A Project Management Training Program

In March 1998, the City of Los Angeles, Bureau of Engineering, completed a nine-month training effort including over 30,000 hours of project management training for over 1,000 employees. This work documents the challenges faced and the solutions formulated during the course of the training. The two separate needs assessments done prior to developing the training program are explained. The development of the course contents for each of the three elements included in the training program—system optimization, project management technical tools, and human relations∕organizational development training—is described. The multiple-level training assessment processes of measuring the instruction, measuring the learning, maintaining the learning, and utilizing the learning are explained and illustrated with examples and results. The lessons learned in managing the training effort, particularly with respect to the logistics of training so many people in such a short amount of time, are documented for managers facing similar large scale training programs.     

CITYWORK: Application of Collaborative Technologies for Infrastructure Management

This paper describes a collaborative maintenance management application called CITYWORK being developed for the Public Works Department at the Fort Gordon Army Installation in Augusta, Ga. The work described in this paper is being carried out in the context of project “CITY” (Civil Infostructure TechnologY—National Science Foundation Grant No. ECS94-22730) to support the sustainable management of civil infrastructure. Infrastructure management requires the coordination of a variety of efforts and integration of information across a range of facilities. CITYWORK addresses coordination, collaboration, and integration in the maintenance management process in a context of sound organizational behavior. The project involves an interdisciplinary team including engineers and social scientists from the IMPACT laboratory at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories, Champaign, Ill. CITYWORK supports the maintenance workflow process by providing private, persistent workspaces for each participant to work on the specific aspects of their interests (e.g., estimators work on generating cost estimates) and share the work with others in an asynchronous manner.     

Strategic Planning in Public Sector Engineering Organization

In today's engineering and construction industries, the concepts of company loyalty, traditional competitors, and employee development are changing at a pace that has not previously been encountered in postindustrial times. In response to these changing concepts, private and public organizations alike are increasing their emphasis on long-term or strategic planning. This paper introduces strategy planning, describes the expected results of strategic planning efforts in engineering and construction organizations, and provides a case study illustration of the process for the City of Los Angeles, Bureau of Engineering (a 1,000-person public sector architectural and engineering organization). The case study describes the seven steps used by the Bureau starting with building a strategic planning team to ending with evaluation of the implementation effort. Lessons learned from the case study are used to identify several recommendations for future planning efforts in the area of strategic planning.     

浅析装饰工程项目管理组织机构的形式

根据目前装饰施工企业项目管理中普遍采用的组织机构形式，结合作者多年来项目管理实践，着重分析了各种项目的组织特征和优缺点，并依据项目性质，提出选择项目组织形式的参考因素，从而为装饰施工企业项目管理的组织机构设置、管理方式提供一些借鉴。     

Benchmarking of Project Management Office Establishment: Extracting Best Practices

This paper deals with best practices in establishing, developing, and implementing project management offices (PMOs). First, a brief overview of the theoretical background for PMOs is presented. The research approach is described, along with an overview of the benchmarking partners used. In the main part of this paper, various aspects of a PMO’s life cycle are discussed based on observations from the benchmarking partners. Through the benchmarking study, we have discovered that although the PMO design differs greatly, certain key characteristics, responsibilities, and tasks are very similar. Successful PMOs take on responsibility for different project-related functions and core tasks related to development of shared methodology and processes for handling of projects, training and competence development within project management, proposing of new projects, and quality assurance of projects. The success of the PMO is related to ensuring the necessary authority of the PMO, real organizational authority as well as academic and social credibility, top management support, and that the PMO covers true needs in the organization.     

Project Alliancing at National Museum of Australia—Collaborative Process

Project alliancing is a new alternative to traditional project delivery systems, especially in the commercial building sector. The Collaborative Process is a theoretical model of people and systems characteristics that are required to reduce the adversarial nature of most construction projects. Although developed separately, both are responses to the same pressures. Project alliancing was just used successfully to complete the National Museum of Australia. This project was analyzed as a case study to determine the extent to which it could be classified as a “collaborative project.” Five key elements of The Collaborative Process were reviewed and numerous examples from the management of this project were cited that support the theoretical recommendations of this model. In the case of this project, significant added value was delivered to the client and many innovations resulted from the collective work of the parties to the contract. It was concluded that project alliances for commercial buildings offer many advantages over traditional project delivery systems, which are related to increasing the levels of collaboration among a project management team.     

Budget and Schedule Success for Small Capital-Facility Projects

The project management environment of small capital projects is unique in many ways. One unique aspect is the total administrative burden they place on resources for approvals, reviews, and execution relative to the overall value of the capital works program. Administratively, many organizations follow a prescribed approval process for all capital project expenditures regardless of size. For these organizations, small capital projects constitute 80% of the projects executed per year but only account for approximately 16% of the capital projects’ budget expenditures. The opportunity to improve organizational performance through more effective project execution on small capital projects could provide substantial savings within individual small capital-project programs. This paper reports on data collected from active small project-program personnel as well as project success factors identified in the literature. By means of analysis and comparison between the data collected and the project success factors identified in the literature, a comprehensive list of small-project success factors was developed. Sixteen factors were identified from project success factors listed by various authors in project management literature. These factors are used as a baseline for evaluating the findings from a questionnaire and interview process conducted with a diverse group of project management personnel. The paper concludes that the factors on small projects are not unlike those on large projects. The key differences noted were related to the frequency of process implementation, which affects the timing and execution of the project work phases for small projects. The area holding the greatest potential for performance improvement for small projects is the front-end planning process.     

Multiobjective Linear Programming Model for Scheduling Linear Repetitive Projects

Linear repetitive construction projects require large amounts of resources which are used in a sequential manner and therefore effective resource management is very important both in terms of project cost and duration. Existing methodologies such as the critical path method and the repetitive scheduling method optimize the schedule with respect to a single factor, to achieve minimum duration or minimize resource work breaks, respectively. However real life scheduling decisions are more complicated and project managers must make decisions that address the various cost elements in a holistic way. To respond to this need, new methodologies that can be applied through the use of decision support systems should be developed. This paper introduces a multiobjective linear programming model for scheduling linear repetitive projects, which takes into consideration cost elements regarding the project’s duration, the idle time of resources, and the delivery time of the project’s units. The proposed model can be used to generate alternative schedules based on the relative magnitude and importance of the different cost elements. In this sense, it provides managers with the capability to consider alternative schedules besides those defined by minimum duration or maximizing work continuity of resources. The application of the model to a well known example in the literature demonstrates its use in providing explicatory analysis of the results.     

Construction Engineering—Reinvigorating the Discipline

Construction engineering is all about production, and producing something useful is the very reason for projects to exist. How then to explain why construction engineering has progressively fallen out of focus in construction project management education and research? For an answer, the development of the discipline of construction management since the 1950s must be understood, a development that yielded a non-production-oriented approach to project management, one that provides the currently accepted operating system for managing the work in projects. This paper first traces the history of the development of the traditional operating system and related commercial terms and organizational practices. It argues that traditional practices rest on an assumption that careful development of a project schedule, managing the critical path, and maximizing productivity within each activity will optimize project delivery in terms of cost and duration. Subsequently, an alternative operating system, developed and proposed by the Lean Construction community, is described. In contrast to the traditional approach, lean defers detailed planning until closer to the point of action, involves those who are to do the work in designing the production system and planning how to do it, aims to maximize project performance (not the pieces), and exploits breakdowns as opportunities for learning. The history of this development will be traced in broad strokes.     

Organizational Alternatives for Large Projects

Organizing large construction projects can be as confusing and challenging as managing them. Many organizational variations are possible. This paper describes five major organizational alternatives and reviews the advantages and disadvantages of each. The alternatives include: (1) Strong functional organization; (2) functional organization with area coordination; (3) functional organization wth area management; (4) area management with craft discipline staff; and (5) autonomous area organization. This paper also proposes a method for selecting a project organization that involves developing organizational criteria and using these criteria in an evaluation matrix. Such a process could aid managers in meeting the challenge of effective project organization.     

Capital Planning System Applied to Municipal Infrastructure

Public owners are challenged by limited and constrained capital sources for acquiring and sustaining infrastructure facilities. They also generally lack supporting automation tools and techniques for analyzing capital investment and project execution decisions, elucidating the impact of these decisions in a holistic manner, and leveraging alternative delivery methods and financing means for competitive advantage. An automated decision support system in development at Massachusetts Institute of Technology provides an integrated planning framework for public owners and engineers to confront these issues. The system, called CHOICES, models life cycle cash flows of capital projects using variable delivery methods and finance options and aggregates them with forecasted operating revenues and expenses at a portfolio level. This paper describes the application of CHOICES to a municipality in Massachusetts. Capital program scenarios were developed using pace of execution and alternate funding sources as primary considerations. Development and analyses of the scenarios suggest that the current municipal environment hinders local infrastructure management and procurement. This is a first-order problem; its solution is likely to outweigh the choice of project delivery for many municipal governments, and it forces municipalities to consider a wide array of alternatives for fulfilling local requirements.     

Project Manager’s Decision Aid for a Radical Project Cycle Reduction

Currently there are no formal decision tools or guidelines to assist owners and project managers in choosing delivery systems and project strategies that would allow significant reductions in the project cycle time. The development of a decision aid that would allow a project manager to prioritize and apply project cycle reduction techniques would be a valuable tool for achieving project cycle time reduction in projects. This paper presents a new high performance project delivery system called “project manager’s game planner” (PMGP) designed to assist a decision maker in identifying and utilizing an optimal set of radical reduction techniques (RRTs) with the greatest potential for success in achieving cycle time reduction. Additionally, the PMGP can assist the user in identifying the top RRTs during any of the five project phases: preproject planning, design, material management, construction, and start-up. Most projects can utilize this PMGP to improve the project performance whether to achieve significant cycle time reduction or to simply achieve effective project execution.     

Project Network Interdependency Alignment: New Approach to Assessing Project Effectiveness

The engineering and construction industry has evolved to a task-centric approach to evaluating the effectiveness of projects. However, a narrow task-based view of project network logic neglects the coordination of communication and knowledge exchanges across the project organizational network. This paper departs from traditional approaches to introduce a new approach to assessing project effectiveness that focuses on alignment of actual knowledge exchanges with knowledge exchange requirements across task-organization network dyads. A new modeling approach is introduced, called Project Network Interdependency Alignment. Project Network Interdependency Alignment identifies potentially excessive or insufficient communication and knowledge exchanges that can make projects ineffective. The modeling approach is introduced and retrospectively validated by using a building renovation construction project. The case study demonstrates that the approach can provide project managers with the capacity to analyze task and organizational network interdependence on projects and the critical capability to identify misalignments that impede project effectiveness.     

Facility Management Value-Adding Functional Analysis Model

Project management functions in facility management groups include design, construction, and renovation of facilities. The organizational structure and processes of such project management group affect the cost, quality, and duration of any project. The group's functions directly add to the overhead of the parent organization and therefore only value-adding functions are needed. The focus of this paper is to describe a value-adding functional analysis model and its application to develop a strategic direction for a parent organization. The paper presents the foundation for the analysis model, describes its application process to define and support the value-adding functions, and concludes with recommendations for organizational improvement strategy. The paper shows that value-adding functions are usually related to working closely with customer needs while considering the parent organization's requirements in project planning and control. In addition, it was found that any form of closed-market reliance on the internal resources in design and construction constrained the various processes and induced a high level of process uncertainty, which reflected negatively on project delivery time and cost.     

Social Network Model of Construction

Engineering and construction projects are dependent on two fundamental elements: (1) the ability to plan and manage the technical components of the project such as the tasks and resources; and (2) the ability of the project participants to effectively develop into a high performance team. Historically, the industry has focused extensively on optimizing the project management processes associated with the former element. In this focus, organizations have emphasized the ability to develop the optimum plan, allocate resources efficiently, and utilize control functions to ensure that the project stays on schedule and within budget. Although this has been effective, this engineering focus has reached the point of diminishing results. Specifically, the engineering approach to project management has neglected to recognize the importance of the participants to the success of the overall project. Rather, the engineering approach has favored the development of an optimum plan as the path to effective project management. In this paper, the engineering-based approach to project success is reconfigured to reemphasize the need to develop high performing teams by recognizing the importance of the project network. This recognition is formalized in the social network model of construction that integrates classic project management concepts with social science variables to enhance the focus on knowledge sharing as the foundation for achieving high performance teams and project results.     

Predicting Performance of Design-Build and Design-Bid-Build Projects

Design-build (DB) and design-bid-build (DBB) are two principal project delivery systems used in many countries. This paper reports on models constructed to predict performance of DB and DBB projects on 11 areas, using project-specific data collected from 87 building projects. The study included collecting, checking, and validating industry data, and the statistical development of multivariate linear regression models for predicting project performance. Robust models are developed to predict construction and delivery speeds of DB and DBB projects. Gross floor area of the project is the most significant factor affecting speed. Besides this, for DBB projects, contractors’ design ability, and adequacy of plant and equipment would ensure speedy completion of the projects. For DB projects, if the contract period is allowed to vary during tender evaluation, this would slow down the project. Robust models to predict turnover and system quality of DB projects are also constructed. A DB contractor’s track record is an important variable. They must have completed past projects to acceptable quality and have ability in financial, health and safety management.     

Molecular and immunologic aspects of the nonclassical HLA class I antigen HLA-G: evidence for an important role in the maternal tolerance of the fetal allograft

To support collaborative engineering, it is important not only to share information, but also to manage that information in a manner that actively promotes integration. This paper describes the central models underlying the COMMIT (construction modeling and methodologies for intelligent integration of information) project, which is defining mechanisms to handle a number of issues relating to the management of information to support decision-making in collaborative projects. Examples are given to illustrate the implementation of the COMMIT information management concepts. The project is being carried out in consultation with a well-established steering group comprising standardization bodies, industries, and researchers. The COMMIT project is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, United Kingdom.     

Alternative Delivery Approaches for Military Medical Construction Projects

Military medical construction projects take more than 10 years to complete, from the time the need for a new facility is identified until the building actually opens for occupancy. This time is often extended even further due to complications during the design and construction process. Furthermore, these projects often are completed well over their original budget. Although there are many reasons for this exorbitant amount of time and many causes for the budgetary problems, one of the major factors is the reliance on the traditional methods of a lump-sum contract and the design∕bid∕build project delivery approach. The writers illustrate how the use of alternative project delivery methods (specifically construction management and design∕build) can reduce the amount of time it takes to design and build a new military medical facility, as well as reduce the overall cost of the project. The advantages offered by these alternative delivery methods are set forth, and their applicability within the federal procurement process is discussed. Several recommendations are then given for using these methods for the design and construction of military medical facilities.     

Educating Civil Engineering Professionals of Tomorrow

Engineering education is currently facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Engineering institutions are being called upon to educate the architectural, engineering, and construction (A/E/C) professionals of tomorrow by complementing their traditional engineering education with the transfusion of information technology and process automation concepts through the necessary reorganization of classes and academic curricula. This paper presents a framework for an interdisciplinary course sequence in civil engineering, project management, and information technology centered on the concepts of fully integrated and automated project processes (FIAPP). The described sequence enables students to benefit pedagogically from working in truly multidisciplinary teams, to enrich their educational experience by bringing real world projects to academic settings, and to teach them fundamental principles in integration and automation of project processes highlighting the value of such integrated project management systems (information management, planning, design, construction management, procurement, operations, and maintenance). Furthermore, the course sequence addresses deficiencies in current one-dimensional educational curricula and needs expressed by educators, students, and industry professionals. The paper presents experiences and knowledge gained from the aforementioned academic sequence on FIAPP and on the utilization of three-dimensional computer models and associated databases in the management of A/E/C processes.