JeongWook Son

Application of agent-based modeling and simulation to understanding complex management problems in CEM research

AbstractAs construction projects have become larger and more complex, they develop different features than smaller or traditional projects, which characterize them as complex systems. Still, Construction Engineering and Management (CEM) researchers have mostly relied on traditional approaches to investigate complex management problems, which might produce misleading results. This paper introduces Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation (ABMS) as a research method, and addresses how it could be applied to CEM research. With an illustrative example of the application of ABMS to CEM research, the theoretical background as well as the design, development, and test processes of ABMS are presented. We then made a recommendation on the promising research subjects in CEM area to which ABMS could be suitably applied.

Embeddedness and collaborative venture networks among Korean construction firms for overseas construction projects

AbstractFinding competent collaborators while executing construction projects overseas is of paramount importance for project success. The partner choice and project performance cannot be understood only from an economic viewpoint because it is constrained by the firms’ embeddedness in social relations. Based on this premise, this paper provides not only a theoretical explanation of the impact of structural and relational embeddedness on firms’ economic behaviour and outcomes, but also empirical evidence by analysing the collaborative process among Korean construction firms working overseas during the past 18 years. Three conclusions are drawn. First, the inter-firm network, at least asymptotically, has scale-free network properties with variance. Second, the network retained endogamic characteristics in that a great majority of smaller firms had worked with only one large firm, forming strong subgroups. Last, there is a plausible evidence of the impact of both structural embeddedness and relational embed...

A Comparative Study on the Life Cycle Cost of Wall Type Apartment and Beam-Column Structural Apartment

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) promote long-life housing to reduce social costs generated by poorly considered rebuilding and extend the life-span of housing. Long-life housing has advantages of durability, floor plan variability, efficient maintenance and ease of remodeling because it is a beam-column structure building. However, long-life housing requires somewhat higher initial construction cost than wall type apartments. It makes increase of long-life housing more difficult. In this study, we compare between wall-type apartment and beam-column structure apartment from Life-Cycle Cost`s viewpoint. As a result of the study, long-life housing incurs 18% higher initial cost than wall type apartment, but is 7% more economical than wall type apartment in terms of Life Cycle Cost. Therefore, it is shown that long-life housing could be a beneficial alternative to traditional wall type apartments.

Understanding Collaborative Working Processes within Construction Project Teams Using Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation

Collaborative processes among team members including communication, coordination, and information-handling processes either during pre-construction or project execution are required in order to accomplish the objectives of construction projects. However, current construction management practice does not explicitly take the effect of organizational aspects on project performance into account. This paper introduces a method to understand collaborative processes in an explicit and systematic fashion. An agent-based simulation of collaborative working processes within construction project teams was designed from game theory perspective and implemented. The simulation produced both individual behavior and network dynamics. Individuals represented as agents made efforts to improve performance by communication and coordinating with other members, and overall team network was emerged as a result of interactions among members. Interestingly, it was found that the tendency of forming cohesive subgroups increased when sustaining relations with between-group partners incurs higher cost. The primary contribution of this paper is that it presented an explicit approach to examining collaborative working processes in construction project teams and it extended existing computational organization and network studies by integrating individual behavior models and network models. Keyword : Construction Management, Project Organizations, Collaboration, Computer Simulation

Implementing Activity-based LCA Model for Carbon Dioxide Emission Analysis and Allocation of Environment Cost

As worldwide efforts to reduce global warming gases, the construction Industry is endeavoring to diminish carbon dioxides emissions. Especially, by introducing the LCA methodology to the industry, A variety of related studies to measure the emission of carbon dioxides have been conducted. However, when the conventional LCA methodology is applied to the construction projects, some limitations have been reported. To overcome the restrictions derived from the industry characteristics, this research suggested the Activity-based LCA model by applying the Activity-based Costing (ABC), which breaks down the whole life cycles into more detailed stages. By implementing the newly developed model, forecasting accuracy of emission was elevated, and the critical control points on carbon dioxides were established. Through the case study of aluminium curtain-wall system, this research verified the usefulness of the Activity-based LCA.

Pre-Bid Clarification for Construction Project Risk Identification Using Unstructured Text Data Analysis

This paper analysed construction bidding information in order to define risk factors that can be appeared in the bid documents of construction projects. For this purpose, text analysis was conducted on biddersO inquiry information (Pre-bid RFI), which inquires uncertain information and omissions in the bid documents in order for pre-bid clarification. From the results of the analysis, what types of risk factors exist in the bid documents and what parts of the bid documents can be pre-reviewed to proactively respond to the uncertain ownerOs requirements. The results are expected to be used as important information for pre-bid clarification of bid documents. Moreover, this study can be meaningful in that it provides a comprehensive way to grasp a large amount of 1,054 documents without analysing the contents of individual documents directly through analysis of bidding information of construction projects using text mining.

Critical Factors Influencing on the Level of Service for Proactive Maintenance in Educational Facilities

Aging educational facility shall be managed and maintained through integrated service perspectives, in consideration of functions of each facility to provide safe and comfortable environment, rather than temporarily fixing/repairing problems. For doing this, it is a must to firstly understand the limitation of highly biased performance-based maintenance practice, which is a most common type applied at present, and therefore to establish maintenance system that reflects the functions and characteristics of maintenance service that a facility was designed with. Therefore, the objective of this study is to find items that have an influence on service level recognition in order to fairly evaluate service functions of educational facilities, and subsequently to use these factors as ingredients of establishing a consistent and efficient maintenance system. Therefore this study proposed explanatory variables to measure influential factors for each major maintenance category. Then appropriate statistical verification was carried out on questionnaires that collected from a number of industry experts to test its fe asibility.

Application of Serious Games for Effective Construction Safety Training

Construction safety training has mostly relied on one-way transference of instructors` knowledge to trainees through traditional media such as textbooks and lecture slides. However, safety knowledge could be more effectively acquired in experiential situations. The authors proposed a serious game to provide a comprehensive safety training environment. Trainees who assume the roles of safety inspectors in the game explore a virtual construction site to identify potential hazards and learn from the contents of feedback created by the game as a result of trainees` input. The paper reports details of the game design and development process. The test results indicated that trainees were motivated to refresh their safety knowledge, increased their learning interests, and enjoyed the learning process. In addition, trainees showed positive attitudes towards using the game scoring as a way of evaluating their safety knowledge. The test results encouraged the continuous development of the game.