James E. Diekmann

Project Organizations as Social Networks

High-performance teams achieve outcomes that exceed the expectations of the project and often demonstrate unique or innovative approaches within a final solution. The foundation of this high performance is the ability to focus on the success of the team over individual objectives. However, the recognition of this emphasis is based on the establishment of professional trust and strong communications between the team members. The social network model of construction introduced a dual-focused approach to enhancing these elements and creating high-performance project teams. The approach emphasizes balancing both a traditional project management emphasis on efficiency of communications with a focus on the social factors that move the project team from efficient to effective. In this paper, the model is extended to present the results of four studies of organizations that are full-service engineering companies that also provide construction oversight services. The paper presents the results of these studies in terms of the social network model and the achievement of high performance in the project teams. Analytical and graphical results are presented based on social network analysis techniques to provide a multiperspective analysis of the project teams.

Making a risk-based bid decision for overseas construction projects

The globalization of international construction markets provides tremendous opportunities for contractors to expand into new foreign markets. However, entry decisions for international construction markets are very risky and more difficult than those for domestic markets, due to the wide variety of uncertainties and complexities associated with the international construction domain. This paper focuses on developing and testing a ‘risk-based go/no-go decision-making model’ for contractors who wish to expand into international construc5 tion markets. The go/no-go decision model applies the cross-impact analysis (CIA) method to assess the various uncertainties associated with international construction. This research draws significant findings regarding the benefits of this go/no-go decision model from experimental studies involving 56 participants.

Risk analysis for revenue dependent infrastructure projects

Recent trends in the construction industry indicate continued use of alternative procurement methods such as design-build, construction management, build-operate-transfer, and privatization. Increased use of these evolving methods produces higher levels of uncertainty with respect to long term performance and profitability. The uncertainties inherent in implementing new procurement methods necessitate investigation of enhanced methods of pre-project planning and analysis. This is particularly true for revenue dependent privatization projects such as toll roads. Poor initial performance of toll road projects suggests traditional methods of project analysis are inadequate. Sustaining investor and stakeholder support of privatized revenue dependent projects is dependent upon successful financial performance. Enhanced risk analysis tools provide improved information for pre-project decision making and performance outcome. One such risk analysis method is the Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo methods are especially useful in evaluating which of several uncertain quantities most significantly contributes to the overall risk of the project. This paper demonstrates a Monte Carlo risk assessment methodology for revenue dependent infrastructure projects.

Strategies for overlapping dependent design activities

Overlapping activities that are traditionally performed in a sequential manner can significantly reduce project delivery times. Overlapping, however, should be approached in a systematic manner to reduce the costs and risks. Information gathered from sector‐based case studies and from the manufacturing domain suggest a formalised framework for identifying overlapping opportunities and strategies can be successfully implemented for infrastructure projects. This framework considers activity characteristics, such as evolution of upstream information and sensitivity of downstream activities to changes in upstream information, to identify appropriate overlapping strategies. Overlapping strategies, such as early freezing of design criteria, overdesign, and early release of preliminary information, are selected based on activity characteristics. These strategies operate either by speeding up the evolution of upstream information or by reducing the sensitivity of downstream activities. By aligning overlapping strategies with activity characteristics, project managers can make better decisions on when and how much to overlap sequential activities to reduce overall project delivery time.

Knowledge-based approach to construction project control

Abstract Project-control systems are important for successful project execution. The paper describes a new approach to construction project control that combines features of existing project-control systems with aspects of knowledge-based systems and social-judgment theory. This new approach has resulted in a program called procon that screens the project database for performance deviations, attempts to diagnose the cause of the performance deviation, and, finally, forecasts the impact of the performance deviation on the project cost and schedule. The program domain includes (a) the scope of work, (b) labour productivity, (c) labour wage rates, (d) material unit prices, and (e) construction-equipment costs. The program introduces the causal approach to performance-deviation analysis, and the social-judgment theory approach for forecast analysis.

Risk analysis: lessons from artificial intelligence

Abstract Risk-analysis procedures have been available for many years. Risk-analysis procedures have been used to gauge the economic and technical hazards that are inherent in many commercial ventures. Most managers recognize the benefits of making decisions on the basis of probabilistic measures rather than single-point estimates. However, risk analyses are not yet common in project-oriented industries. One problem with present-day risk-analysis procedures is that those procedures that are simple enough for use by normal project personnel are too simplistic to capture the subtlety of risky situations. Those that are complex enough to capture the essence and subtlety of risky situations are so complex that they require an expert to operate them. Practically minded project personnel are reluctant to use procedures that appear to be too simplistic to yield useful results, and managers are equally reluctant to allocate scarce resources to the hiring of risk-analysis experts. To address this problem, one needs risk-analysis procedures that are able to model risky situations, but that hide their inherent computational complexity from the everyday user. Fortunately, new analysis tools are emerging that have the potential to allow complex risk analyses to be performed simply. These new tools, which are underpinned by decision analysis and, lately, expert-systems technology, may lead to powerful, yet simple, approaches to the representation of risky problems. The paper suggests a possible direction for the evolution of project risk-analysis procedures, and the tools that might be used to support these procedures.

Animation‐based construction schedule review

Three‐dimensional (3‐D) computer aided design (CAD) and its integration with project schedules (4‐D CAD) are promising technologies in design and construction. This paper represents a second study on the effectiveness of visualization on project planning. While the initial study investigated 2‐D, 3‐D and walk‐thru technologies’ impact on project schedule development, the subsequent study reported herein, focuses on the impact of 3‐D/4‐D visualization on project schedule review. Experimental results provide quantitative evidence of the advantages of 3‐D/4‐D representations for schedule review for construction projects.

Simulation of Overlapping Design Activities in Concurrent Engineering

Concurrent engineering is the process of reducing the total project delivery time by overlapping activities that normally occur sequentially. The benefits are a shortening of delivery time and a possible reduction in overall costs. However, there are potential risks to overlapping dependent activities. The interaction between an upstream activity and a downstream activity relies on how information evolves in the upstream activity and how sensitive the downstream activity is to that changing information. This implies that if an upstream activity is slow to evolve information and a downstream activity is highly sensitive to changing information, the risk in overlapping these activities will be higher than activities that are fast to evolve and not as sensitive to changing information. The risk can manifest in rework, or reperforming some aspect of the downstream activity because of the evolution of the upstream activity and the amount of overlapping used. This research developed computer simulation models to better understand the potential risk of rework. The simulation models allow for overlapping different types of slow- and fast-evolving upstream activities with high- and low-sensitivity downstream activities using overdesign and early release strategies and different amounts of overlapping. The overall findings show that simulations of overlapping activities yield a reliable approach to modeling concurrent engineering activities. The simulations provide information on the probability of rework based on the different combinations of evolution, sensitivity, overlapping strategy, and the percent amount of overlapping used between the upstream and downstream activity. The use of computer simulations and modeling of overlapping activities therefore allows engineers and managers to understand the potential risks and what strategies to apply when utilizing concurrent engineering on a project.

Judgemental forecasting in construction projects

Forecasting is a very important strategic task within the project control framework. Forecast activity seeks to answer one of project managements prime questions: ‘When will the the project be completed and what will it cost?’ Large variances in costs or schedules will impact the profitability, cashflow and, in extreme cases, the viability of projects. This paper discusses a new approach to forecasting within the context of project control. The paper concerns itself with the situation wherein a project manager has observed a variance from a project goal (a wage rate, for example) and the manager must now predict (i.e. forecast) the final actual wage rate for the project. Forecasting is a difficult task because one must understand the effect of past performance and the impact of future events. A good forecasting technique, therefore, needs to include both historical trend-based data and competent judgements based on construction experience and knowledge. This research was conducted to develop an alternati...

Construction scheduling using 3‐D CAD and walk‐thru

Three‐dimensional (3‐D) CAD and walk‐thru are promising technologies in design and construction. While gaining widespread acceptance in design, the use of 3‐D and walk‐thru during the construction phases of projects is evolving slowly. One significant barrier to acceptance includes lack of documented cost/benefit analysis. Experimental results reported herein provide quantitative evidence of the advantages of 3‐D CAD and walk‐thru for planning construction projects. The results provide strong evidence of the practical benefits and appropriate areas of application for 3‐D CAD and walk‐thru technology.