Paul Chinowsky

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.

Project Network Interdependency Alignment: New Approach to Assessing Project Effectiveness

The engineering and construction industry has evolved to a task-centric approach to evaluating the effectiveness of projects. However, a narrow task-based view of project network logic neglects the coordination of communication and knowledge exchanges across the project organizational network. This paper departs from traditional approaches to introduce a new approach to assessing project effectiveness that focuses on alignment of actual knowledge exchanges with knowledge exchange requirements across task-organization network dyads. A new modeling approach is introduced, called Project Network Interdependency Alignment. Project Network Interdependency Alignment identifies potentially excessive or insufficient communication and knowledge exchanges that can make projects ineffective. The modeling approach is introduced and retrospectively validated by using a building renovation construction project. The case study demonstrates that the approach can provide project managers with the capacity to analyze task ...

Climate Change and Roads: A Dynamic Stressor–Response Model

Decision‐makers who are responsible for determining when and where infrastructure should be developed and/or enhanced are facing a new challenge with the emerging topic of climate change. The paper introduces a stressor–response methodology where engineering‐based models are used as a basis to estimate the impact of individual climate stressors on road infrastructure in Mozambique. Through these models, stressor–response functions are introduced that quantify the cost impact of a specific stressor based on the intensity of the stressor and the type of infrastructure it is affecting. Utilizing four climate projection scenarios, the paper details how climate change response decisions may cost the Mozambican government in terms of maintenance costs and long‐term roadstock inventory reduction. Through this approach the paper details how a 14% reduction in inventory loss can be achieved through the adoption of a proactive, design standard evolution approach to climate change.

Networks in engineering: an emerging approach to project organization studies

The field of social science has introduced a number of qualitative and quantitative approaches that have been adopted in the engineering project organization research domain. One such approach that is receiving increasing attention is social network analysis (SNA). Introduced in the 1930s and refined in multiple domains since the introduction, SNA has become a fundamental tool for social scientists over the past eight decades. Recently, engineering project organization researchers have begun to explore the application of this tool within the engineering project domain. This paper introduces both the historical development of SNA within the social science community and the recent adoption of this approach within the engineering community. The paper traces the recent trend in papers published by the engineering community to illustrate the increasing attention paid to SNA by researchers and the evolution of its use. This background is used to propose several paths forward for future researchers to expand and...

Climate Change, Growth and Infrastructure Investment: The Case of Mozambique

Climate change may damage road infrastructure, to the potential detriment of economic growth, particularly in developing countries. To quantitatively assess climate changes consequences, we incorporate a climate–infrastructure model based on stressor–response relationships directly into a recursive dynamic economy‐wide model to estimate and compare road damages with other climate change impact channels. We apply this framework to Mozambique and simulate four future climate scenarios. Our results indicate that climate change through 2050 is likely to place a drag on economic growth and development prospects. The economic implications of climate change appear to become more pronounced from about 2030. Nevertheless, the implications are not so strong as to drastically diminish development prospects. Our findings suggest that impact assessments should include damages to long‐run assets, such as road infrastructure, imposed by climate change.

Climate change: comparative impact on developing and developed countries

Government organizations are responsible for strategic decisions regarding the economic development of individual countries and regional areas. This decision-making process is influenced by the certainty of the information presented to government officials. One area where this decision-making influence is challenging government officials is in climate-based events. The past decade has witnessed a significant rise in the number of climate events, as well as the number of people affected by climate events. Far from being under control, evidence and long-term projections suggest that these events are climate-based rather than weather-based. In these projections, climate change is a global issue with potential impacts for every country. However, the relative impact of these events will be far different in the developed and developing worlds. As detailed in this paper, the authors examined this disparity through an analysis of 10 countries with varying income levels to determine the relative impact of climate ...

Safety risk interactions among highway construction work tasks

Recent research has produced frameworks for integrating safety risk data into project schedules, visual models and other construction planning tools. Unfortunately, only a few studies have attempted to quantify base‐level safety risk for construction tasks and no study has attempted to quantify the degree to which spatial and temporal interactions among tasks contribute to the potential for injury. A research study was performed to quantify the impact that pair‐wise spatial and temporal interactions have on the base‐level risk of 25 common highway construction work tasks in the United States. Six hundred risk interactions were quantified by obtaining and aggregating over 23 500 individual ratings from certified experts using the Delphi method. The results indicate that incompatible tasks may increase the base‐level risk up to 60%. The most incompatible highway construction tasks are: (1) installing curbs and gutters and installing rigid pavement; and (2) construction zone traffic control and installing rigid pavement. Additionally, watering and dust palliatives and pavement marking is the one compatible task pair and there are 45 neutral task pairs. The resulting database and analysis have the potential to increase the efficacy of existing frameworks for integration of safety risk data with project planning tools.

Infrastructure and climate change: a study of impacts and adaptations in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia

The African Development Bank has called for

A tool for enhancing innovation in construction organizations

40 Billion USD per year over the coming decades to be provided to African countries to address development issues directly related to climate change. The current study addresses a key component of these issues, the effect of climate change on the road infrastructure of Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia. The study incorporates a stressor-response approach to estimate the effects of projected precipitation, temperature, and flooding changes on the paved and unpaved road infrastructure of these countries. The paper highlights the result of running 425 climate scenarios for each road type and policy option from 2010 to 2050. Based on this broad analysis, it is estimated that the three southern African countries are facing a potential

Estimated effects of climate change on flood vulnerability of U.S. bridges

596 million price tag based on median climate scenarios to maintain and repair roads as a result of damages directly related to temperature and precipitation changes from potential climate change through 2050. The challenge for policy makers is to determine the potential risk that a country is facing based on the uncertainties associated with the multiple aspects of climate change modeling.