Yoojung Yoon

Protocol to Enhance Profitability by Managing Risks in Construction Projects

AbstractTo enhance the profitability of a construction company, risks that affect the profit of the company must be controlled as part of their long-term business planning. Project risk management is a systematic process used for managing risks. However, it is challenging to properly analyze the probability and impact of risks because of the inherent uncertainties associated with construction projects. Therefore, a practical risk management protocol is proposed for construction companies to handle the risks through the analysis of completed construction projects. The protocol consists of two phases: Phase-1, risk identification and analysis at the project level, and Phase-2, development of risk-handling strategies to control risks at the company level. The major contribution of the proposed protocol is that any construction company can practically utilize the protocol to establish risk management strategies by evaluating the effectiveness of the relationships among cost centers, profit centers, and extern...

Preference clustering-based mediating group decision-making (PCM-GDM) method for infrastructure asset management

This paper proposes a new method for multicriteria group decision-making processes.The method deals with the subjectivity issues in group decision-making processes.The method employs two concepts such as preference clustering and mediating agent.Sample concrete bridge decks were considered as a case study.The case study demonstrated the effectiveness to minimize the subjectivity issues. The problem-solving decision-making process often requires involvement of a group of individuals who have differing interests and conflicting multiple evaluation criteria. Therefore, the greatest concern in multiobjective group decision-making problems is how to arrive at a best decision that is agreeable to all the members of the group. Many previous studies focused on handling this concern based on decision rules, such as the consensus or ranking selection approaches. Although many contributions to the literature were made by past studies on this issue, disagreement remains on finding an effective way to address the subjectivity issue in group decision-making. This paper introduces a new approach called the preference clustering-based mediating group decision-making (PCM-GDM) method for minimizing the subjectivity issue. The PCM-GDM method basically employs two concepts: (1) clustering the preferences of the group members in a decision and (2) utilizing a mediating agent as a final decision-making tool. The new approach was applied to a case study of sample concrete bridge decks in the state of Indiana. The results of this study confirm that the proposed approach can significantly improve the multicriteria group decision-making results by providing a way to exclude biased judgments by decision-makers that can interfere with the development of one best alternative. The proposed approach advanced the reliability of the conventional decision-making knowledge, which is dependent on a consensus or the ranking of approaches by human experts to reach one solution.

Protocol for Profitability Analysis Using Internal Entities in Organizational Structure of Construction Companies

AbstractConstruction companies bid on projects and expect to obtain a profit by implementing awarded projects. As profit-generating entities, the construction companies are composed of cost and profit centers. The cost centers within the organization provide services required to fulfill the activities of the profit centers. The profit centers create billable work that is reimbursed by the owners of the projects. However, construction companies have had difficulty in winning new construction projects because of high competition, economic recession, and so forth. Also, many construction companies are not obtaining the profits they expect from the awarded projects. Therefore, a protocol to analyze profitability should be developed to understand the gaps between actual and estimated profit and the origins of loss of profit on construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to present a protocol for profitability analysis for the construction companies. The construction companies can utilize the protocol t...

A System for Rehabilitation Planning of Infrastructure Projects

According to the Report Card in 2009 by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), infrastructure across the nation is poorly maintained, unable to meet current and future demands, and in some cases, unsafe. The average deterioration grade on all of the nation‟s infrastructure systems is D (A = Exceptional, B = Good, C = Mediocre, D = Poor, F = Failing). The ASCE estimates

Condition Improvement Measurement Using the Condition Evaluation Criteria of Concrete Bridge Decks

2.2 trillion (estimated 5 year need) as the total cost of repairs needed to upgrade the deteriorated condition of infrastructure. However, a decline in the federal investment over the years for supporting infrastructure systems requires that the states and local communities carry most of the burden of managing those systems. This paper presents a web-based application tool called Analytical System for Planning of Infrastructure REhabilitation (ASPIRE) to help public agencies plan efficient rehabilitation strategies within limited budgets. They can make final decisions on infrastructure rehabilitation by estimating the physical conditions of facilities and allocating limited budget based on the evaluation score in the presented application. The ASPIRE gets input from five different participants who have their own roles: 1) a supervisor; 2) a Primary Decision Maker (PDM); 3) Group Members (GMs); 4) a Field Engineer (FE); and 5) a Cost Estimator (ES). The ASPIRE also provides a flexible evaluation database according to the type of infrastructure based on technical and social/political criteria and sub-criteria levels. The group evaluation module in the model provides a more objective evaluation score of infrastructure systems. This paper describes the web-based application and illustrates the results of a case study to explain the model and its application.

Decision Support Model for Determining Cost-Effective Renovation Time

AbstractMaintenance, repair, and rehabilitation (MR&R) are cost-effective activities for maintaining good serviceability of concrete bridge decks during their lifetimes. Many past studies were conducted to provide public agencies with optimal MR&R strategies for selecting the correct treatment types at the appropriate application times. While researchers did establish and confirm that the annual deterioration rate and the effectiveness of the MR&R activities are the key input factors that affect the outcomes of MR&R strategy models, they did not spend nearly as much time on engineering inquiry to measure the effectiveness of MR&R activities as they did on projecting the deterioration patterns of bridge systems. The issues of selection bias, empirical data reliability, and overstatement of the effectiveness of MR&R activities continue to compromise the present methods. Therefore, this paper presents a new method that addresses these issues by utilizing the bridge condition evaluation criteria commonly appl...

Leveling Process of Annual Budgetary Requirements for Pavement Preservation

AbstractThe renovation of a building, instead of raising a new structure, is being scrutinized more closely at present as a sustainable alternative for reaping the benefits of improving a building’s energy performance and mitigating its physical deterioration. The extent of the benefits would be dependent on the optimal renovation time determined through the building owner’s decision-making process. Unfortunately, only a few studies have explored improvement of the decision-making process for determining an appropriate renovation time, making it difficult for building owners to conduct reliable cost-effective renovation planning. A model that estimates the optimal cost-effective renovation time of a building therefore would be a valuable tool, and the model introduced in this paper addresses this need. By applying the model to an actual renovation project as a case study, this model yielded 24 renovation alternatives for achieving a cost-effective renovation time, from which the optimal alternative was id...

Method for Generating Multiple MRR Solutions for Application in Cost-Leveling Models

AbstractThis paper presents a model for leveling annual budgetary requirements (ABRs) for pavement preservation programs over a multiyear analysis period. Given the information such as the candidate pavement preservation projects, associated costs, application years, and time floats to be shifted, the presented leveling process adjusts the application years of the projects to minimize the variance among ABRs. The minimum moment method is modified considering the dummy period that is to shift preservation projects within their time floats and additional constraints for the leveling process. To validate the leveling model, this study uses Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) pavement preservation projects as a case study that consists of a total of 193 projects over a three-year analysis period between 2010 and 2012. As a result of the case study, the leveling process provides relatively consistent ABRs over the three-year analysis period for INDOT. Therefore, the major contributions of this researc...

Benefits and Assessment of Annual Budget Requirements for Pavement Preservation

AbstractCost-leveling models have been introduced recently to minimize the fluctuations in annual maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation (MRR) costs within a multiyear infrastructure asset-managem...

Multitiered Prioritizing Method Using Urgency Scale for Bridge Deck Rehabilitation

This research identifies methods and best practices that can be used by the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) in performing various strategies for pavement preservation. It also identifies various methods of calculating the benefits of pavement preservation and a methodology for allocation of funds for pavement preservation, which are the two main objectives of this research. In order to achieve these objectives, several tasks were performed: literature review, data collection through Surveys and telephone interviews, data analysis and recommendations. For the data collection process, all the department of transportation (DOTs) across the US and three Canadian provinces were sent a Survey. A total of 26 responses were received, and by analyzing them thoroughly, seven state DOTs were identified as candidates for telephone interviews. In order to quantify the benefits of pavement preservation, a method called Annualized Costs was identified and recommended to INDOT. Furthermore, a methodology was developed for budget allocation. This methodology was developed to create more consistent demands for resources (i.e., budget) by using a resource leveling algorithm. This algorithm overcame the discrepancies in the budget requirements, providing more balanced budgetary needs over the entire life cycle of the projects. With this model, INDOT will know in advance how much budget will be needed or should be allocated for optimum results. All these recommendations were made on the basis of collected data and literature review performed by researchers during the course of this project