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Incorporating Machine Learning into a Data Warehouse for Real-Time Construction Projects Benchmarking

  • Yin, Zhe;DeGezelle, Deborah;Hirota, Kazuma;Choi, Jiyong
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
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    • 2022.06a
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    • pp.831-838
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    • 2022
  • Machine Learning is a process of using computer algorithms to extract information from raw data to solve complex problems in a data-rich environment. It has been used in the construction industry by both academics and practitioners for multiple applications to improve the construction process. The Construction Industry Institute, a leading construction research organization has twenty-five years of experience in benchmarking capital projects in the industry. The organization is at an advantage to develop useful machine learning applications because it possesses enormous real construction data. Its benchmarking programs have been actively used by owner and contractor companies today to assess their capital projects' performance. A credible benchmarking program requires statistically valid data without subjective interference in the program administration. In developing the next-generation benchmarking program, the Data Warehouse, the organization aims to use machine learning algorithms to minimize human effort and to enable rapid data ingestion from diverse sources with data validity and reliability. This research effort uses a focus group comprised of practitioners from the construction industry and data scientists from a variety of disciplines. The group collaborated to identify the machine learning requirements and potential applications in the program. Technical and domain experts worked to select appropriate algorithms to support the business objectives. This paper presents initial steps in a chain of what is expected to be numerous learning algorithms to support high-performance computing, a fully automated performance benchmarking system.

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A Study on the Status of Defect of Landscape Trees Its Improvement Plan at the Apartment Complex (공동주거단지 조경식재공사의 하자실태와 개선방안 연구)

  • Kim, Y.H.;Kwon, Y.H.
    • Journal of Practical Agriculture & Fisheries Research
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.101-111
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    • 2008
  • As the quality of life improves, people want to live in more pleasant environment with beautiful trees, clean air and water. They are keenly interested in environmental issues as well as living environment of apartment which is a trademark of modern life. With this situation, the function and roles of landscaping trees have been recognized as a critical factor to improve living environment. As people have asked for more demands on those trees, it has raised more issues on the defect of trees and is required the solution to those issues. So, the purpose of this study was to survey the reasons of defects and find out those solutions. The data on defects in 1990s was referenced to the reports issued by SH Corporation in 1994 and 1997. The data on defects in 2000s are collected from March, 2006 to May 2006 based on the survey for apartments already constructed by Korea Housing Corporation. The results of the survey were shown that, in the year of 1994, landscaping trees causing high rate of defects were Acer buergerianum (92%), Pinus densiflora(85.7%), Celtis sinensis(80%), Cydonia sinensis(75%) and Diospyros kaki(66.6%), and in the year of 1997, landscaping trees causing high rate of defect were Ziziphus jujuba(100%), Cornus alba(65.2%), Diospyros kaki(60%), Thuja occidentalis(60%), and Metasequoia glyptostroboides(42%). And, in the year of 2006, landscaping trees causing high rate of defect were Sophora japonica(100%), Taxus cuspidata(80%), Magnoila quinquepeta (75%), Acer palmatum(62.5%) and Ginkgo biloba(50%). Because the reasons of defects were various according to the conditions including the climate, location, time and landscaping trees carried into the work area, we present the problems and solutions to those defects. Since the landscaping trees are living creatures, the factors of defects were various and complicated according to the site condition. So, in the period of warranty, contractor should designate the tree manger who can recognize the situation and take suitable action within timely manner.

A Study on Multilayer Sub-contracting in Construction Industry of Hong Kong

  • Cheng, T.F.;Lam, H.C.;Leung, K.L.;Liu, W.T.;Zayed, Tarek;Sun, Yi
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
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    • 2020.12a
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    • pp.23-29
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    • 2020
  • Multilayer sub-contracting is a significant practice among the world, including Hong Kong. When a principal contractor secured a project from a developer, the specific jobs will usually be breaking down and sub-contractors with the lowest bid [1]. The adoption of multilayer sub-contracting has been a controversy issue which is considered as a two-side blade. While certain studies have been carried out to examine both the contributions, damages and improvements for multi-layer subcontracting, the construction industry and researchers are still waiting for a solid measure to enhance the system. Hence, this research attempts to study the advantages, disadvantages, conducts a comparison between single and multilayer sub-contracting and measures of current Hong Kong construction industry based on literature review, questionnaire and in-depth interviews. To achieve the objectives, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and total weighted score methods are adopted to examine and rank the criterion. The findings of this study provide a good basis for understanding the major reasons and problems caused by the adoption of multilayer sub-contracting. Besides, the identified safety perspective explores a new perspective regarding to issues of multi-layer subcontracting, which will serve as a solid foundation for further research to enhance safety performance. Finally, the findings of measurements towards improvement of multilayer sub-contracting will also provide a solidsolution for construction industry.

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COMPENSATION STRUCTURE AND CONTINGENCY ALLOCATION IN INTEGRATED PROJECT DELIVERY SYSTEMS

  • Mei Liu;F. H. (Bud) Griffis;Andrew Bates
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
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    • 2013.01a
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    • pp.338-343
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    • 2013
  • Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) as a delivery method fully capitalizes on an integrated project team that takes advantage of the knowledge of all team members to maximize project outcomes. IPD is currently the highest form of collaboration available because all three core project stakeholders, owner, designer and contractor, are aligned to the same purpose. Compared with traditional project delivery approaches such as Design-Bid-Build (DBB), Design-Build (DB), and CM at-Risk, IPD is distinguished in that it eliminates the adversarial nature of the business by encouraging transparency, open communication, honesty and collaboration among all project stakeholders. The team appropriately shares the project risk and reward. Sharing reward is easy, while it is hard to fairly share a failure. So the compensation structure and the contingency in IPD are very different from those in traditional delivery methods and they are expected to encourage motivation, inspiration and creativity of all project stakeholders to achieve project success. This paper investigates the compensation structure in IPD and provides a method to determine the proper level of contingency allocation to reduce the risk of cost overrun. It also proposes a method in which contingency could be used as a functional monetary incentive when established to produce the desired level of collaboration in IPD. Based on the compensation structure scenario discovered, a probabilistic contingency calculation model was created by evaluating the random nature of changes and various risk drivers. The model can be used by the IPD team to forecast the probability of the cost overrun and equip the IPD team with confidence to really enjoy the benefits of collaborative team work.

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Research on RAM-C-based Cost Estimation Methods for the Supply of Military Depot Maintenance PBL Project (군직 창정비 수리부속 보급 PBL 사업을 위한 RAM-C 기반 비용 예측 방안 연구)

  • Junho Park;Chie Hoon Song
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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    • v.26 no.5
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    • pp.855-866
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    • 2023
  • With the rapid advancement and sophistication of defense weapon systems, the government, military, and the defense industry have conducted various innovative attempts to improve the efficiency of post-logistics support(PLS). The Ministry of Defense has mandated RAM-C(Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability-Cost) analysis as a requirement according to revised Total Life Cycle System Management Code of Practice in May 2022. Especially, for the project budget forecast of new PBL(Performance Based Logistics) business contacts, RAM-C is recognized as an obligatory factor. However, relevant entities have not officially provided guidelines or manuals for RAM-C analysis, and each defense contractor conducts RAM-C analysis with different standards and methods to win PBL-related business contract. Hence, this study aims to contribute to the generalization of the analysis procedure by presenting a cost analysis case based on RAM-C for the supply of military depot maintenance PBL project. This study presents formulas and procedures to determine requirements of military depot maintenance PBL project for repair parts supply. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to find the optimal cost/utilization ratio. During the process, a correlation was found between supply delay and total cost of ownership as well as between cost variability and utilization rate. The analysis results are expected to provide an important basis for the conceptualization of the cost analysis for the supply of military depot maintenance PBL project and are capable of proposing the optimal utilization rate in relation to cost.

Mental health symptoms among dependent contractors in Korea: a cross-sectional study based on the Fifth Korean Working Condition Survey

  • Seong-Uk Baek;Sung-Shil Lim;Sehyun Yun;Won-Tae Lee;Min-Seok Kim;Jin-Ha Yoon;Jong-Uk Won
    • Annals of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
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    • v.34
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    • pp.1.1-1.13
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    • 2022
  • Background: Recently, there has been a call to improve the holistic welfare of dependent contractors (DCs). Thus, our study examined the relationship between DCs and mental health symptoms and how this relationship was modified by age, sex, and income status of workers. Methods: A total of 27,980 workers from the Fifth Korean Working Conditions Survey are included in our study. The participants who reported having depression or anxiety over the last 12 months are defined those who had mental health symptoms. We performed exact matching for age group and sex, followed by conditional logistic regression with survey weights. Finally, stratified analyses by age, sex and income level were conducted. Results: DCs were found to be at increased risk of depression/anxiety compared to other workers. The odds ratio (OR) is 1.52 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.06-2.17). In the stratified analyses, vulnerable groups were middle-aged (OR [95% CI]: 1.68 [1.10-2.54]), female (OR [95% CI]: 1.85 [1.20-2.84]), and low-income (OR [95% CI]: 3.18 [1.77-5.73]) workers. Conclusions: Our study's results reinforce those of other studies that show that DCs are at greater risk of experiencing mental health issues than other workers and that and this risk is greater for middle-aged, female, and low-income workers. These results suggest that appropriate policy efforts should be made to improve the psychological well-being of DCs.

A Study on How to Cope with the Abusive Call on On-demand Bonds (독립적 보증과 그 부당한 청구에 대한 대응방안 연구)

  • KIM, Seung-Hyeon
    • THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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    • v.69
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    • pp.261-301
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    • 2016
  • Recently the abusive calls on on-demand bonds have been a critical issue among many engineering and construction companies in Korea. On-demand bond is referred to as an independent guarantee in the sense that the guarantee is independent from its underlying contract although it was issued based on such underlying contract. For this reason, the issuing bank is not required to and/or entitled to look into whether there really is a breach of underlying contract in relation to the call on demand-bonds. Due to this kind of principle of independence, the applicant has to run the risk of the on demand bond being called by the beneficiary without due grounds. Only where the call proves to be fraudulent or abusive in a very clear way, the issuing bank would not be obligated to pay the bond proceeds for the call on on-demand bonds. In order to prevent the issuing bank from paying the proceeds under the on-demand bond, the applicant usually files with its competent court an application for injunction prohibiting the beneficiary from calling against the issuing bank. However, it is in practice difficult for the applicant to prove the beneficiary's call on the bond to be fraudulent since the courts in almost all the jurisdictions of advanced countries require very strict and objective evidences such as the documents which were signed by the owner (beneficiary) or any other third party like the engineer. There is another way of preventing the beneficiary from calling on the bond, which is often utilized especially in the United Kingdom or Western European countries such as Germany. Based upon the underlying contract, the contractor which is at the same time the applicant of on-demand bond requests the court to order the owner (the beneficiary) not to call on the bond. In this case, there apparently seems to be no reason why the court should apply the strict fraud rule to determine whether to grant an injunction in that the underlying legal relationship was created based on a construction contract rather than a bond. However, in most jurisdictions except for United Kingdom and Singapore, the court also applies the strict fraud rule on the ground that the parties promised to make the on-demand bond issued under the construction contract. This kind of injunction is highly unlikely to be utilized on the international level because it is very difficult in normal situations to establish the international jurisdiction towards the beneficiary which will be usually located outside the jurisdiction of the relevant court. This kind of injunction ordering the owner not to call on the bond can be rendered by the arbitrator as well even though the arbitrator has no coercive power for the owner to follow it. Normally there would be no arbitral tribunal existing at the time of the bond being called. In this case, the emergency arbitrator which most of the international arbitration rules such as ICC, LCIA and SIAC, etc. adopt can be utilized. Finally, the contractor can block the issuing bank from paying the bond proceeds by way of a provisional attachment in case where it also has rights to claim some unpaid interim payments or damages. This is the preservative measure under civil law system, which the lawyers from common law system are not familiar with. As explained in this article, it is very difficult to block the issuing bank from paying in response to the bond call by the beneficiary even if the call has no valid ground under the underlying construction contract. Therefore, it is necessary for the applicants who are normally engineering and construction companies to be prudent to make on-demand bonds issued. They need to take into account the creditability of the project owner as well as trustworthiness of the judiciary system of the country where the owner is domiciled.

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Unbilled Revenue and Analysts' Earnings Forecasts (진행기준 수익인식 방법과 재무분석가 이익예측 - 미청구공사 계정을 중심으로 -)

  • Lee, Bo-Mi;Park, Bo-Young
    • Management & Information Systems Review
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    • v.36 no.3
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    • pp.151-165
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    • 2017
  • This study investigates the effect of revenue recognition by percentage of completion method on financial analysts' earnings forecasting information in order industry. Specifically, we examines how the analysts' earnings forecast errors and biases differ according to whether or not to report the unbilled revenue account balance and the level of unbilled revenue account balance. The sample consists of 453 firm-years listed in Korea Stock Exchange during the period from 2010 to 2014 since the information on unbilled revenue accounts can be obtained after the adoption of K-IFRS. The results are as follows. First, we find that the firms with unbilled revenue account balances have lower analysts' earnings forecast accuracy than the firms who do not report unbilled revue account balances. In addition, we find that the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts decreases as the amount of unbilled revenue increases. Unbilled revenue account balances occur when the revenue recognition of the contractor is faster than the client. There is a possibility that managerial discretionary judgment and estimation may intervene when the contractor calculates the progress rate. The difference between the actual progress of the construction and the progress recognized by the company lowers the predictive value of financial statements. Our results suggest that the analysts' earnings forecasts may be more difficult for the firms that report unbilled revenue balances as applying the revenue recognition method based on the progress criteria. Second, we find that the firms reporting unbilled revenue account balances tend to have higher the optimistic biases in analysts' earnings forecast than the firms who do not report unbilled revenue account balances. And we find that the analysts' earnings forecast biases are increases as the amount of unbilled revenue increases. This study suggests an effort to reduce the arbitrary adjustment and estimation in the measurement of the progress as well as the introduction of the progress measurement method which can reflect the actual progress. Investors are encouraged to invest and analyze the characteristics of the order-based industry accounting standards. In addition, the results of this study empower the accounting transparency enhancement plan for order industry proposed by the policy authorities.

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Problems Analysis and Revitalization Plan of Urban Development Projects by the Land Readjustment Method (환지방식에 의한 도시개발사업의 문제분석 및 활성화대책)

  • Kim, Hyoung-Soo;Lee, Young-Dai;Lee, Jun-Yong
    • Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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    • v.10 no.5
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    • pp.37-46
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    • 2009
  • This research will focus on the public agencies, designers, supervisors, building cooperation, and contractor who involved in urban development plan. By understanding the complexity and the priorities in urban development process, all problems of the urban development projects can be solved or improved. These priorities are specified using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process). A questionnaire survey is employed to identify the problems of urban development process and the methods of revitalizing urban in this research. Through the survey, 35 issues are drawn out. Factor analysis technique is applied to extract the underlying interrelationships possibly existing. Using latent root criterion and varimax rotation method, 9 factors are extracted(by using 34 issues after deleting 1 issue less than 0.4 of factor loading) These 9 factors named as PIF (Problem Improvement Factor) consist of integration estimation (PIF1), cooperation operation capability (PIF2), contractor corporation capability (PIF3), capital for infrastructure investment (PIF4), misunderstanding of effective land use (PIF5), financial capability (PIF6), obscure goal of project (PIF7), shortage of cooperation expertise (PIFS), administrative procedures (PIF9). PIF 6 is the most important factor and PIF 1 is the most widely effective factor to succeed urban land development projects. It is recognized that administrative office is most responsible for PIF1 cooperation is most responsible for PIF2, 7, 8 and 9; contractors is most responsible for PIF3 and PIF6; administrative agencies is most responsible for PIF4; cooperation and consultants are responsible for PIF5. From findings in this study, some suggestions are proposed for the revitalization methods of urban development projects through the land readjustment method.

Development of a Business Model for Korean Insurance Companies with the Analysis of Fiduciary Relationship Persistency Rate (신뢰관계 유지율 분석을 통한 보험회사의 비즈니스 모델 개발)

  • 최인수;홍복안
    • Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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    • v.6 no.4
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    • pp.188-205
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    • 2001
  • Insurer's duty of declaration is based on reciprocity of principle of the highest good, and recently it is widely recognized in the British and American insurance circles. The conception of fiduciary relationship is no longer equity or the legal theory which is only confined to the nations with Anglo-American laws. Therefore, recognizing the fiduciary relationship as the essence of insurance contract, which is more closely related to public interest than any other fields. will serve an efficient measure to seek fair and reasonable relationship with contractor, and provide legal foundation which permits contractor to bring an action for damage against violation of insurer's duty of declaration. In the future, only when the fiduciary relationship is approved as the essence of insurance contract, the business performance and quality of insurance industry is expected to increase. Therefore, to keep well this fiduciary relationship, or increase the fiduciary relationship persistency rates seems to be the bottom line in the insurance industry. In this paper, we developed a fiduciary relationship maintenance ratio based on comparison by case, which is represented with usually maintained contract months to paid months, based on each contract of the basis point. In this paper we have developed a new business model seeking the maximum profit with low cost and high efficiency, management policy of putting its priority on its substantiality, as an improvement measure to break away from the vicious circle of high cost and low efficiency, and management policy of putting its priority on its external growth(expansion of market share).

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