Performance Of Infrastructure Projects Research Articles

Large-Scale Transport Infrastructure Project Performance: Generating a Narrative of Context and Meaning

Large-Scale Transport Infrastructure Project Performance: Generating a Narrative of Context and Meaning

A web-based tool to incorporate social equity in infrastructure planning and delivery

Project prioritization is a form of decision analysis that helps practitioners establish priorities when allocating limited funding. Cities and transit agencies have been increasingly interested in adding environmental and equity considerations to this equation. Particularly, the City of Toronto’s (CoT) Transportation Services Division expressed the need for a more robust equity assessment method to prioritize programs competing for limited capital funding.This article contributes to CoT’s goal by developing a web-based tool to help managers at the Transportation Services Division assess the equity performance of infrastructure projects under their care. The tool’s output is a quantitative score which is based on the demographic and transportation profile of those who live around the project location and on the anticipated impacts of the project. This article summarizes an applied research partnership between the University of Toronto and the City of Toronto over an 18-month period, contributing to advance the state-of-practice in Canadian cities.As the City of Toronto faces a major budget shortfall, this new tool shows great promise to support equity-oriented project prioritization. More broadly, we hope that reporting our experience will prompt other cities to make equity an integral part of their infrastructure planning and delivery process.

Dynamic approach for investigating delivery system effects on infrastructure project performance

PurposeInnovative design and execution approaches are employed in infrastructure sectors and planning to enhance the integrated project delivery system, assure the sustainability of infrastructure projects, and meet the demands of the dynamic, changing environment. Delivery methods must incorporate new technologies. By combining digital technology, teamwork, and mass manufacturing, a greater degree of exceptional quality, sustainability, and resilience in the environment will be generated. As a result, a new approach does not rely on the reaction policy, but instead considers alternative scenarios and employs a simulation model to determine the best course of action.Design/methodology/approachIn the paper, the system dynamics approach to construction management is validated in light of pertinent research. Additionally, it describes the difficulties facing the infrastructure projects' delivery system. Additionally, the strategy for system dynamics creation is described. This strategy includes a causal loop diagram, generates a stock-flow diagram, and simulates forecasts of model behavior over time. Next, the optimization model's validation process is used to create a system dynamics model for choosing the best infrastructure project delivery system project and controlling it to maximize sustainability, mass production, digital integration, and team integration. The dynamic complexity of project management is growing.FindingsThe primary goal is to present a system dynamics (SD) simulation to look at how well infrastructure projects perform in terms of choosing the best method for delivering infrastructure projects. One of the most ideal methods for delivering projects is integrated project delivery. An effective methodology for making strategic decisions on the choice of the best project delivery method. In order to enhance certain infrastructure project delivery system metrics for sustainability, mass production, digital integration, and team integration, the model included building strategy and sophisticated system dynamics simulation. According to the construction strategy, the outcomes have been satisfactory.Originality/valueSystem dynamics research has been done to replicate the idea of contemporary construction in order to determine the best approach for delivering infrastructure. The government and decision-makers would benefit from understanding this research as they decide on the best delivery method for boosting the sustainability and productivity of infrastructure projects in Egypt.

Adfreeze Strength of Wooden Piles in Warm Permafrost Soil

In recent years, permafrost warming has adversely affected the performance of infrastructure projects in northern Canada. The common construction practice in these permafrost-underlain areas is to use the pile foundation for building and infrastructure rather than using shallow foundations. Thus, the influence of warming permafrost on the loading capacity of pile foundations is critical for evaluating forthcoming changes under a warming climate. The present study was performed to assess the influence of temperature and loading rate on the adfreeze strength of piles in permafrost soil. A series of uniaxial compressive tests on wooden piles drilled into frozen soil were carried out at various temperatures, mimicking the conditions in warming permafrost. The results demonstrated that an increase in strain rate led to an increase in the adfreeze strength of piles. Moreover, the wooden piles exhibited peak adfreeze strength at a displacement of less than 2 mm for most temperature and deformation rate combinations. Interestingly, although the adfreeze strength of piles increased as temperatures cooled below −1°C, a transition phase between −3°C and −4.5°C was observed in which the adfreeze strength decreased. It could be noted that failure occurred in the wooden piles at temperatures colder than −5°C rather than frozen soil failure at these temperatures. These variations in the adfreeze strength were related to soil temperature, unfrozen water content, and the adhesive bonds at the interface between the frozen soil and pile.

The Impact of Boundary Spanning by Public Managers on Collaboration and Infrastructure Project Performance

The public sector is increasingly collaborating with the private sector in the development of large-scale public infrastructure projects. However, the difficulties arising due to working across organizational boundaries are often detrimental to project performance. This article argues that boundary-spanning activities can enhance the quality of collaboration and subsequently the performance of projects. Boundary spanners utilize relational governance mechanisms and undertake conscious endeavors for building interorganizational relationships by engaging in activities, such as coordination and communication with the stakeholders. The data for this study are composed of 158 survey responses from lead public managers involved in Dutch national public infrastructure projects. The data are analyzed using structural equation modeling. The study demonstrates that the quality of collaboration has a significant impact on the performance of the project during the implementation phase. Further, we find that the different boundary-spanning activities are interconnected and that they have a significant positive relationship on project performance, with a mediating effect of collaboration. The study concludes that, and shows how boundary spanners are vital to the collaborative processes through which public infrastructure projects are implemented.

(AI) in Infrastructure Projects—Gap Study

Infrastructure projects are usually complicated, expensive, long-term mega projects; accordingly, they are the type of projects that most need optimization in the design, construction and operation stages. A great deal of earlier research was carried out to optimize the performance of infrastructure projects using traditional management techniques. Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques were implemented in infrastructure projects to improve their performance and efficiency due to their ability to deal with fuzzy, incomplete, inaccurate and distorted data. The aim of this research is to collect, classify, analyze and review all of the available previous research related to implementing AI techniques in infrastructure projects to figure out the gaps in the previous studies and the recent trends in this research area. A total of 159 studies were collected since the beginning of the 1990s until the end of 2021. This database was classified based on publishing date, infrastructure subject and the used AI technique. The results of this study show that implementing AI techniques in infrastructure projects is rapidly increasing. They also indicate that transportation is the first and the most AI-using project and that both artificial neural networks (ANN) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are the most implemented techniques in infrastructure projects. Finally, the study presented some opportunities for farther research, especially in natural gas projects.

The Mediating Role of Benefit Management for Sustaining the Performance of Infrastructure Projects

Benefit management is a valuable approach, promoted and supported by strategic management for maximizing organizational benefits. It has also been recognized as a means of improving project performance, though more research is needed to understand how it works. This research adds to the contemporary literature on public sector project management by studying the links between project governance, benefit management, and project performance from a developing country perspective. This study provides insights for project professionals who are working in government organizations for optimizing the benefits of investment. The study provides a reference to formulate strategies for managing and governing the performance of government-funded projects in developing countries like Pakistan. The research uses a positivist approach and quantitative design. The quantitative technique is employed to address all the aspects of the study. The structural equation modeling revealed that benefit management acted as a mediating factor in the relationship between project governance dimensions and public sector project performance. This study highlights the importance of incorporating a comprehensive benefit management approach to streamline the benefit management process by aligning projects with the organizational strategy for sustaining project performance. These findings stress the need for a comprehensive benefit management approach in improving the project performance of government-sponsored projects. The study attempts to improve the understanding of project professionals about the role and significance of benefit management, which will be helpful to get organizational support for the employees who are striving to improve the project performance in Pakistan.

Effects between Information Sharing and Knowledge Formation and Their Impact on Complex Infrastructure Projects’ Performance

Adopting knowledge management theories from an inter-organizational perspective, this study aims to uncover the relationships among information sharing (IS), knowledge organization (KO), and knowledge integration (KI) through knowledge formation (KF) for improving complex infrastructure project performance. Two hundred and thirty-four valid questionnaires were collected from organizations involved in complex infrastructure projects, and their responses were evaluated using partial least-squares structural equation modeling. The findings show that IS has a significant effect on the improvement of project performance and manifests as multiple mediation roles through KO, KI and KF, not via the direct effect of IS on KI and that of KO on KF. Inter-organizational trust also plays a new and positive moderating role in the relationship between KO and KI, not in the relationship between IS and KO. This study not only provides insights on the practice of knowledge management for improving complex infrastructure project performance, but it also discovers new pathways of knowledge management and relational governance through project-specific knowledge formation.

Developing a Construction Safety Standard System to Enhance Safety Supervision Efficiency in China: A Theoretical Simulation of the Evolutionary Game Process

Labor safety is one of the most fundamental indicators to improve contractors’ sustainability. Safety supervision plays a crucial role in affecting the safety performance of infrastructure projects. However, studies of standards development to enhance safety supervision efficiency are far from complete. Safety standards define safe behaviors for construction workers and hazard control processes in the workplace, and they are usually considered as an important part of safety control. In addition, the systematic reform of construction safety standards in China provides an innovative perspective to enhance safety supervision efficiency by linking standards to supervision. For this purpose, this paper proposes the concept and framework of the “Construction Safety Standard System (CSSS)” through expert interviews. CSSS hierarchically classifies safety standards and integrates similar standards. Its implementation will significantly influence the behavioral decisions of safety supervision stakeholders. Evolutionary game (EG) theory is applied to demonstrate the decision-making procedure in CSSS establishment and application. Furthermore, system dynamics (SD) is utilized to model and analyze equilibrium states under different supervision strategies. Meanwhile, case studies are implemented to assess the CSSS’s effectiveness in reality. The numerical results indicate that through CSSS implementation, the strategy choice fluctuation of supervisors and contractors is suppressed and a more desirable stable equilibrium is reached. The government tends to supervise and contractors tend to obey safety standards consciously. The findings reveal that CSSS can enhance safety supervision efficiency and have meaningful implications for theoretical study on safety supervision and construction safety management practice.

The Influence of Relational Capital and Social Capital on the Infrastructure Project Performance in UAE

Most managers believe that their current structures are effective or highly effective in achieving business goals by relying on the traditional capital. Yet, many infrastructure project organizations in the UAE revolve around traditional and functional structures which are lack both the flexibility required to adapt to the changing business landscape and the capability to achieve end results effectively. Thus, this study strives to fill this gap by testing the role of relational and social capital on infrastructure project performance. This study has applied the quantitative approach to collect the data through a questionnaire instrument from 335 respondents. This study has found that there are positive and significant relationships between relational capital and social capital with the performance of public infrastructure projects in the UAE

The Role of Innovation Capital on the Public Infrastructure Project Performance in UAE

UAE is one of the leading countries in the Middle East that has achieved a rapid growth in its economy over the last decades. In a few years, the UAE has built several infrastructure projects, which reflects the state trends towards improving the provided services to the public. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of innovation capital on the infrastructure project performance in the United Arab Emirates. This study used a quantitative method design. The population of this study comprised all unlisted infrastructure company providers within the UAE, while the sample was 293 employees from these companies. This study relies on the primary data measurements; the questionnaire instrument was used. The current study has found that there is a positive and significant relationship between innovation capital and infrastructure project performance improvement.

Key BIM Adoption Drivers to Improve Performance of Infrastructure Projects in the Ethiopian Construction Sector: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

The aim of this paper is to explore the critical BIM adoption drivers across the Ethiopian public infrastructure construction sector. In this regard, a comprehensive systematic literature review was employed to identify potential BIM implementation attributes in developing countries and validated through a pilot test. Then, quantitative data was collected from experts working in various organizations using a structured questionnaire survey. A structural equation model was then developed based on five key BIM adoption constructs and 14 adoption drivers. Based on the path analysis, Application, Environment, and Project related factors positively affect BIM adoption in infrastructure projects, whereas Organization and Information Management are insignificant and negatively affect BIM adoption in the Ethiopian construction industry. The study highlighted key BIM adoption attributes that are helpful to enhance the overall project management performance in infrastructure projects. The proposed action plan is beneficial to various professionals, government, and stakeholders in an effort to improve the current level of BIM uptake in the horn of Africa. More so, the findings of this paper can be used to facilitate and promote BIM adoption in public infrastructure construction projects across the Ethiopian construction market.

Critical Success Factors Influencing the Performance of Infrastructure Projects in The Aviation Industry in Kenya; A Case of Moi International Airport

Purpose: Aviation sector in Kenya facilitates both international and domestic trade, promotes tourism and foreign investment thus contributing to government revenue and employment opportunities. Therefore, improving airport infrastructure would help reduce travel time, improve connectivity. The high rates of project failure have become a major concern for stakeholders hence the need to identify key factors that promote project success or failure. This study seeks to assess the critical success factor influencing the performance of construction projects in Kenya.Methodology: The study adopted quantitative method to examine critical success factors for the performance of aviation construction projects in Kenya. Descriptive case study research design was adopted and self –administered questionnaires were used to collect quantitative for analysis. The variables of interest include timely financing project activities, competency of contractors, participation of stakeholders, and management skills. Descriptive analysis and inferential tests were conducted with the aid of IBM SPSS version 23 software.Results: The study found that timely financing, contractor competency, stakeholder participation, and management skills have positive and significant influence on the performance of aviation construction projects. Descriptive results suggest that tractors competency, timely financing, management skills, and stakeholders’ participation have a strong positive influence on project performance. The study has also established a significant contribution of contractor competency to the successful performance of aviation construction projects. It was also noted that participation of key stakeholders in projects identification, decision making, and resource mobilization can enhance the success of aviation construction projects. It was observed that these factors account for over 54.9% of changes in project performance.Unique contribution to theory, policy and practice: In light of these results, the study recommends industry players to put measures in place that would allow timely provisions of finance for all project activities. It is also important to source for competent and experienced contractors, engage key stakeholders in decision making about the project, and recruit a competent and skilled project manager. The study results have a significant contribution to practitioners in the aviation construction sector in Kenya. The study provides the practitioner with the most critical variables likely to influence the performance of aviation construction projects. It further acknowledges that external factors also influence the success of these projects. In light of this, the practitioners can institute contingency plans to mitigate the risks to ensure successful completion of their projects. To the academic, the current study has filled literature gap on critical success factors for aviation project performance. Given the upcoming mega project in aviation sector around the world, these factors provide the basis for future research in this area to ensure these projects are executed successfully within budget and schedule

BIM-based environmental impact assessment for infrastructure design projects

Sustainability is becoming a key factor in the decision-making process of infrastructure projects throughout their lifecycles. In particular, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in the design phase is becoming a matter of significant importance, for both public and private sectors, given the long-term impacts of design decisions on the environmental performance of infrastructure projects. Traditionally, EIA is performed by a sustainability expert at the end of the design cycle, by which time the modification of design is both costly and time-consuming. In recent years, Building Information Modelling (BIM) is leveraged to better integrate EIA with the design practices. However, there are several limitations with how this integration is approached: (1) EIA is normally performed by software other than the one used for the design. This renders the continuous EIA based on incomplete BIM models difficult; (2) there is a lack of explicit data structure for the integration of EIA and BIM data. This limits the interoperability and flexibility of the EIA tools in terms of accommodating to different EIA databases; (3) in the majority of the cases the integration of EIA and BIM is not bidirectional, which results in the incapacity of the designers to immediately visualize the results of EIA in the design platform and to track the progress of the design in terms of EIA; and (4) the BIM-based EIA has rarely been implemented in an infrastructure project. Therefore, this research aims to develop a continuous BIM-based EIA for infrastructure projects that utilizes an explicit data structure to (1) systematically integrate data from various sources, and (2) enable bidirectional data exchange between BIM and EIA. The framework allows designers to run an automated EIA at any point in the design stage and immediately assess the Environmental Impact Score (EIS) of their design choices. A prototype is developed and tested on a case study to indicate the feasibility of the proposed framework. The framework is assessed in terms of functionality, ease of use, scalability, and contribution to raising sustainability consciousness through a workshop with experts. It is shown that the framework is able to quickly provide designers with accurate information about the potential environmental impact of all objects in infrastructure design projects. The workshop with experts showed that the tool clearly makes it easier to perform EIA compared to the existing, highly fragmented, process. This allows the design team to use this assessment on the same level as other design parameters in the decision-making process.

Improving performance of infrastructure projects in developing countries: an Ecuadorian case study

Improving the quality of infrastructure is crucial for sustainable development. Providing infrastructure faces many challenges – both financially and in terms of how projects are delivered. This is particularly apparent for developing countries. This research aims to (a) determine the key factors influencing the successful delivery of infrastructure projects, (b) provide an example of these factors as manifested on an important Ecuadorian flood control and irrigation infrastructure project and (c) identify key learnings for future projects in similar contexts. Many of the key failure factors identified in the literature were evident on the example project, validating the literature findings and indicating that the learnings may be relevant to the context of developing countries more widely. These factors included insufficient planning, unrealistic estimates, poor stakeholder communication, bureaucracy, insufficient ground investigation and an inadequate project delivery system. Addressing these issues is an important step towards improving infrastructure delivery in developing countries.

Embeddedness and Actors’ Behaviors in Large-Scale Project Life Cycle: Lessons Learned from a High-Speed Rail Project in Spain

AbstractDespite wide-ranging research on large-scale infrastructure project performance, little is known about the role that project public institutional context and project owner’s response capabi...

Guidelines for Robust Adaptation to Environmental Regulations in Infrastructure Projects

AbstractEnvironmental regulations can greatly affect the operation of new and existing infrastructure projects. In fact, the economic performance of infrastructure projects is closely related to en...

Risk enablers modelling for infrastructure projects using Bayesian belief network

Work in the area of risk assessment of infrastructure projects is full of different techniques; study on the risk management factors is non-existent. It is required because such risks of high impact paralyze the performance of infrastructure projects. Delay and cost overruns in infrastructure projects affect the society welfare at large. Because of this, the reputation of the government is at stake. This paper is an attempt to contribute to the risk enablers modelling, by first identifying major critical success factors for risk management and then finding cause-and-effect relationships between them for developing a Bayesian belief network (BBN) model. The analysis of this model and results determine relative importance of the critical success factors on which risk management efforts must be focused first to ensure that the project achieves objectives within the stipulated time and cost.

Risk factors affecting the ability for earned value management to accurately assess the performance of infrastructure projects in Australia

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate a set of risk-related factors influencing the earned value management (EVM) concept as an assessment technique in evaluating the progress of modern sustainable infrastructure construction projects.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative research approach has been adopted for identifying risk-related factors influencing EVM concept from a literature review and through interviewing industry personnel, followed by an inductive process to form sets of key factors and their measuring items.FindingsEVM is a common method for assessing project performance. A weakness of this approach is that EVM assessment in its current form does not measure the impact of a number of project performance factors that result from the complexity of modern infrastructure construction projects, and thus does not accurately assess their impact in this performance. This paper discusses and explains a range of potential risk factors to evaluating project performance such as sustainability, stakeholder requirements, communication, procurement strategy, weather, experience of staff, site condition, design issues, financial risk, subcontractor, government requirements and material. In addition, their measuring items were identified.Practical implicationsThis research assists projects managers to improve the evaluation process of infrastructure construction performance by incorporating a range of factors likely to impact on that performance and which are not included in current EVM calculations.Originality/valueThis research addresses the need to include in the EVM calculation a range of risk factors affecting the performance of infrastructure projects in Australia and therefore makes this calculation a more reliable tool for assessing project performance.

On the magnitude of cost overruns throughout the project life-cycle: An assessment for the Italian transport infrastructure projects

The cost performance of infrastructure projects is a serious problem worldwide. This paper aims to analyse the generating process of cost overruns along the various phases of the project life-cycle. To this purpose, we employ a large dataset of Italian transport infrastructure projects for roads, started and completed during the period 2000–2013. Applying the same methodology used by the construction management research, we breakdown the various phases of the project life-cycle as well as the related cost items (estimated or actual) to analyse empirically the role of each phase in the overall evolution of cost overruns. Specifically, we pay particular attention to the costs for the physical execution of the work, distinguishing them from all other costs. The results show that Italian public infrastructure works suffer from significant cost overruns in the execution phase. However, the Italian contracting authorities seem to systematically overestimate the size of the final costs for the physical realization of the work. This risk aversion attitude is more relevant when considering financial coverage (rather than budget) and it is likely to leave room for opportunistic behaviours in the execution phase. In terms of policy implications, our results suggest the adoption of more stringent (and objective) criteria to assess the project budget and to provide its financial coverage.