Different Types Of Construction Projects Research Articles

A General Framework for Sustainability Assessment of Buildings: A Life-Cycle Thinking Approach

Construction is a manufacturing industry that consumes substantial amounts of natural resources, human resources, and social capital. Activities that occur during building construction and utilization negatively impact the environment and have direct and indirect impacts on the surrounding community and society. Properly assessing the sustainability of buildings is critical to the pursuit and achievement of sustainable development goals. Also, construction project decision-makers and stakeholders currently lack an effective tool for comparing the relative sustainability of different materials, design approaches, construction methods, and building operation alternatives. Thus, an integrated framework for assessing building sustainability in terms of environmental, economic, and social aspects is developed and proposed in this paper based on life cycle thinking. This framework is applicable to different building types and life-cycle assessment scopes and provides a practical tool for construction investment project stakeholders to reference, implement, and use to guide the decision-making process. This framework may also provide a reference for other researchers in the construction field to develop sustainability assessment models optimized for different types of construction projects.

Pre-design CSFs (critical success factors) of building projects for Dubai's development boom

PurposeThis paper aims to identify the pre-design critical success factors CSFs pertaining to different types of construction projects in the rapidly growing city of Dubai, by adopting one of the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tools, analytic hierarchy process (AHP).Design/methodology/approachA mapping process was utilized to filter and categorize CSFs gathered from a literature review. A total of 5 main and 27 sub-main criteria were derived following RIBA's Plan of Work 2020 (Royal Institute of British Architects). A questionnaire was distributed among experts in the construction industry to assess the development in vicinity of the Sheikh Zayed Road (SZR). An analysis was conducted to prioritize the CSFs as per experts' judgment.FindingsAccording to the experts' combined judgment, CSFs linked to client requirements (CR) are the most significant at 22.9% priority weight. Overall project review (OPR), project team (PT), project preparation (PP), previous projects feedback and experience (PPF) success factors achieved 21.4, 19.5, 18.9 and 17.2%, respectively. Within CR, sub-CSFs of client consultation and acceptance (CCA), responsibly matrix for stakeholders (RM), client track record (CTR) and client level of service (CLS) were prioritized by the experts.Research limitations/implicationsThis work was carried out by respondents based in UAE only, and focused on one urban stretch of Dubai, this could be replicated by employing experts from other countries and other case study areas within Dubai.Practical implicationsThis study would significantly have an impact on the education of current and future project managers, planners, engineers, architects and, most importantly, decision-makers on helpful pre-design strategies for enhancing their project success. This research could assist, direct and educate management, as the management provides/manages the necessary resources for projects. Furthermore, management also has the authority to choose project leaders/consultants that will make the project successful.Social implicationsConsolidating Dubai's phenomenal growth requires prioritizing socio-economic strategies in future development projects at the pre-design and pre-construction stage, which will improve the city's business environment and the quality of life for Dubai's residents. This opens up fresh possibilities over the next few years for integrating robust procedures for successful execution, monitoring and evaluation of future construction developments from the outset.Originality/valueAlthough many studies have identified various factors as important for successful building projects, few appear to have done a complete analysis using pre-design criteria to systematically categorize professional views on the relative relevance of CSFs. There is a lack in research examining the factors that led to Dubai's successful construction projects. This study attempts to bridge this gap and provide a prioritized framework reference model to assist project/asset managers and decision-makers.

Review of the Building Information Modelling (BIM) Implementation in the Context of Building Energy Assessment

In recent years, many researchers across the world have addressed the implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the energy assessment of the built environment. However, several potential issues still need to be resolved in order to utilise the benefits provided by BIM to a maximum degree. To fill this gap, a systematic literature review is conducted in this study to critically investigate the utilisation of BIM tools in energy assessment. To achieve the above-mentioned objective, after shortlisting the relevant papers published hitherto, using keyword searching, a systematic review was undertaken, including the application of BIM in the contexts of different countries, types of BIM tools, BIM and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) integration, energy affiliations, stakeholders’ involvement and their roles, uncertainty, and sensitivity analysis. The outcomes show the most widely used and effective BIM tools in different types of construction projects in various countries. The review of the literature clearly shows that BIM tools can effectively be used in the assessment of energy performance of buildings. The article gives insight to engineers, architecture, and decision makers to carefully select appropriate BIM tools in terms of energy assessment.

Sustainability Inclusion in Construction Contracts Index

Despite the interest that environmental prudence has garnered worldwide, the construction industry remains behind in incorporating sustainable concepts in construction contracts and contract administration. Some research promotes the adoption of sustainability clauses into construction contracts, and some of the standard contract forms include sections on sustainability. However, there is no research to date that analyzes the current state of adopting sustainable practices and techniques in contractual terms. There are also no specific measures tailored to the different types of construction projects, and owner/developers have no tools to assess sustainability components of their construction contracts. Therefore, this research investigated the degree of incorporation of sustainability clauses in construction contracts in the United Arab Emirates. Sustainable practices were collected from the literature and validated via interviews with 5 construction organizations and surveys of 11 more to develop the Sustainability Inclusion in Construction Contracts Index (SICCI) in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs). The SICCI was designed and validated to measure the inclusion of sustainable practices in contractual terms typically used by the construction industry. The resulting index was applied as a case study to a residential construction project in the United Arab Emirates. The project team found the index very usable and the project scored a 70% inclusion rate in contractual terms. Inclusion assessment is the first step in true adoption of sustainable development concepts in construction projects. This paper recommends further adoption of this tool in construction organizations to promote sustainable practices.

Difference in S-Curve for Different Types of Construction Projects

Project cash flow and contractor S-curve are tools that can be used to measure, control and anticipate project progress. Few studies dedicated to evaluate and judge the behaviour of the original S-curve. This study aims to evaluate the similarities and changes of construction projects S curves between different project types. More than 40 S-curves were collected from the state of Kuwait for different types of construction projects. The list of collected curves divided into six groups based on the type of client, no of buildings and number of floors. Statistical analysis used to compare the curves inside each group of projects. Statistical analysis using test of normality, T-paired test then Standard Euclidean Distance were applied to evaluate the similarity and changes between groups. This study revealed that there is a level of similarity of S-curves for high rise buildings and there is no similarity of S-curves for one or multi-building projects. The maximum gap between S-curves for one and high rise building laying in the middle part of project duration, while the maximum gap between S-curves for multi-building project laying in 70% to 80% of project duration. This study revealed that the variance of S-curve behaviour indicating there is no common attitude for all types of construction project types. This study can help construction stakeholders to anticipate their expected expenses and help in project cash flow management.

FIELD TRIPS: CONSTRUCTION CLASSROOMS WITHOUT ROOF

Higher education embraces outside-classroom activities such as internships, community services, and site visits. These activities bring real-world experiences into classrooms and blend them with educational content and provide a rich learning environment. Construction job site visits provide students with exposure to different types of construction projects and provide the opportunity of observing construction methods, materials, components, and crews. The Building Construction Science (BCS) program at Mississippi State University program provides students with an interactive project-based learning environment in which students utilize the additional amount of class time to experiment, collaborate, and learn. Eight studios are the core courses of the BCS program and cover the main construction subject areas. Due to the nature of studio work, students are more involved in a “learning by doing” paradigm. One of the main curriculum components of studios is out-of-state field trips, which take place at every level of the program for about one week per academic year. To evaluate the effectiveness, strengths, and challenges of field trips, a quantitative research method was used to explore students’ impressions and feedback. The results indicate field trips play a significant role in students’ learning and connect their theoretical knowledge with real-world practices. Potential benefits, optimal conditions, and challenges pertaining to the construction field trips are explored and discussed to help future job site visit planning.

Developing a risk breakdown matrix for onshore wind farm projects using fuzzy case-based reasoning

As worldwide goals for sustainable development expand, numerous countries are investing in renewable energy projects, particularly onshore and offshore wind farm projects, which have low adverse environmental impacts. Since onshore wind farm projects are novel types of energy infrastructure projects in many countries worldwide, the literature lacks a comprehensive list of risks that affect such projects. The first goal of this paper is to fill the research gap by identifying the work-package–level risks that affect onshore wind farm construction projects and developing a risk breakdown matrix suitable to these projects. However, the application of existing risk identification techniques in these projects is usually hindered by the lack of comprehensive research in the literature, scarcity of historical data, and high cost of acquiring expert knowledge. Consequently, the second goal of this paper is developing a new risk identification technique based on case-based reasoning and fuzzy logic suitable to onshore wind farm projects. The case-based reasoning component enables the identification of risks associated with a given type of construction project based on its similarities to the other types of projects. Moreover, the application of fuzzy logic in the proposed technique allows users to assess the similarities between different types of projects using linguistic variables, and it facilitates the capture of partial similarities between the different types of construction projects. In addition to the novel risk identification technique, this paper presents a risk breakdown matrix of onshore wind farm projects representing 169 risk factors, which are mapped to 11 construction work packages of onshore wind farm projects to improve the risk management process for these projects. The results of this paper and the proposed risk identification technique are compared with conventional techniques, confirming that the proposed technique is suitable to novel types of construction projects like onshore wind farms.

Quantifying materials waste in the Egyptian construction industry: A critical analysis of rates and factors

Construction and demolition waste (CDW) is a critical challenge facing the construction industry. It leads to deterioration of the triple bottom line of sustainability. Unfortunately, the CDW management research in Egypt lacks studies investigating (1) the variations in CDW generation (CDWG) among different types of construction projects, and (2) the factors affecting CDW reduction (CDWR). Based on a benchmarking approach, this research (1) quantifies CDW in terms of generation rates and costs among different construction project types in Egypt, and (2) investigates the relationship between CDWG and different adopted CDWR factors. Using structured interviews, a comparative case study was conducted to investigate industrial, residential, commercial, and infrastructure projects. Analysis of results demonstrated that CDWG rates and costs differ from one project type to another due to the project's nature, size, and complexity on the one hand, and the applied CDWR factors such as waste-efficient practices, awareness, culture & behaviour, and legislation on the other hand. On average among the four project types, it was found that “timber”, “sand”, and “bricks/blocks” are the most wasteful materials. It was also found that “practices” and “legislation” are the least applied CDWR factors on average among the four project types, which need to be better applied for better CDWR results.

A Review of Employer-Caused Delay Factors in Traditional and Building Information Modeling (BIM)-Enabled Projects: Research Framework

Construction delays are considered a common worldwide problem. Previous studies have investigated construction delay factors from the perspectives of different project stakeholders. However, a thorough analysis of such delays on different types of construction projects in different geographies is still lacking, precisely the effect of employers’ delays in traditional and building information modeling (BIM)-enabled projects. This research proposes a research framework to address potential employer-caused delay factors in traditional and BIM-enabled projects. A cross-sectional literature search was carried out to review construction delay factors and employer-caused delay factors in traditional and BIM-enabled projects. The study found that: (a) a research gap exists in traditional construction delay studies in specific continents and project types as well as in BIM-enabled project studies, (b) delay aspects have not been addressed or have been partially addressed in previous studies, and (c) a relationship model between employer-caused delay factors and success factors can be developed by studying the effects of BIM barriers and implementation strategies. This paper is the first to present a comprehensive review on delay factors and tender a novel framework to address employer-caused delay factors in both traditional and BIM-enabled projects.

Delay causes in Kazakhstan’s construction projects and remedial measures

Delay in construction projects is a major concern. Research was conducted to find the construction delay causes and mitigation measures. Literature reveals that different countries experience various causes of delays and significances of these causes are different based on project types. This study explores delay causes in Kazakhstan’s construction industry and analyzes their influence on different types of construction projects. Fifty-five delay causes relevant to construction projects in Kazakhstan have been identified through literature review and primary interviews with selected construction professionals. Afterwards, a comprehensive survey was conducted among the industry professionals. The survey results show that different delay causes have different importance based on the project types (industrial, residential, commercial, etc). Moreover, project parties (client, contractor and consultant) have different views on the delay causes. Accordingly, the study ranks delay causes based on project parties and project types and compares their correlations. Finally, recommendations for the most prominent delay causes have been provided. This study provides better understanding on delay causes and gives important guideline for stakeholders of Kazakhstani construction industry and other construction professionals in the world to control their projects. Similar studies can be conducted in other countries to identify causes and remedial measures for delays.

Investigating profitability performance of construction projects using big data: A project analytics approach

The construction industry generates different types of data from the project inception stage to project delivery. This data comes in various forms and formats which surpass the data management, integration and analysis capabilities of existing project intelligence tools used within the industry. Several tasks in the project lifecycle bear implications for the efficient planning and delivery of construction projects. Setting up right profit margins and its continuous tracking as projects progress are vital management tasks that require data-driven decision support. Existing profit estimation measures use a company or industry wide benchmarks to guide these decisions. These benchmarks are oftentimes unreliable as they do not factor in project-specific variations. As a result, projects are wrongly estimated using uniform rates that eventually end up with entirely unusual margins either due to underspends or overruns. This study proposed a project analytics approach where Big Data is harnessed to understand the profitability distribution of different types of construction projects. To this end, Big Data architecture is recommended, and a prototype implementation is shown to store and analyse large amounts of projects data. Our data analysis revealed that profit margins evolve, and the profitability performance varies across several project attributes. These insights shall be incorporated as knowledge to machine learning algorithms to predict project margins accurately. The proposed approach enabled the fast exploration of data to understand the underlying pattern in the profitability performance for different types of construction projects.

Fresh and Mechanical Properties of Sustainable Concrete Using Recycled Aggregates

In the last few decades, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) witnessed rapid development in the construction industry. It was recently emphasized to adopt sustainability practice in all aspects related to construction. The recent sustainable practice that was enforced by Dubai Municipality in construction field is “greening the concrete” by solely replacing the Portland Cement with supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), such as grand granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) and fly ash. On the other hand, the use of recycled aggregates can also contribute to the greening of concrete and to the reduction of carbon foot print from the construction industry in the UAE. Consequently, it is significant to study the suitability of local available recycled aggregate and their effect on concrete fresh and hardened properties, in order to expand the current practice. The recycled aggregates, used in this investigation, are obtained from a local recycled aggregates plant in Abu Dhabi using concrete from demolished buildings in Abu Dhabi. The natural aggregates in concrete mixtures were replaced by recycled aggregates with the following percentages: 20%, 40%, 60% and 100%. The concrete parameters investigated are mainly the slump retention, rheology and compressive strength. The results are analyzed to arrive to pertinent conclusions for the utilization of concrete with recycled aggregates in different types of construction projects.

Real-time resource tracking for analyzing value-adding time in construction

Abstract Improving the effectiveness of production control has attracted the interest of researchers and lean construction practitioners over recent years, through techniques such as Last Planner System (LPS) and Location-based Management System (LBMS). However, in these techniques, data collection and analysis still remain manual. Remotely locating workers on site has been suggested as a potential technology to collect crucial data required for production control. The purpose of this study is to test the applicability of a real-time tracking system for collecting data for production control in different types of construction projects. We applied Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology in real-time tracking of workers in three case projects, including residential, office building, and plumbing renovation. We compared various tracking device placement strategies and analyzed the share of uninterrupted presence of workers in work locations based on the collected data. The findings show that both location-based and time-based information of workers can be obtained in real time from the proposed system, but issues of accuracy and coverage need to be considered when defining the data collection plan for each project. Accuracy and coverage issues can be resolved to a significant degree by applying heuristics in data analysis rather than investing in a more sophisticated tracking technology. The conclusion is that real-time tracking technologies are ready for implementation when certain heuristics and guidelines for installation are followed. It is possible to calculate a real-time presence index on a construction site. These data could be used to evaluate the impact of construction management interventions on waste on-site.

Ranking the Factors that Influence the Construction Project Success: the Jordanian Perspective

Project success is what must be done for the project to be acceptable to the client, stakeholders and end-users who will be affected by the project. The study of project success and the critical success factors (CSFs) are the means adopted to improve the effectiveness of project.This research is conducted in an effort to identify which factors influence the success of project accomplishment in Jordan. This study has selected, through an extensive literature review and interviews, (83) factors categorized into (7) main groups that the questionnaire respondents were required to score. The responses from 66 professionals with an average of 15 years of experience in different types of construction projects in Jordan were collected and analyzed using SPSS and the most important factors for success for various success criteria are presented depending on the relative importance index to rank the categories. The research revealed the significant groups of factors are: factors related to Client , factors related to Contractor’s, factors related to Project Manager (PM), and factors related to Project management. In addition the top ten sub factors are: Assertion of the client towards short time of the project, availability of skilled labor, Assertion of the client towards high level of the quality, capability of the client in taking risk, previous experience of the PM in similar projects, previous experience of the contractor in similar projects, decision making by the client/ the client’s representative at the right time, assertion of client towards low cost of project, experience in project management in previous projects, and flow of the information among parties. The findings of this study might be useful to construction project participants in taking decisions leading to successful finishing of construction projects in Jordan.

Empirical study of effectiveness of construction waste minimization in Bauchi state

This paper critically investigates and analysed the to determine the level of waste minimization practices in Bauchi State, Nigeria. In practice, there has been a tremendous increase in building construction which led to the generation of waste at different stages of construction. The structure of Nigerian construction industry is complex having different types of clients and contractors. This consist of public and private clients, main contractors and sub-contractors, indigenous and foreign companies, low technology firms and sophisticated specialists, builders and civil engineers and a whole range of construction professionals connected within the industry. The growing popularity of Public Private Partnership (PPPs) also means more international construction firms are likely to come into the Nigerian construction industry. The materials and methods was that questionnaire design was undertaken to determine the opinion of contractors on waste minimization practices in the study area. The sample group identified comprises project managers, project engineers, quantity surveyors, site supervisors and the method of distribution and collection of the questionnaire survey is through google by Survey Monkey. The questionnaire was constructed using Likert scale. The respondents were asked to rank on a scale of 1-5 waste minimization strategies on construction sites. The population of this research were construction firms in Bauchi participating on different types of construction projects. In this research, use of census is administered. A total number of 77 construction firms with valid registration in Nigeria. The result of the survey on the level of waste minimization practices in Bauchi construction industry. Reuse on site with the highest mean of 3.86 is in the high category and ranked first. The reuse on site is the most frequent practice on construction site. The second ranked mean is 3.57 also in the High category which represent the proportion of respondents that minimize waste at the source of origin. The finding of the research study shows that the study emphasized the Reuse is the most acceptable way of waste minimization in construction site in the study area. From the findings of this research study, its recommended that the contraction firms should have waste management plan regardless of its size as this will reduce both physical and non-physical waste and increase the profit

Structural Equation Modeling for Relationship-Based Determinants of Safety Performance in Construction Projects

AbstractSafety performance in construction projects is attributed to many determinants (factors) in a safety system. This study identifies various directly or indirectly related determinants and their effects on safety performance of construction projects. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), this study empirically examines the effect of safety climate (SC), hazard management (HM), safety budget (SB), safety rules and regulations (SR), and safe work behavior (WB) of employees and workers on safety performance (SP) of projects. The unit of analysis of this study is a construction project. A questionnaire survey was conducted, and 230 responses were collected from different types of construction projects across India. The results provide evidence that safety climate, safety budget, and hazard management positively influence safe work behavior of employees and the safety performance of the project. Conversely, the SEM findings demonstrate that implementation of safety rules and regulations are positivel...

Establishing Formalized Representation of Standards for Construction Cost Estimation by using Ontology Learning

Construction cost estimation for tendering is important for both tenders and bidders in construction projects and needs to be strictly complied with corresponding standards so that quantities and prices from different bidders are comparable. In the view of flexibility and extensibility, ontology is regarded as a promising technology for formalized representation of the standards for construction cost estimation (cost standards for short hereafter) in computer programs. In order to automate the processes of construction cost estimation for estimators. However, the manual establishment of ontology for construction cost estimation (cost ontology for short hereafter) is labor-intensive and time-consuming for software developers, not to mention that there are numbers of standards for different types of construction projects in different regions. In order to solve this problem, a semi-automatic approach based on the framework of cost ontology that authors established previously is proposed to establish the cost ontology by using ontology learning technology. Firstly, the data sources, i.e. the cost standards are analyzed and the corresponding relations between information in cost standards and the elements in the framework are summarized. Then based on the corresponding relations, the approach is designed, in which concepts, relations and rules are extracted by natural language processing and domain lexical analysis to fill the framework. The approach lays a foundation for the practical use of ontology for automating construction cost estimation.

CAUSES OF DELAY IN INDIAN TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS

A survey on time performance of different types of construction projects in western Maharashtra was co nducted to determine the causes of delay and their importance according to e ach of the project participants, i.e., the owner, consultant and the contractor. Sixty four causes of delay were identified during the res earch. It seems that the problem is common and nota ble as 72% of the total infrastructure projects reported by all the respond ents were delivered late, whereas only 28% were com pleted on time. Clients’ respondents indicated that 59% of the public projec ts they were involved in were delivered late. Consu ltants’ respondents reported that 62% of the projects they were involved in were completed late. Contractors’ respondents also shar e the same view and articulated that 77% of the projects they are invol ved in exceeded the preset duration. The top five icauses of construction delays in transportation infrastructure projects ar e mainly Land Acquisition, Environmental Impact of the project, financial closure, Change orders by the client, Poor site management asupervision by contractor .Respondent’s opinion about the contribution towards the delay is 50 % respondent feels that del ay in the construction in mainly due to the contrac tor. 40 % of respondent feel that client is mainly responsible for the delay in const ruction projects. And only 10 % of respondent feel that delay mainly occur due to consultant. It is evident that consultant as a medi ator has less responsibility in construction delays .

Optimizing schedule for improving the traffic impact of work zone on roads

Many different types of construction projects set up work zones on roads. Especially in urban areas, lane closures as a result of work zones have a considerable impact on local traffic. However, for a construction project that consists of several work zones and several work crews, the traffic impact may be improved by appropriate scheduling. Therefore, this paper proposed a scheduling model based on the route-changing behavior of road users. The proposed model calculates the traffic delay of vehicles by microscopic simulation, and applies team ant colony optimization to search for a near-optimal schedule. The project planner then ensures that the contractor executes the activities according to the near-optimal schedule. The proposed model is applied to schedule a sewer system construction project in a city. The results of our study indicate that with our proposed model the total traffic delay is reduced by 11.1% when compared with a schedule proposed by the project planner.

Causes of delay in large construction projects

A survey on time performance of different types of construction projects in Saudi Arabia was conducted to determine the causes of delay and their importance according to each of the project participants, i.e., the owner, consultant and the contractor. The field survey conducted included 23 contractors, 19 consultants, and 15 owners. Seventy-three causes of delay were identified during the research. 76% of the contractors and 56% of the consultants indicated that average of time overrun is between 10% and 30% of the original duration. The most common cause of delay identified by all the three parties is “change order”. Surveys concluded that 70% of projects experienced time overrun and found that 45 out of 76 projects considered were delayed.