A Progress Measurement Framework for Large-Scale Urban Construction Projects

Abstract

Large-scale urban construction comprised of multiple construction projects of different types poses a challenge to progress management. While the progress of a construction project can be measured as the percentage of a facility’s physical completion, this standard is less reliable an indicator in gauging the progress of an urban construction project, as the function of urban facilities determines their role in the completion of an urban system. This paper suggests a new measurement framework consisting of five hierarchically structured models in order to better assess construction progress for large-scale urban projects. To test the validity of the proposed framework, it has been applied to a real-life urban development project carried out in Sejong Special Self-Governing City, South Korea. The weight set on functional importance was quantified according to the analytic hierarchy process method. This study also conducted a survey of 23 practitioners who managed the case project. The contribution of this research is to propose a framework that redefines the progress of urban construction projects by focusing on functional importance in urban systems and formulating a qualitative method of calculating progress for urban construction projects. Such achievements are expected to provide useful information to project managers concerning the extent to which an urban construction project has progressed and the extent to which the progress of an individual project affects the progress of an urban project as a whole.