuses on the correlation between the compliance level and the industrial features. The investigation finds that: (1)Construction companies display lower levels of corporate governance compliance; (2)Construction companies display lower levels of structural board independence and respect for stakeholders; (3)Compliance levels of construction companies are correlated with the number of employees and the ownership concentration; (4)Compliance levels of the whole sample companies are correlated with the factors representing firm size, such as turnover, capital and number of employees, but are independent of profitability as well as stock price volatility. The above empirical evidence characterizes the features of corporate governance in Taiwan listed construction companies, including: (1)Large companies lurking high risk of agency problems have more willingness to conduct corporate governance and meanwhile can afford higher costs for the conduction, so that their compliance level would be higher than smaller companies; (2)Construction companies in Taiwan have higher ownership concentration, on account of the industrial tradition of family business, and therefore pay less attention to the compliance with structural board independence and respect for stakeholders. However, the conclusions indicate that further studies are essential to clarify whether the above disparities would lead to a negative cycle of corporate governance practice in construction industry. The benefits of corporate governance should unfold more evidently to convince construction companies for improving their investment environment and stimulating their healthy growth.

Corporate Social Responsibility has become a hot issue for modern enterprises recently. Under this trend, companies have to focus on what they can do for society instead of on just making profits. This paper is to explore the relationship between ecological corporate social responsibility and organizational performance in the construction industry in Taiwan. 192 samples were collected from Taiwan's general contractors and analyzed using factor analysis, correlation analysis and path analysis. This study found: (1) in general, the contractors in Taiwan don't devote much to realizing ecological corporate social responsibility, and there is still much room for improvement; (2) the correlation analysis results indicated there are significant positive relationships between ecological corporate social responsibility and organizational performance; and (3) according to the path analysis results, a contractor can improve its business performance by improving its realization of corporate social responsibility.

The quality of performance evaluation on engineering consultants that provide design-related technical services is difficult to be measured, and only a handful of papers discussed the quality during the design stage. Although design cost is relatively far less than construction cost for a project, the decisions made in the design phase have a significant impact on the final products of the project, especially for large public construction projects. Therefore, this research focuses on reviewing and then establishing a performance evaluation framework for the consulting firms that execute detailed design and provide technical services for the Taipei Rapid Transit Systems (TRTS). By interviewing experts, this study first established a set of indicators to evaluate these firms' performance. Then, those indicators were incorporated into the four aspects of balanced scorecard (BSC) to establish the architecture of the evaluation mechanism. The weight of each indicator was calculated by analytic hierarchy process (AHP) from a survey conducted among experts. The results showed that the top-three indicators were quantity take-off, functions conformity, and budgeting. The framework of performance evaluation established by this study can be applied to measure service performance during the design stage. It not only facilitates the monitoring of consulting firms, but also helps to reduce unnecessary change orders and disputes during the construction stage.

The purpose of the present thesis is to develop bankruptcy prediction models capable of being applied to the Korean construction industry and to deduce an optimal model through comparative evaluation of final developed models. A study population was selected as general contractors in the Korean construction industry. In order to ease the sample securing and reliability of data, it was limited to general contractors receiving external audit from the government. The study samples are divided into a bankrupt company group and a non-bankrupt company group. The bankruptcy, insolvency, declaration of insolvency, workout and corporate reorganization were used as selection criteria of a bankrupt company. A company that is not included in the selection criteria of the bankrupt company group was selected as a non-bankrupt company. Accordingly, the study sample is composed of a total of 112 samples and is composed of 48 bankrupt companies and 64 non-bankrupt companies. A financial ratio was used as early predictors for development of an estimation model. A total of 90 financial ratios were used and were divided into growth, profitability, productivity and added value. The MDA (Multivariate Discriminant Analysis) model and BLRA (Binary Logistic Regression Analysis) model were used for development of bankruptcy prediction models. The MDA model is an analysis method often used in the past bankruptcy prediction literature, and the BLRA is an analysis method capable of avoiding equal variance assumption. The stepwise (MDA) and forward stepwise method (BLRA) were used for selection of predictor variables in case of model construction. Twenty two variables were finally used in MDA and BLRA models according to timing of bankruptcy. The ROC-Curve Analysis and Classification Analysis were used for analysis of prediction performance of estimation models. The correct classification rate of an individual bankruptcy prediction model is as follows: 1) one year ago before the event of bankruptcy (MDA: 83.04%, BLRA: 93.75%); 2) two years ago before the event of bankruptcy (MDA: 77.68%, BLRA: 78.57%); 3) 3 years ago before the event of bankruptcy (MDA: 84.82%, BLRA: 91.96%). The AUC (Area Under Curve) of an individual bankruptcy prediction model is as follows. : 1) one year ago before the event of bankruptcy (MDA: 0.933, BLRA: 0.978); 2) two years ago before the event of bankruptcy (MDA: 0.852, BLRA: 0.875); 3) 3 years ago before the event of bankruptcy (MDA: 0.938, BLRA: 0.975). As a result of the present research, accuracy of the BLRA model is higher than the MDA model and its prediction performance is improved.

As construction projects have been getting larger and more complex, a single individual or organization cannot have complete knowledge or the abilities to handle all matters. Collaborative practices among heterogeneous individuals, which are temporarily congregated to carry out a project, are required in order to accomplish project objectives. These organizational knowledge creation processes of project teams should be understood from the active and dynamic viewpoint of how they create information and knowledge rather than from the passive and static input-process-output sequence. To this end, agent-based modeling and simulation which is built from the ground-up perspective can provide the most appropriate way to systematically investigate them. In this paper, agent-based modeling and simulation as a research method and a medium for representing theory is introduced. To illustrate, an agent-based simulation of the evolution of collaboration in large-scale project teams from a game theory and social network perspective is presented.

The schedule hierarchy in construction project is generally composed of three levels. The highest level is a milestone schedule and represented by Bar Chart format. The middle level is an integrated project schedule (IPS) and represented by CPM (Critical Path Method) format. The lowest level is a detail working schedule and usually represented by Bar Chart. The traditional scheduling techniques such as ADM (Arrow Diagramming Method) or PDM (Precedence Diagramming Method) cannot represent all kinds of schedule within schedule hierarchy as identical schedule format. However, the BDM (Beeline Diagramming Method) technique can represent all kinds of schedule within schedule hierarchy as identical CPM format. This paper describes the basic concept, principle, interpretation methods, and schedule computation methods of the BDM as a new networking technique that can represent all kinds of overlapping relationships between activities, and then presents an example of representing three level's schedules within schedule hierarchy by the BDM technique.

The construction industry's importance to nation building, economic empowerment, and contributions to global commerce cannot be over emphasised. However, poor productivity, accidents, rework, time and cost overruns, and client dissatisfaction have characterised the industry performance in a multi-dimensional way. The central issue in this particular research is the seemingly inadequate achievement of optimum performance in the construction process, either with respect to value for money for the client and the entire construction supply chain or value in terms of the utility derived from built assets in spite of efforts by government and governmental bodies such as the Construction Industry Development Board (cidb) to increase industry performance. Therefore, based upon an extensive review of related literature, the paper reports on effects and causes of non-value adding activities in the construction industry in general, and South African construction in particular. The research findings indicate that activities that can be referred to as non-value activities are not only prevalent, but they can also be held responsible for performance related issues in terms of cost, time, quality and health and safety (H&S) in construction; and the exploration of pluralism in the research methodology may result in a robust model based upon the system dynamics approach. Therefore, the study suggests that there is major scope for value optimisation in the construction process especially in terms of availability and implementation of interventions, which have not only proven successful in other industries, but are also adaptable in the construction industry context.

Construction errors can have significant effects on project performance. Yet, any attempt to tackle error should be driven by the ability to understand its archetypal nature. This study aims to analyze a variety of construction errors at the execution stage, in order to develop a comprehensive set of categories that shall provide insights about the effect of different error types on the industry. We investigate a database provided by an authoritative source, which includes a number of 256 construction errors that occurred in the year 2009 in Dubai construction industry. Results from this study reveal that the most common error arose from 'poor workmanship' which accounted for 21% of the total encountered faults. The next most common types arose from the 'usage of impaired materials', followed by the 'deviation from an intended dimension'. These observations infer that the majority of construction errors are driven by workers' lack of skill or competence. Moreover, it suggests that execution-oriented errors are the major cause of faults and accidents rather than design errors.

The goal of a project manager is generally to minimize the cost of the project and also to cope with uncertainty. This paper deals with the problem of project scheduling a set of activities satisfying precedence constraints in order to minimize the sum of the costs associated with the starting times of the activities in the network with imprecise activity durations, represented by means of interval or fuzzy numbers. So far this problem has been completely solved by several authors when the activities durations have crisp values. However, they do not consider the imprecision in activity durations in their models. Here the framework of possibility theory is proposed to solve this problem. In fuzzy arithmetic, usually, the interval calculations are used for the aim of complexity reduction and simplification. Thus the case of interval-valued durations is first addressed, and then extended to fuzzy intervals. A numerical example is used to illustrate the developed concept.

With Beijing's success in bidding for the 2008 Olympic Games, the increasing demand for infrastructure development and reduced public sector funding capacity has created a significant funding gap which calls for alternative project delivery methods such as Public-Private Partnership (PPP). Although the exploration of infrastructure projects using PPP model have been practiced since the late 80s, the $560 million National Stadium which served as the main venue for the Olympic Games is the first stadium project in China to be delivered under PPP operation. The project is generally considered successful despite the concession transfer in 2009 with concern of better serving the public interest. Compared to other infrastructure projects such as transportation, waste management and water management, the development of major sports facilities for mega-sports events with PPP has its own unique features and is subject to different major risks. This research identifies and analyzes critical risks in the implementation of PPP in major sports facility development through case study of the National Stadium project. A questionnaire survey and several interviews are conducted to solicit expert opinions from experienced practitioners. The purpose is to provide additional insights in risk management strategies and opportunities in China's PPP implementations in major sports facilities for policy makers and private sectors involved with investment decisions in future similar infrastructure development.

Conservation of energy and fuel is the trend in smart building design. Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) technology is often used in temperature sensing and signal transmission to manage indoor temperature, but it is rarely applied to the shell of the building. Heat retention and poor insulation in building shells are the largest causes of high energy consumption by indoor air conditioning. Through combining RFIC technology with temperature sensors, this study will develop smart temperature information material that can be embedded in concrete. In addition to accurately evaluating the effectiveness of shell insulation material, the already-designed Building Physiology Information System can monitor long-term temperature changes, leading to smarter building health management.

As a knowledge-based economy is emerging, knowledge management (KM) is being rapidly disseminated in both academic circles and the business world. Accordingly, how to effectively manage knowledge is vital to the survival and advance of a company, particularly in project-based industries such as construction. For these reasons, construction companies have adopted IT-based Knowledge management systems (KMS), which is the technology platform and infrastructure that an organization employs to support knowledge management. However, many construction companies have spent resources on developing a KMS that only focus on codification. Furthermore, small and medium-sized companies have limited resources to afford extensive investments. This research addresses the problems found in the current KMS and develops a web-based construction knowledge management portal (CKMP). To achieve these objectives, a case study is conducted and requirements for implementing KM are identified. Based on the identified requirements, this paper builds CKMP using Expert Index (EI), blog, ontology based knowledge retrieval, and wikiblog. The most important functionality of CKMP is their fundamentals to synchronize and support KM process. In order to validate the CKMP, a pilot test with actual users is conducted, and the usability of the system is compared with the current systems. This study is relevant to both the construction industry and academia, as it provides a means of enhancing the performance of KM.

Project delivery systems have evolved over the years. Continuous changes in technology and the increasing sophistication in buildings required specialization of design and construction services. IPD as a delivery method has been used in the USA and other countries. With the development of BIM, lots of construction companies have been realizing this method since BIM came out in China. However IPD are not considered with BIM, IPD will be an important role in management system of construction. This study introduced the definition of IPD and based on the flow process of IPD, compared the process in china and other countries. Through the real project and the condition in China this paper analyzed the feasibility of IPD in China.

With a focus on different aspects of PMIS in construction projects, various sets of critical success factors (CSFs) have been suggested in the literature such as IS Success Model by various researchers. It is crucial to explore the relative importance and groupings of these factors. This paper aims to identify CSFs associated with Project Management Information System (PMIS) in construction projects, and explore their ranking and underlying relationship. CSFs for PMIS identified through a literature review, and consolidated by interviews and pilot studies with professionals in construction industry. A questionnaire instrument was sent out to experienced users (Construction Manager and Constructor) in Korea, and 253 completed questionnaires were retrieved. To increase the generalizability of the results, the respondents were spread across construction site. Using factor analysis and considering the high importance of the factor, CSFs were grouped into three dimensions. All these three groupings and their relationship were included in a framework for successful PMIS in construction projects. These findings help to clarify what the high prioritized factors are, and could also be used as an assessment tool to evaluate the performance of PMIS and thus help to identify areas for improvement.

Recently, construction projects are very complicated and diverse such as high-rise buildings and big bridges, etc. These complicated projects call for a system which can effectively generate productive ideas and activities. Value Engineering (V.E.) activity within construction projects is a necessity for systematic design management and to improve construction ability. This need in the construction industry has required a regular implementation of VE into construction projects. For this reason; America, South Korea, and some other nations have adopted VE applications which control the baseline investments of the construction projects. The process of VE activity is a preferred system and a reasonable alternative. In particular, idea generation within these projects is an important stage in the VE job plan. In this study, VE idea patterns are extracted through best practice analysis from VE cases of road construction projects. Next, we suggest an idea hierarchy model to be used in conjunction with VE idea patterns. This model is supported by reasonable idea generation in VE activity of construction projects. Finally, this model could possibly be the outcome of successful VE results.

Urban renewal projects, in the form of mega-projects, are being actively implemented both nationally and internationally to revitalize inactive cities. These programs, however, are difficult to manage efficiently due to their need for a large budget over a long period of time and due to conflicts with stockholders. Moreover, existing cost and duration management systems are structured with emphasis on the design and construction stage of unit projects, thus limiting their application to long-term mega-projects that are integrated with various facilities. To solve these problems, this study developed a web-based system that can collectively manage the cost and duration of mega-projects at a program level. The unit modules included in the system--CBS organization, construction cost and duration prediction, and total cost and duration prediction--can support decision-making at the early stage of the program. Furthermore, the modules, which include contract management, execution management, change management, and program progress management, support the program operations for its successful accomplishment. The web-based cost and duration management system developed in this study is expected to be used as a valuable tool that supports the successful accomplishment of mega-projects through their efficient management throughout their life cycle.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is of increasing interest to both industry practitioners and academics because of increasing public awareness of environmental, economic and social sustainability. The last decade witnessed a large number of studies on the development of CSR principles and the implementation of CSR in various industries such as the mining industry, oil industry and food industry. However, there is limited number of CSR studies focusing on the construction industry. Considering the critical role the construction industry plays in achieving economic, social and environmental sustainability, it is imperative to extend the current CSR research to the construction sector. This paper provides a critical review of literature related to corporate social responsibility in construction context. A special focus is placed on the current practice adopted by the industry to be socially responsible. A research agenda is set up to tackle this critical issue.

Although the Korean construction industry has risen rapidly, the quality of the buildings is not met with the industry standard compared to the potential of the technology development and the cost of maintenance has been increased. The user's request for quality have been increased, but in the current building construction, the contractors only follow the specifications of design, material and technology, and their main concern is whether they are in right track with the specification or not. Thus, the necessity of developing technology has been ignored and sufficient opportunities for the development have not been provided as well. In the developed countries, in contrast, the quality assurance and the payment regulation system has been utilized for the active response to the changes of users' request. As a result of this, the maintenance cost has been decreased and the development of construction technology has been improved. Therefore the pay adjustment system is needed to create the improvement of the quality of the buildings by the contractors' earnest building construction. In order to introduce the pay adjustment system suitable to the Korean construction industry, this study presented the logical method of adjusting the construction cost and making payment with the pay adjustment index that is created based on the result of the performance test, after making a set of the indicators of the building performance standard and applied them to the targeted building.

Contracting is said to be a high-risk business, and a common cause of business failure is related to cash management. A contractor's financial viability depends heavily on how actual payments from an owner deviate from those defined in the contract. The paper presents a method for contractors to evaluate the punctuality and fullness of owner payments based on historical behaviour. It does this by classifying owners according to their late and incomplete payment practices. A payment profile of an owner, in the form of aging claims submitted by the contractor, is used as a basis for the method's development. Regression trees are constructed based on three predictor variables, namely, the average time to payment following a claim, the total amount ending up being paid within a certain period and the level of variability in claim response times. The Tree package in the publicly available R program is used for building the trees. The analysis is particularly useful for contractors at the pre-tendering stage, when contractors predict the likely payment scenario in an upcoming project. Based on the method, the contractor can decide whether to tender or not tender, or adjust its financial preparations accordingly. The paper is a contribution in risk management applied to claim and dispute resolution practice. It is argued that by contractors having a better understanding of owner payment behaviour, fewer disputes and contractor business failures will occur.

Risk evaluation approaches for bidding on international construction projects are typically partitioned into three stages: country selection, project classification, and bid-cost evaluation. However, previous studies are frequently under attack in that they have several crucial limitations: 1) a dearth of studies about country selection risk tailored for the overseas construction market at a corporate level; 2) no consideration of uncertainties for input variable per se; 3) less probabilistic approaches in estimating a range of cost variance; and 4) less inclusion of covariance impacts. This study thus suggests a three-staged risk evaluation model to resolve these inherent problems. In the first stage, a country portfolio model that maximizes the expected construction market growth rate and profit rate while decreasing market uncertainty is formulated using multi-objective genetic analysis. Following this, probabilistic approaches for screening bad projects are suggested through applying various data mining methods such as discriminant logistic regression, neural network, C5.0, and support vector machine. For the last stage, the cost overrun prediction model is simulated for determining a reasonable bid cost, while considering non-parametric distribution, effects of systematic risks, and the firm's specific capability accrued in a given country. Through the three consecutive models, this study verifies that international construction risk can be allocated, reduced, and projected to some degree, thereby contributing to sustaining stable profits and revenues in both the short-term and the long-term perspective.

This research will attempt to reveal that private developers in the Malaysian construction industry have been practicing strategic partnering in their organizations. While the investigation was conducted using quantitative and qualitative approaches, this paper will only reveal results obtained from the questionnaire survey. Results from the questionnaire survey indicate that private developers in the Malaysian construction industry had implemented strategic partnering in their organizations. The elements of the partnering process, which are partnering formation, partnering application and partnering completion or reactivation were tested. The results show that all the elements of the partnering process have been exercised in their projects. Thus it can be surmised that strategic partnering has been practiced by private developers in the Malaysian construction industry.

Utilizing construction knowledge and experiences in design phase can reduce change orders and improve productivity in construction phase. To do so, information must be made available to the design team in time. Current approaches for effective utilization of constructability knowledge, however, only focus on the formalization of constructability knowledge such as a checklist, which lacks the consideration of the appropriate use at the proper point in time. The inadequate use of constructability knowledge can result in unnecessary reworks. To deal with this problem, the design team needs to know what constructability knowledge is required for specific design activities in the design process. This paper presents a constructability implementation model using the dependency structure matrix (DSM) that focuses on information flows between design activities and constructability knowledge. For this objective, design activities in the design process are modeled in a matrix form based on their dependency. Then, constructability knowledge, which needs to be considered in the design stage, is mapped into activities and incorporated into the matrix, creating Constructability-DSM (C-DSM). Next, the partitioning algorithm is applied to C-DSM for optimal information flow. The Partitioned C-DSM is then analyzed based on the relationship between activities. Finally, the optimal utilization of construction knowledge in the design process is determined by identifying what constructability knowledge is required for each design activity, and how and when it is reflected to design for constructability. Thus, this research can help provide robust control actions to reduce unnecessary iterative cycles in design process for efficient constructability implementation.

Players of construction projects proceed with each work process by information gathering, modification and communication. Due to the complex and long-span lifecycle projects increased, it became more important to grasp this mechanism for the successful project performance in construction project. Hence, most project information management systems or knowledge management systems equip information retrieval system. There are two logic to infer the meaning of retrieval target; inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. The former is based on metadata explaining the target and the later is based on relation between data. To infer the information flow, it is necessary to define the correlation between players and work processes. However, most established information retrieval systems are based on index search system and it is not focused on correlation between data but data itself. Thus, this research aims to research on process of information flow retrieval system for large-scale construction projects.

In general, the early stage of urban renewal such as preparing a master plan and processing administrative works including planning permission are conducted by local governments in Korea. The local governments need to review the status of projects that are undergone in other local governments' territories. However, no integrated information system to manage information to this end at the level of nation exists in Korea. If the system would be developed, it may support central government to obtain information on required resources at the national level. In addition, local governments can gain guidance on the process and recognize potential problematic situations from others experience. The system should include functions to collect data on project summary, cost and schedule of projects according to local governments. The expected effects from using the information system are as following. First, information generated from project practice become more credible on account of management at the national level. Because the authorized party such as system administrative agents of governments are responsible for collecting and managing data. Second, the unified information system with no regard to the place where projects progresses reduces the efforts for accumulating reference data for aiding local governments decision making by providing appropriate information timely. Also, enhanced information accessibility for stakeholders make the project process clear. Finally, oversight management is enforced with visualization technology adopted in the system, presenting master plan and mass model including information on usage by floors and progressing information graphically. Ultimately, potential challenges can be anticipated by considering records accumulated from other local governments' projects. This paper presents concept, functionalities, and architecture of information system enabling to manage data from individual projects and aggregate those for oversight management for local and central governments. As a part of systems analysis, general requirements of briefing system for governments and necessary data fields to this end are identified.

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors that influence knowledge sharing and determine the attitudes of quantity surveyors towards knowledge sharing based on the factors. The analysis was based on an online questionnaire survey of Registered Quantity Surveyors from Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. Individualism and collectivism were identified as two major factors that influence attitude towards knowledge sharing. Indicators of individualism include individual attitude, competitiveness, care, incentives and rewards; while the indicators of collectivism are trust, social behaviors and motivation. The findings show that the level of attitudes towards knowledge sharing among quantity surveyors is generally high under enabling organizational environment. However, this is a cautious conclusion as the valid sample on which the analysis is based is relatively small. Willingness to share was found to be highest when incentives and rewards are involved as well as when there is a knowledge management system to promote continuous learning and sharing of knowledge.

A novel approach for analysis of criticality with respect to path and to activity in networks with fuzzy activity durations is proposed. After recalling the Yager ranking method, the relative degree of criticality of activities and paths are defined. An efficient algorithm based on path enumeration to compute the relative degree of criticality of activities and paths in networks with fuzzy durations is proposed. Examples of former researches are employed to validate the proposed approach. The proposed algorithm has been tested on real world project networks and experimental results have shown that the algorithm can calculate the relative degree of criticality of activities and paths in a reasonable time.

During disaster response, prioritization of limited resources is one of the most important bust challenging tasks. At the same time, it is imperative to timely provide the rescuers with the adequate equipment to facilitate lifesaving operations. However, supply of high demand equipment was insufficient during the initial phase of disaster response, challenging lifesaving operations in the case of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. In respond to the Haiti Earthquake, spatial information of the geographic area was not sufficient to support the search and rescue operations in the early phase of disaster response. However, with the help of civilians, information such as road names, infrastructure damage, and victim locations were updated into the spatial data repository. At the same time, resource outside of the disaster affected zone converges into the area to assist the response efforts, which is the effect of convergence that often made resource coordination challenging in large scale disasters. To efficiently collect information and utilize the converging resources, this paper proposes a flexible data repository for information update for equipment utilization in large scale disaster response scenarios.

This paper presents the case study of the CE by collaborative system and proposes a model of the CM group for the cable supported bridge. The cable supported bridges have a large project scale and need a high level of construction method. Therefore an advanced construction management system is required for successful completion of project. The construction management (CM) group which control design management, construction plan, subcontract, technical support and R&D is organized for the cable supported bridge project. The CM group established a collaborative system with construction site and drew an effective management of cost, process, quality, safety for each project. Furthermore, the CM group established the procedure of construction management based on the construction engineering (CE) items and performed the project management on the construction phase. Efficiency of cost reduction and site control is maximized by using a collaborative system.

There are quite a number of business processes in the urban regeneration project. Managers and participants who involved in the project make and use information for the best way to perform in the particular business process. The information can be also reused and produced for data at the next stage. Accordingly, the information sometimes goes out of existence and work data up into new information when the urban regeneration project has been accomplished. But in that case some of changes happen occasionally, the business for urban regeneration has suffered a loss of profit and time as result of confusions about decisions and inappropriate action. For that reason, the information should be analyzed to achieve its aim at the business process under the influence of changes. Then, even though detail processes and management method change, the Core Information, which are important factors for accomplishing the project, help that the project can be operated to solve the problem about confusion and loss of the business. In conclusion, the Core Information is main effective factors for successful urban regeneration projects on the change management. The purpose of this study is to research the information according to the Information-flow and changes, and to find out the influence factors and the Core Information to manage efficiently at the process of urban regeneration projects.

A robust asset management methodology is essential for effective decision-making of maintenance, repair and rehabilitation of a bridge network. It can be achieved by a computer-based bridge management system (BMS). Successful BMS development requires a reliable bridge deterioration model, which is the most crucial component in a BMS, and an optimal management philosophy. The maintenance optimization methodology proposed in this paper is developed for a small bridge network with limited structural condition rating records. . The methodology is organized in three major components: (1) bridge health index (BHI); (2) maintenance and budget optimization; and (3) reliable Artificial Intelligence (AI) based bridge deterioration model. The outcomes of the paper will help to identify BMS implementation problems and to provide appropriate solutions for managing small bridge networks.

According to the labor related data from Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency, accident victims of construction industry are increasing 6% annually since 2006. The major reason why the rate of accidents increases in Korea is that lots of labor working with another trades works simultaneously in various type of works. This study analyzes the current accident status in view of the type of building, type of works, and project size for the latest 3 years (2007~2009). As a result, 'single family & semi-detached houses' has the largest number of accidents among buildings. In addition, 'finishing work' shows the highest number in terms of work type. For the size, accidents occurred much for 'less than 300 million'. The results of this study can be used to focus on managing the highly hazardous area where the construction accidents mostly occur; therefore, it is anticipated to contribute to improve efficiency of safety management.

The importance of project performance management as an alternative for solving problems is rising, which are followed by the difficulties of managing construction project in the construction industry. This research classifies and applies the potential improvement made by the construction practitioners. In order to apply influential factors for success on the construction project, the research identifies the relationship between the factors and performance management practices. In addition, in order to predict the results reflecting the project characteristics which are un-improvable by the construction managers in the initial stage of construction, the effect of project characteristics to the identified management practices have been drawn by performance area. Finally, in order to improve the predicted performance, this research provides a framework in setting valid best practices according to the performance areas through a statistical analysis between the best practices and project characteristics through the industry survey.

Delays in completing construction projects have significant financial and social impact to all parties involved in the construction process and in particular in developing countries. This is very evident in most construction projects in Libya and in both public and private sectors. The research study was initiated by Libyan Government and the main aim of the project is to develop a new strategy in reducing the impact of delay factors. In order to achieve this, a number of objectives have been set-to conduct a comprehensive literature survey, to conduct a comparative study of the delay factors in project completion in both Libya and UK using semi structured questionnaire and finally, to identify and analyse the causes of delay and ranked them using frequency of occurrence and severity. The critical causes of delay for construction projects were quite different between Libya and UK. For the former, the most critical causes of delay in Libyan construction industry were low skills of manpower, changes in the scope of the project, slowness in giving instruction and poor qualification of consultant, while for the latter they were financial problems, bad weather conditions on the job site and change in the scope of project. Statistical experiments including Paired Samples T-Test, was run to test the significance of the survey data in both countries Libya and UK. The statistical results confirmed the collected data from the survey were significant.

Health and safety in the construction industry continue to fall behind many industries despite much effort to improve the status. A considerable amount of research has been conducted to try and contribute to addressing the problem of health and safety (H&S) in the construction industry. A number of studies have looked at the role of various construction project stakeholders and their contribution to H&S. However there is no clear identification of the extent to which various stakeholders could contribute and therefore influence the outcome of H&S on construction projects. In view of the above, the current Delphi study went a little bit further and sought to establish the impact significance of construction clients and designers on H&S. This paper will present findings from the study which is the impact significance of clients and designers on H&S consideration throughout the project life cycle.

Retentions are generally considered to be intended to act as a powerful tool to incentivize contractors/subcontractors to remedy defective work in cases of non-performance. This study attempts to establish the extent to which retentions can be used for this purpose by investigating case law connected with insurance and defective work. One of the significant questions is whether retentions are sufficient to deal with construction defects or value of retentions in the rectification of defects is illusory. The cost to repair a defect may vary depending on a number of components including type, cause, magnitude and the construction stage at which the defect occurs. It is expected that a review of existing cases on defective workmanship will provide an insight on the issues and whether retentions are effective in their intended function. In order to establish their functionality, the study described in this paper investigated 6 construction insurance cases to identify the critical issues and the causes of dispute. It was found that the nature and the cause of defects were different in each case. It was also established that certain defect types not covered by insurance may be covered by retentions - potentially one of the key uses of a retention strategy. It is expected that the findings will assist in forming a view on the quantum of money that may be required paving the way for a first time understanding on a rational basis for setting up retention regime.

Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) techniques have been developed to provide a means for evaluating occupant responses to changes in an environment and linking this response to physical measures of that environment. POE has been used to systematically evaluate the performance of buildings after they have been built and occupied for some time. This paper present findings on factors (social and physical), which influences housing residential satisfaction of a sample of occupants in four different government Housing Subsidy locations in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. Descriptive statistics were carried out on the data obtained through the use of occupant survey. Findings emanating from the survey revealed that the respondents were satisfied with their overall housing situation, but had complaints about certain aspects of the housing unit. However, the respondents felt that most of their housing needs were not being met. Also, a comparison is also made of the perceived factors of dissatisfaction amongst the housing subsidy occupants. It is recommended that a wider systematic coverage of the subject through investigation and diagnostic POE and occupants need assessment should be carried in housing subsidy schemes in South Africa.

Developments in the teaching of the National Diploma in Building students should be geared towards meeting the needs of the construction industry in South Africa. These needs are usually in the form of skills and knowledge required to resolve thorny issues encountered in practice. The lack of capacity in the construction industry needs to be addressed from the basis of ensuring that the education system caters for both mature entry and matriculation entry students. The paper looks at a comparison in performance between mature entry and matriculation (just finish High School) entry students focusing on the National Diploma in Building students at the University of Johannesburg. The paper will make a comparison between those students who work first before enrolling for their first year National Diploma in Building and those who are directly from high school. Cooperative education involves training and systematically developing students through the acquisition of the requisite skills, attitudes, values and knowledge required to adequately perform in their chosen careers. The paper describes the problems and experiences that have been encountered by both mature and matriculation entry students in their three years of study which affects their performance. The paper will then look at the value of prior experience in enabling students to finish their National Diploma in Building within a three year period. The paper closes with some recommendations for the future.

Construction works of civil infrastructure projects generate a considerable amount of carbon emissions by utilizing a set of energy-intensive equipment and causing traffic congestion. However, the voluntary efforts of the contractor to mitigate these emissions are at an early stage. To address this issue, this paper explores the opportunities to take carbon emissions that would be caused from construction works into consideration in contracting methods and procedures. The opportunities for reducing carbon emissions from construction activities themselves are examined under the framework of Performance Contracting for Construction (PCfC), and carbon emissions from traffic congestion are attempted to be incorporated into the Road User Cost (RUC) calculation. This paper also identifies and discusses major challenges that must be confronted when considering the mitigation of these emissions in contracting methods and procedures.