Eric Scheepbouwer

Transition in Adopting Project Delivery Method with Early Contractor Involvement

Recently asset owners have been investigating alternative delivery models for construction projects that offer improvements in value for money and project delivery time. One of these methods is the early contractor involvement (ECI) strategy. In this strategy a contractor is engaged before commencement of the construction work to give input during design. After the design, the construction work is negotiated with the contractor. Implementation of this new delivery strategy can raise issues with involved parties in the industry. To find these transitional issues, expectations and opinions were collected from practitioners from the three involved parties—owners, designers, and contractors—who had experience with ECI. The results show that all parties agreed in expecting improvements in quality and innovation and that the costs needed to adopt this system were not significant. Owners and contractors opined that the design phase could be expedited; however, the designers argued that any time savings were negated by increased collaboration and negotiation between the parties. There was also disagreement on risk allocation during construction. Contrary to the other parties, the contractors did not perceive the allocation of risk to them to be greater than with traditional procurement systems. Finally there was disagreement about whether the necessary collaborative culture was present in the construction industry for adopting “open book” costing, often practiced in ECI. It is recommended that for successful implementation of ECI, objectives in the areas of disagreement should be clarified between parties as they work through a transitional phase in adopting the ECI procurement method.

Project Management Strategies for Complex Projects: Case Study Report

Successful management of complex transportation projects requires a fundamental change in how projects are planned, developed, designed, procured, and constructed. The Strategic Highway Research Program 2 (SHRP 2) Renewal Research Project R10, Project Management Strategies for Complex Projects, is investigating strategies, tools, techniques, and methods that can be effectively used for complex project management. This report for Project R10 describes the results of Task 4 (Develop Case Studies) and a portion of Task 5 (Analyze Case Studies). Fifteen projects in the United States and three international projects were investigated through in-depth case studies to identify tools that aid project managers of complex projects to successfully deliver projects. These 18 projects represent a number of different project types, locations, project sizes, and phases of project development. The tools identified from these projects fall into two areas: project development and project execution.

U.S. Partnering Programs and International Partnering Contracts and Alliances: Comparative Analysis

The term “partnering” has many meanings in the transportation industry. Some definitions are strictly legal, others are merely descriptive titles given to a set of team-building tools used to reduce adversarial relationships on individual construction projects. As collaborative methods of transportation project delivery increase, it is important for researchers and practitioners to be able to identify the precise meaning of an operative title from the context in which it is used. This paper presents a comparative analysis of advantages and disadvantages of three collaborative partnering methods: U.S. nonbinding partnering charter, binding partnering contract, and alliance agreements used internationally. The results are from an analysis of five U.S. and international studies on partnering and relational contracting based on case studies from more than 30 U.S. and international transportation projects. The paper found that although the U.S. partnering program has documented successes, its nonbinding nature provides no recourse if projects turn sour. In comparison, the international partnering and alliance contracts have specific remedies to which an agency can turn to mitigate negative impacts if one party fails to live up to contractual responsibilities. The paper recommends that U.S. agencies consider developing project partnering charters that can be incorporated into design and construction contracts as modifications in the same manner that alliance and partnering agreements are codified for international projects.

Alliance Contracting—Evolving Alternative Project Delivery

Alliance contracting may be defined as a project delivery model where the owner(s), contractor(s), and consultant(s) work collaboratively as an integrated team and their commercial interests are aligned with actual project outcomes. The objective of this study is to identify and synthesize current effective practices that comprise the state of the practice related to the use of alliance contracts around the world and discuss the procurement procedures that have been used to successfully implement alliance contracting on typical transportation projects. The bulk of the information comes from a comprehensive literature review and 11 project case studies from Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The study finds that alliancing appears to be an excellent choice to deliver complex projects that require innovative solutions to the challenges presented in their scopes of work.

Critical success factors for post-disaster infrastructure recovery: Learning from the Canterbury (NZ) earthquake recovery

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to synthesise critical success factors (CSFs) for advancing post-disaster infrastructure recovery and underpinning recovery authorities in decision making when facing future disasters. Design/methodology/approach The seismic recovery after the Canterbury (NZ) earthquake sequence in 2010-2011 was selected as a case study for identifying CSFs for an efficient recovery of infrastructure post-disaster. A combination of research approaches, including archival study, observations and semi-structured interviews were conducted for collecting data and evidences by engaging with participants involved at various tiers in the post-disaster recovery and reconstruction. The CSFs are evaluated and analysed by tracking the decision-making process, examining resultant consequences and foreseeing onwards challenges. Findings Six salient CSFs for strengthening infrastructure recovery management after disasters are identified. Furthermore, the study shows how each of these CSFs have been incorporated into the decision-making process in support of the post-disaster recovery and what difficulties encountered in the recovery process when implementing. Practical implications The proposed CSFs provide a future reference and guidance to be drawn on by decision makers when project-managing post-disaster recovery operations. Originality/value The value of the paper is that it bridges the gap between managerial contexts and technical aspects of post-disaster recovery process in an effort to rapidly and efficiently rebuild municipal infrastructure.

Relationship Between Early Contractor Involvement and Financial Performance in the Rebuilding of Infrastructure in Christchurch, New Zealand

Alliance contracting is a partnering project or program delivery method in which all parties work collaboratively to share risks. The Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT) alliance has been set up to manage the high risk of the unknown scopes of work associated with disaster recovery projects after the 2011 earthquakes in Christ-church, New Zealand. SCIRT uses early contractor involvement (ECI) as a key measure of risk mitigation and to offer value for money. ECI provides constructability input during the design process to ensure that any issues and construction risks are identified early and taken into consideration. Because there has been considerable pressure to start the rebuilding, not all SCIRT projects have had the benefit of ECI. With the objective of quantifying the positive effect that ECI has on financial outcomes, 288 projects that were in construction or had been finished by the end of February 2014 were compared. The comparison was based on whether ECI had been used both during the design phase of a project and in the cost estimation of the project. The results clearly showed that across the alliance program there was significant improvement in cost performance and cost accuracy of reconstruction projects that received early contractor input.

Differential rutting in Canterbury New Zealand, and its relation to road camber

Abstract In Canterbury New Zealand, chip seal is the primary surface material for rural state highways. The roads are designed to accommodate various types of traffic; traffic that has grown steadily over the past decade. The growth in dairy and logging, two of New Zealand’s main exports, resulted in a large rise in milk and logging trucks. This significant increase in traffic has led to a significant amount of pavement failure due to rutting which predominantly occurs in the outside wheel path rather than the inside. This paper provides a review and analysis of LTPP data at two rural sites. Data from these sites show more rutting in the outside wheel path than the wheel path close to the crown of the road. Contributing factors observed from the literature are included in this paper and it was shown that the main contributing factor to rutting is load (traffic). Road pavements are constructed to be homogeneous but anecdotally it is known that using camber or a crown will divide the load from traffic more towards the outside wheel. Some general factors that increase the difference are the axle width, and height of the centre of mass, the camber percentage and present rutting depth. Calculations show that the difference in load on the left and right wheel can lead to quite different ESAL values compared to values calculated based on the average load. In fact, an example using Austroads shows that the ESAL value can almost double if actual wheel loads are used. It also shows that there are no other mechanisms that adequately account for this difference.

Framework for Objectively Determining Best Practices for Alternative Contracting Methods

Alternative contracting method (ACM) usage has grown to the point where the industry has sufficient experience to provide a definitive set of best practices both to promote consistency in the nation’s procurement system and to leverage the lessons learned by early ACM adopters. The barrier to achieving this goal is that there is no uniform agreement on the definition of what constitutes a best practice. Both an objective definition and a framework for identifying and analyzing ACM practices are proposed that have been found to be effective by peer-reviewed research to determine whether a given practice deserves to be termed as a best practice. The framework is based on a series of indexes that are used to rank candidate practices in order of their importance and their effectiveness. The 24 ACM practices evaluated were identified from six NCHRP Synthesis reports on ACM topics. It was found that only four of the 24 candidates met the objective criteria to be termed a best practice. These candidates were formalizing and institutionalizing agency ACM procedures, using two-step best-value award procedures, appointing an agency ACM champion, and offering stipends for unsuccessful competitors.

Positioning of travelling vehicles in rural New Zealand on chip sealed roads

Abstract The position of vehicles is different from the pavement design assumptions. This is an important finding for collecting pavement condition data and could play a significant part in the chip seal maintenance procedure. Contractors have identified that lateral wheel path distribution is a central factor in calibrating the variable transverse application of bitumen spray bar in order to minimise pavement ravelling and bleeding thereby prolonging pavement life. Currently, visual cues are used to estimate the position and width of wheel paths. However, this is problematic when no visual distress mechanisms are present. A new methodology using the Infra-Red Traffic Logger (TIRTL) was used to determine the lateral distribution of vehicles on several sites in New Zealand. The result focused on straight sections of road and the feasibility of using the methodology around a curved section. Data has been analysed and presented for several chip seal, rural state highway sections. This data could assist in improving maintenance procedures. The results show, the wheel path width is significantly narrower than anecdotal pavement design assumptions suggest. Preliminary work has been conducted on a curved section of road. Results and findings have been discussed.

Statistical Model for Estimating Restoration Time of Sewerage Pipelines after Earthquakes

AbstractA timely and effective postearthquake recovery could minimize the impacts and disruption that have arisen due to the induced physical damage to sewerage pipelines. The knowledge of the rest...