Xiaolong Xue

Critical Review of Collaborative Working in Construction Projects: Business Environment and Human Behaviors

The changing business environment characterized by tense competitiveness and wide global links requires construction organizations to establish effective and efficient interorganization collaborative management systems. Collaborative working (CW), as a new term and especially as a working model, is emerging for improving performance and enhancing competitiveness by responding to the changing environment in construction. This research presents the definition of CW underpinned by the principle of collaboration. Through a thorough literature review of selected papers from the well-known academic journals in construction management, the business environment and human behavior are identified as two key areas which impact the performance of CW in construction projects. Critical reviews on these areas are presented by focusing on different subcategories in each area to investigate the state of the art and trends of CW in construction projects. Some limits of research and practice on CW in construction projects are discussed and future research directions are recommended.

Towards an Agent-Based Negotiation Platform for Cooperative Decision-Making in Construction Supply Chain

Negotiation is an effective and popular decision-making and coordination behavior in inter-organizations systems, especially in construction supply chain (CSC) which is characterized with fragmentation, low efficiency and multiple partners. This research proposes a multi-agent based negotiation platform for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of cooperative decision-making in CSC adopting agent technology and regarding CSC as a typical multi-agent system. General structure of the agent based negotiation platform is designed, which includes two kinds of agent group: specialty agents and service agents. Since different members in CSC have different preferences on the decision attributes (such as cost, time, quality, safety and environment), a multi-attribute negotiation model is established by designing negotiation protocol and describing the negotiation process.

Comparative Study of Traditional and Group Decision Support-Supported Value Management Workshops

AbstractValue management (VM) participants often encounter problems of lack of active participation in addition to insufficient time and information in decision analysis. Group decision support systems (GDSS) have been proposed to overcome these problems by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of VM studies. To investigate the effect of using GDSS in VM workshops, three experimental studies together with questionnaire surveys have been conducted to compare the traditional VM and GDSS-supported workshops. The results have revealed that GDSS can help improve the performance of VM workshops in quantity of ideas, process efficiency, and participants’ satisfaction. These outcomes are valuable to the construction industry in Hong Kong, in which both the government and industry have called for wider use of VM, and yet users often encounter difficulties that are attributable to the large number of participants and short duration of the workshops.

Failure Caused by Inappropriate Construction Methods: An Expensive Lesson

AbstractConstruction method selection, implementation, and improvement (CMSII) is a crucial and difficult task for construction projects, especially for large and complex projects, which often face constraints such as complex project environment, lack of information, and uncertainties caused by new technologies. Despite its importance, few research projects have been conducted in this field, especially from both technical and management points of view. Although cases of project failure caused by inappropriate construction methods are reported from time to time, studies of the detailed causes and lessons learned are rare. This research developed a CMSII workflow model and discussed the CMSII process in a drainage project that suffered multimillion-dollar losses due to problems associated with CMSII. By investigating the details of the CMSII, this study identifies the key technical and management issues to be considered in each CMSII stage, reveals the problems, and, most importantly, summarizes the lessons...

A two-level programming method for collaborative scheduling in construction supply chain management

There are increasing requirements for collaborative scheduling (CS) in supply chain management (SCM). CS in construction supply chain (CSC), which involves multiple partners, such as general contractor, subcontractors, and material suppliers, can be seen as a multilevel decision-making system with hierarchical structure. Adopting the decomposition-coordination thought of large scale system theory and using the multilevel programming theory, a two-level programming model for CS decision making is established to find satisfactory solution for every partner in CSC. This model has the merit of paying attention to the maximization of profit or minimization of cost of all partners located at different decision-making level in CS process. The algorithm of this model is provided, which is combined with the first level programming adopting simulated annealing algorithm and second level programming using discrete search algorithm. Finally, an illustrative example of CS in a CSC is presented. The two-level programming method provides a new way to improve collaborative decision making in CSC. This research makes a contribution to the body of knowledge of scheduling.

Application of DEA-Based Malmquist Productivity Index Measure to the Construction Industry in China

Although productivity is not the only determinant of economic growth, it is a measure of the economic prosperity and degree of competitiveness of an industry. Productivity analysis can provide valuable information about the effectiveness of economic policies. It is also a useful tool for policy makers to improve decisions on economic development and industry performance. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) measures the relative efficiency of decisionmaking units, which avoids functional specification to express production relationship between inputs and outputs. DEA-based Malmquist productivity index (MPI) approach has been applied to express the productivity change over time. This paper presents the method for calculating input-oriented DEA-based MPI. The MPI, which comprises technical efficiency change and empirical production frontier shift, is used to measure the productivity changes of the construction industry of China’s different regions over the period of 1997 to 2002. The calculated results indicate that productivity of the construction industry in China experiences a continuous improvement from 1997 to 2001 and starts a slight decline in the time period of 2001 to 2002. However, there still are different gaps of productivity development level of the construction industry between western, midland, eastern and northeastern regions. It is necessary to adopt effective policies and measures to improve the performance of productivity and competitiveness of the construction industry, and to promote the sustainable development of the construction industry in different regions. The DEA-based MPI approach provides a practical tool to assist policies design and make strategic decisions for improving the total performance of the construction industry in China.

Cognition and decision making in construction engineering management

Little research has been investigated in construction engineering management (CEM) community by employing cognitive science. The 2nd workshop is the continuous efforts to provide a forum to discuss the theoretical and practical issues on integrating cognition research into CEM to improve judgment and decision. Papers are collected from departments of construction management in top universities in China. These papers make valuable contributions from different perspectives to explore cognition research in CEM, such as team cooperation, claim support system, management information system, decision making models and methods, and performance measurement.

MANS3C: AN AGENT-BASED MULTI-ATTRIBUTE NEGOTIATION FRAMEWORK FOR CONSTRUCTION SUPPLY CHAIN COORDINATION

There are many problems in construction process, such as fragmentation, budget overrun, time overrun and high waste, most of which are supply chain problems and often caused by the lack of coordination and information sharing across organizations in the supply chains. Supply chain coordination (SCC) is a critical success factor for the application of supply chain management to effectively improve construction performance. An agent-based multi-attribute negotiation framework for construction SCC (MANS3C) is designed, which adopts the agent technology and regards construction supply chain as a typical multi-agent system. This framework integrates the specialty agents (contractor agent, designer agent, supplier agent, owner agent, etc.) and service agents (coordinator agent, monitor agent, name server agent) into a multi -agent system on the Internet to improve decision-making efficiency and information sharing. Since different participants in the supply chain have different preferences on decision -making attributes, such as cost, time, quality, safety and environment, a multi -attribute negotiation mechanism is established by constructing a multi-attribute negotiation model, describing the multi -attribute negotiation process, and designing the multi-attribute negotiation protocol. The establishment of this mechanism is based on the negotiation theory and utili ty theory, and aimed at promoting the coordination between specialty agents. A prototype system is developed and tested on a hypothetical construction project. The test indicates that MANS3C can solve problems in construction supply chain and provides a so lution to construction SCC.

An framework for team cooperation in engineering project management

In order to achieve effective cooperation of the engineering project team, this paper constructed the cooperation model of the engineering project team and analyzed the cultural regulating, profit regulating and institution regulating in the engineering project team form the viewing angle of system theory based on existing research results. Furthermore, this paper proposed four kinds of management methods of engineering project team cooperation, such as team reliance management, team conflict management, team study management and team encouragement management.

Information-Oriented Models and Methods for Construction Project Supply Chain Coordination

This work focuses on establishing coordination models and method with different information in the operation process of established construction project supply chains (CPSCs). A two-level programming model for collaborative decision making is established to find optimal solutions for all stakeholders in CPSCs. An agent-based negotiation framework for CPSCs coordination in dynamic decision environment is designed based on the intelligent agent technology and multi-attribute negotiation theory. This work also presents a relative entropy method to help negotiators (stakeholders) reaches an acceptable solution when negotiations fail or man-made termination. This is a summary of the first author’s Ph.D. thesis supervised by Yaowu Wang and Geoffrey Qiping Shen (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) and defended on 25 June 2006 at the Harbin Institute of Technology (China).