Jesper Kranker Larsen

Factors Affecting Schedule Delay, Cost Overrun, and Quality Level in Public Construction Projects

AbstractAs a result of the loss of financial resources and the need to optimize projects, academics, politicians, and the construction industry have become increasingly aware of the challenges presented by the frequent time and cost overruns and reduced quality of construction projects. The purpose of this study was to analyze the factors that project managers experience as having the greatest effect on time, cost, and quality, and to discover whether the effects of these factors are significantly different from each other. A questionnaire with 26 factors identified from interviews was sent to the full population of publicly employed project managers. Factors were ranked using the relative importance index and tested for significant differences using Friedman’s test. Wilcoxon’s test was used in a post-hoc analysis. From the findings it was determined that the most influential factor for time is unsettled or lack of project funding; for cost, errors or omissions in consultant material; and for quality, err...

Identifying the key process factors affecting project performance

Purpose A construction project traditionally involves a variety of participants. Owners, consultants, and contractors all have diverse opinions and interests, but they all seek to ensure project success. Success is habitually measured as performance output regarding cost, time, and quality. Despite previous research mapping the success and failure factors, construction managers seem to have difficulty in attaining success. To provide clearer guidance on how to fulfill success criteria, the purpose of this paper is to identify the underlying factors that affect performance and thus project success in construction processes. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey based on a literature review provided 25 key process factors divided into five key categories. Based on the responses from commonly involved construction parties, the factors were ranked and tested for significant differences between the parties. Findings The top five most important process factors were found to relate to the sharing of knowledge and communication. Moreover, testing the ranking for significant differences between owners, consultants, and contractors revealed five differences. The differences related to the interpretation and importance of trust, shared objectives, project coordination, and alternative forms of coordination. Originality/value All respondents identify improved knowledge sharing and communication as the key to improved cost, time, and quality performance and are therefore the areas where construction managers need to focus their resources. Thus, improved experience sharing and communication will increase the likelihood of project success, through improving competences, commitment, and coordination.

Productivity, Challenges, and Applying Mass Customization in the Building and Construction Industry

The productivity in the Danish construction industry is significantly less compared to other sectors in Denmark. It has only doubled over the last 50 years, and based on this fact, this paper as a starting point look into the productivity of the building and construction industry to investigate trend similarities with other countries. Hereafter a literature study elaborates the challenges within the building and construction industry to understand the conditions that strain the industry in improving productivity.

The Project Management Process of Planning and Budgeting in Public Construction Projects

Budgeting and scheduling are central elements in all projects through diverse estimates that are defining the level of project outcome success. It is therefore relevant to study how large public construction agencies apply cost and time scheduling in their projects. The study objective is firstly, to comprehend the process of cost and time scheduling in the initial phases of a project. Secondly, to discover which factors stimulate budget and deadline increases in publicly funded construction projects. Applied data collection is based on semi-structured interviews with publicly agency employed project and property managers. Findings demonstrate that too early decision making disrupt the deadline and total cost in the client briefing stage. Due to lack of clear defined project scope and user requirements are too optimistic. The subsequent project stages are thus pushed by an earlier decided deadline and budget, where following complications within the project organizations were found to stimulate budget and scheduling increases.

Exploring Barriers Toward the Development of Changeable and Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems for Mass-Customized Products: An Industrial Survey

Cyber-physical reconfigurable manufacturing systems that are able to efficiently produce customized products in lot sizes of one have the potential to significantly advance mass customization. Necessary enabling technologies are fast developing; however, the fundamental enabling principles of changeability and reconfigurability are still far from being reality in industry. Therefore, this paper explores organizational prerequisites and barriers for the development of changeability and reconfigurability, as well as significant differences regarding their presence in various industrial settings. The findings indicate that important prerequisites are only rudimentarily developed and that knowledge regarding reconfigurable system design is limited. Additionally, a long-term view on investments in production capacity and a strong coordination between production and product development were identified as prerequisites which existence are contingent on the industrial setting. The findings provide valuable insight into how to support an industrial transition toward changeability, in order to create the foundation for smart mass customization manufacturing.

Critical enablers of changeable and reconfigurable manufacturing and their industrial implementation

During design of reconfigurable manufacturing systems, manufacturing companies need to select and implement the right enablers of reconfigurability in accordance with the specific requirements being present in the manufacturing setting. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate enablers of reconfigurability in terms of their importance in industry, current level of implementation in industry, and significant differences in their implementation and criticality across different manufacturing settings.,A questionnaire survey is conducted, in order to provide generalizable empirical evidence across various industries and manufacturing types.,The findings indicate that the level of implementation of the reconfigurability enablers is rudimentary, while their criticality is perceived higher than the current level of implementation. Moreover, significant differences regarding implementation and criticality of mobility, scalability, and convertibility were found for companies with varying degrees of manual work, make-to-stock production, and varying production volume, industry type and organization size.,Main limitations of the research cover the relatively small sample size and non-random sampling method applied, primarily limited to one country, which could be increased to further extent the findings reported in this paper.,The findings indicate that the importance and implementation of reconfigurability enablers is contingent on the manufacturing setting. Thus, the research presented in this paper provides valuable knowledge in regard to aiding a paradigm shift in industry and help companies design manufacturing systems with the right reconfigurability enablers.,This paper expands research on manufacturing system design for changeability and reconfigurability, by explicitly considering these as capabilities that can be enabled in various ways for various purposes in different manufacturing contexts.

Project Management and Scheduling through National Project Management Phases in Government Construction Agencies

Effective project coordination and management of time and cost scheduling in public funded construction projects receive a considerable focus from academics, politicians, and the construction industry itself with opposing points of view. The study objective is therefore to investigate the process of time and cost scheduling during the different project stages, and their relationships between critical factors affecting project schedules. Applied data collection was based on semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey with publicly agency employed project managers and property managers. A multiple research approach was thus utilized to mix the two dataset. Findings demonstrate that project complications in the execution stage is associated to lack of project requirements and design with too optimistic project deadline and budget from the initial project stages. Moreover, a relationship was found between the presence of experienced consultants and the achievement of project success throughout the project phases as particular vital.

Streamlining Publicly Funded Construction Projects: Proactive Planning and Cost Scheduling to Reduce Critical Increases

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Analyzing Factors Affecting Time, Cost, and Quality between Diverse Public Construction Agencies

Construction projects’ overrun of deadline and budget with reduced quality of the end-product is a challenge which academics, politicians, and construction parties have become more aware of. The objective of this research is to review if factors affect public construction projects’ time, cost and quality significantly different between different public construction agencies. The study was initiated by literature review and expert interviews, which lead to identification of 26 factors. A questionnaire was afterwards sent to the full Danish population of publicly employed project managers. The principal findings demonstrate that factors affecting time, cost and quality to a large extent do not differ significantly between the studied organizations. However, a significant difference between factors impact at time, cost and quality was established in the following post-hoc analysis. The conclusion is thus consequently, that the identified factors largely affect non-significantly different between organizations.

Implementation of BIM in the Danish building Sector

The Danish building sector has now for some years worked for implementation of BIM in the whole building process. In practice, it seems with the long way from the wish of using BIM in the whole building process to what really happens on the projects and building sites. To get an idea of how long the BIM implementation has come in the sector, a contractor company at present involved in one of the biggest public construction projects in Denmark was contacted to survey some employees at the project, because such a project ought to be one where BIM is best implemented. This survey shows the building sector is implementing BIM, but there are still big challenges to solve both internally in the company and externally both in the immediate environment and distant environment.