Performance Evaluation of Construction Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

To successfully evaluate investments related to integrated information management in the construction industry, causal loop diagramming was used to depict the qualitative system dynamics model for the study of the dynamics of construction enterprise resource planning systems (C-ERP). With the aid of system dynamics principles, together with literature review and two case studies, the major variables that influence the successful evaluation of C-ERP in the construction industry were evaluated. The major variables identified were validated with data from a survey. The validation procedure quantified associations between variables and perceived benefits from C-ERP stakeholders of construction-related firms. The model described in this paper aims at providing a holistic understanding of the C-ERP dynamics in construction. With this model, researchers and industry practitioners can develop an insight into C-ERP investments in practice.     

Developing an ARIS-House-Based Method from Existing Information Systems to Project-Based Enterprise Resource Planning for General Contractor

In recent years, general contractors in the construction industry have gradually begun to implement a system called enterprise resource planning (ERP). During the ERP implementation process, contractors performed required analyses on daily operation functions demanded by the enterprise. The analyses focused on function mapping to ensure that ERP satisfies all the requirements, including the functions of existing information systems, and meets future requirements. The process of function mapping in the construction industry typically involves a series of lengthy and time-consuming meetings, and face-to-face discussions; systematic analysis procedure was lacking. This research will propose a novel function mapping approach, the Architecture of Integrated Information Systems (ARIS)-house-based (AHB) method, to enhance the effectiveness of meetings and improve the efficiency of discussions. In addition, AHB method will use the structure of ARIS-house diagram to guide the function mapping process, streamline existing information systems, meet future requirements, and successfully implement ERP. Finally, this research will use a case study to verify the effectiveness of the AHB method for contractor to implement ERP.     

Improved SWOT Approach for Conducting Strategic Planning in the Construction Industry

Strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) analysis has been in use since the 1960s as a tool to assist strategic planning in various types of enterprises including those in the construction industry. While still widely used, the approach has called for improvements to make it more helpful in strategic management. The project described in this paper aimed to study whether the process to convert a SWOT analysis into a strategic plan could be assisted with some simple rationally quantitative model, as an augmented SWOT analysis. By using the mathematical approaches including the quantifying techniques, the “maximum subarray” method, and fuzzy mathematics, one or more heuristic rules (HRs) are derived from a SWOT analysis. These HRs bring into focus the most influential factors concerning a strategic planning situation, and thus inform strategic analysts where particular consideration should be given. A case study conducted in collaboration with a Chinese international construction company showed that the new SWOT approach is more helpful to strategic planners. The paper provides an augmented SWOT analysis approach for strategists to conduct strategic planning in the construction industry. It also contributes fresh insights into strategic planning by introducing rationally analytic processes to improve the SWOT analysis.     

Multiproject Planning and Resource Controls for Facility Management

Facility managers face the challenges of managing many different types of small, geographically dispersed construction projects. Depending on the complexity and distribution of projects, the time required to prepare for production consumes a large percentage of the total time required to complete the job. Increasing crews’ productive hours is a key objective when planning multiproject schedules. Existing methods, however, lack the effective means to explicitly model, analyze, and optimize resource utilization for these multiple concurrent projects. As a result, few facility managers fully exploit the potential to better manage their often limited budget and resources. This paper presents an explicit model of the mobilization requirements of multiple crews performing a variety of different activities over a geographic space. The model allows the facility manager to explicitly investigate the impact of crew composition, crew specialization, and depot locations. Using work rule decisions regarding alternative crew allocations, facility managers may dynamically allocate resources to optimize resources and to complete projects in a minimum amount of time. To verify and validate this new model, a computerized system, called FIRS (Facility/Infrastructure Resource Scheduler), was created to analyze the multiproject resource plans with data from two military organizations and a university campus. FIRS utilizes a new genetic algorithm that was developed specifically to work with multiproject scheduling. Using FIRS, facility managers can develop and test alternative crew allocations based on the qualifications of the crews available and the type of operation being performed.     

Analyzing Enterprise Resource Planning System Implementation Success Factors in the Engineering–Construction Industry

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems offer many benefits to the engineering–construction industry. Many construction firms recognize the benefits of ERP system implementation; however, they still hesitate to adopt these systems due to high cost, uncertainties, and risks. This study identifies and analyzes critical factors that need to be considered to ensure successful ERP system implementation in the construction industry. First, this paper identifies the factors associated with the success and failure of ERP systems, and provides indicators to evaluate the success of such systems. Then, the paper develops an information system success model to analyze the relationships between factors and success indicators. Finally, the paper provides recommendations for successful ERP systems based on the analysis. The derived success factors should help senior managers in construction firms make better decisions and improve their business value by implementing the most effective EPR systems.     

Developing a Resource Supply Chain Planning System for Construction Projects

The high variability of construction environments results in high construction-cost variation, especially in material costs. Inadequate planning may cause material shortages that delay the project schedule or, alternatively, a substantial increase in inventory costs by producing or supplying materials earlier than they are needed at the construction site. In order to solve these problems, this paper studies steel rebar production and supply operations and establishes an optimal model that minimizes the integrated inventory cost of the supply chain. Based on the optimal model, this paper develops a decision-support system to generate a production and supply plan for a supplier and buyers of steel rebar. After utilizing the decision-support system to create the supply and production plan, this paper analyzes the results to study the influence of transaction constraints on inventory cost. This paper also discusses cases of global optimization of the inventory cost for the entire supply chain and compares them with cases of local optimization for individual members.     

Sequence Planning for Electrical Construction

The sequences in which work is completed bear significantly on the performance of electrical contractors in building construction projects. When project work sequences are poorly planned or poorly executed, electrician constructors often must contend with compressed schedules, trade stacking, and out-of-sequence work to ensure timely completion of a project. This paper analytically evaluates the importance of sequence planning to efficient electrical work. It describes changes that were made to crew-level planning procedures for an electrical contractor and the impact these had on crew performance. The analysis shows that sequence planning at both the project level and the crew level are important to the performance of electrical crews. Most notably, a strong correlation (0.73) was detected between crew planning performance one week and crew productivity performance in the following week. Results of the study are provided. Principles of sound sequences and guidelines for sequence planning are also captured from the analysis. These sequence guidelines are designed to avoid, where possible, the often adverse project conditions in which electrical contractors find themselves and to handle those conditions most effectively when they cannot be avoided.     

Determination of Key Performance Indicators with Enterprise Resource Planning Systems in Engineering Construction Firms

The study focuses on developing a unified approach to define information specificities for key performance indicators (KPIs). Borrowing from the time-system theory, the paper defines different types of KPI and identifies that a KPI has two dimensions—knowledge specificity and time specificity. Different approaches are presented to analyze knowledge and time sensitivities. This paper addresses a key question related to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems applications in the engineering construction industry: what are the areas of business processes within the engineering construction industry where ERP cannot be used to collect KPIs related to business processes? The writers review empirical and specialized processes within the construction industry to identify business processes not covered by existing ERP systems. A survey focused on qualitative aspects of ERP systems implementation in engineering construction firms was conducted among ERP-enablers in the construction industry and provided a basis for the presented case study. Data collected are from major engineering and construction firms in the United States and therefore the results are relevant for researchers and industry practitioners concerned with application of enterprise management systems in the respective firms.     

Resource Management in Construction

Resource plannirtg and management is one of the most important ingredients for competitiveness and profitability in today's construction industry. In order to control costs, equipment and labor should be utilized in the most efficient way possible. This can be achieved by minimizing the total cost of leased resources under the constraint of maximum and most efficient use of owned equipment and contracted labor force. This paper presents a mixed‐integer linear programming model for the management of resources throughout the project life. Based on the Critical Path Method time analysis, the model derives the schedule for equipment rentals and transient resources, as well as the utilization scheme for owned equipment and other available resources. The model can be used as an estimating tool for multi‐project resource planning and sharing, and as a means to implement the most efficient utilization of resources throughout the duration of the whole project.     

Conceptual Planning Process for Electrical Construction

The competitive nature of the construction industry has motivated many specialty contractors to search for ways to improve efficiency by increasing their quality and decreasing their costs in order to strengthen their market share. As a result, contractors are turning to “better planning” as a method for improving their efficiency and, consequently, increasing their profitability. In fact, a consensus exists in the construction industry that more formalized preconstruction planning is necessary to remain successful in an increasingly competitive industry. This paper presents a model electrical preconstruction planning process that was crafted from outstanding processes used on several successful electrical projects. Furthermore, a method to evaluate the effectiveness of planning, by comparing actual planning to the model process, is briefly introduced. From this assessment, “effective planning” was correlated to project outcome, and evidence is provided that better planning is, indeed, related to successful performance.     

Issues in Professional Construction Management

The use of professional construction management has increased rapidly since the introduction of this form of organization in the early 1960's. Despite this widespread use questions concerning the scope, definition, and differences in implementation of this project delivery system remain. An ASCE technical committee has investigated these questions and disseminated information concerning professional construction management through technical sessions at ASCE meetings, published papers, and a specialty conference. This paper summarizes the results of these activities and provides references of the literature available regarding the development and use of professional construction management.     

Formalism for Construction Inspection Planning: Requirements and Process Concept

Inspectors currently do not have adequate planning support to prevent inefficient or overlooked inspections and undetected defects. Underlying this problem is the lack of a planning formalism for specifying inspection goals and for developing and selecting inspection plans. This paper discusses the requirements for such a formalism. We describe sources of inspection knowledge and approaches for planning in general and for inspection planning specifically. We then describe a set of requirements for the representation and reasoning needed to support the use of available inspection knowledge to assist inspectors in the processes of creating sets of inspection plan alternatives and reducing that set to a smaller set of inspection plans for a given project.     

PDM++: Planning Framework from a Construction Requirements Perspective

Construction requirements represent the key preconditions for construction. These include topological precedence, key resources, space requirements, etc. Consequently, identifying them is necessary for feasible construction planning to be achieved. Despite this, little attention has been given to the impact of construction requirements on a project schedule, possibly because of the lack of a good tool for representing these requirements. This paper distinguishes construction requirements into static and dynamic types, according to changes in the need of the requirement during its life cycle. A modeling framework, PDM++, is then proposed. The framework deals with schedule constraints arising from both static and dynamic construction requirements, provides greater semantic expression to capture schedule constraints unambiguously, and facilitates the representation of interdependent conditional relationships. The concept of meta-intervals is also devised to represent complex requirements involving several activities and schedule constraints, and it facilitates modeling at higher levels of plan abstractions. Finally, an illustrative case study is presented to show the applicability of PDM++ in representing schedule constraints and alternative scheduling from a construction requirements perspective.     

Management Thinking in the Earned Value Method System and the Last Planner System

Management theory has been neglected in the construction industry, which has rather focused on best practices. This paper investigates the theories implicit in two prevalent project control systems: the earned value method (EVM) and the last planner system (LPS). The study introduces two fundamental and competing conceptualizations of management: managing by means (MBM) and managing by results (MBR). The EVM is found to be based on MBR. However, project control based on MBR is argued to be inappropriate for managing at the operational level where tasks are highly interdependent. The LPS is found to be based on the MBM view. The empirical evidence from literature and case study suggested that the MBM view is more appropriate to manage works when it is applied to the operation level where each task is highly interdependent.     

Project Planning for Construction under Uncertainty with Limited Resources

Much of the project scheduling literature treats task durations as deterministic. In reality, however, task durations are subject to considerable uncertainty, and that uncertainty can be influenced by the resources assigned. The purpose of this paper is to provide the means for contractors to optimally allocate their skilled workers among individual tasks for a single project. Instead of the traditional use of schedules, we develop control policies in the form of planned resource allocation to tasks that capture the uncertainty associated with task durations and the impact of resource allocation on those durations. We develop a solution procedure for the model and illustrate the ideas in an example. The data for the example is collected from a real project.     

Human Resource Data in the Construction Industry

Unionized construction workers in a major midwestern city were surveyed to collect data on education, training, experience, employment history, and a variety of other demographic variables. The characteristics of this local work force were analyzed and, where possible, contrasted with the data on the national construction labor force. The implications of the findings were discussed as they relate to the need for human resource planning in the construction industry. For example, the data indicated that younger workers are not joining unions in the same numbers as in the past. The anticipated result is a future shortage of skilled workers in the unionized sector of the industry, which has implications for construction productivity and for the funding of various worker benefits. The need for improved human resource planning was stressed.     

Application of Innovative Critical Chain Method for Project Planning and Control under Resource Constraints and Uncertainty

This research proposes an innovative critical chain method (ICCM) for project planning and control under resource constraints and uncertainty. An improved genetic algorithm is developed to identify the critical chain and to obtain the optimal start time of each activity under the most optimistic duration of each activity and resource constraints. Furthermore, a feeding buffer is added in an insert point in order to deal with uncertainties. The benefits of applying this ICCM are demonstrated in an example project.     

Parallel Computing Framework for Optimizing Construction Planning in Large-Scale Projects

Available construction optimization models can be used to generate optimal tradeoffs between construction time and cost, however their application in optimizing large-scale projects is limited due to their extensive and impractical computational time requirements. This paper presents the development of a parallel computing framework in order to circumvent this limitation. The framework incorporates a multi-objective genetic algorithm module that identifies optimal trade-offs between construction time and cost; and a parallel computing module that distributes genetic algorithm computations over a network of processors. The performance of the framework is evaluated using 150 experiments that represent various combinations of project sizes and numbers of processors. The results of this analysis illustrate the robust capabilities of the developed parallel computing framework in terms of its efficiency in reducing the computational time requirements for large-scale construction optimization problems, and its effectiveness in obtaining high quality solutions identical to those generated by a single processor.     

Non-Unit-Based Planning and Scheduling of Repetitive Construction Projects

Repetitive scheduling methods are more effective than traditional critical path methods in the planning and scheduling of repetitive construction projects. Nevertheless, almost all the repetitive scheduling methods developed so far have been based on the premise that a repetitive project is comprised of many identical production units. In this research a non-unit-based algorithm for the planning and scheduling of repetitive projects is developed. Instead of repetitive production units, repetitive or similar activity groups are identified and employed for scheduling. The algorithm takes into consideration: (1) the logical relationship of activity groups in a repetitive project; (2) the usage of various resource crews in an activity group; (3) the maintaining of resource continuity; and (4) the time and cost for the routing of resource crews. A sample case study and a case study of a sewer system project are conducted to validate the algorithm, as well as to demonstrate its application. Results and findings are reported.     

Greening Project Management Practices for Sustainable Construction

Environmentally sustainable building construction has experienced significant growth during the past 10 years. The public is becoming more aware of the benefits of green construction as prominent politicians, celebrities, documentarians, and journalists highlight the built environment’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions and natural resource consumption. Other factors, including higher energy prices, increased costs of building materials, and regulatory incentives, are also pushing the green building market to grow and expand. However, barriers to green building continue to exist, including the ability to deliver a green project within acceptable cost constraints. In order for project managers to deliver sustainable construction according to clients’ cost expectations, modifications must be made to traditional project management processes and practices. The objective of this paper is to suggest specific modifications to conventional building practices to optimize the delivery of cost-efficient green building projects. This paper presents an overview of research related to the costs and trends of green building and uses these research findings to make recommendations for greening project management practices for the construction industry. Our research results show that greening project management practices can add significant value to a sustainable construction project while delivering it within acceptable cost constraints. A detailed analysis using matrix present specific adjustments to traditional project management practices, with a premise that a green project improves its chances for financial success if a cross-discipline team is involved at the earliest stages and throughout the project.