Evaluation of Differing Subsurface Ground Conditions in Construction Contracts

Subsurface ground conditions present a big factor of uncertainty in a construction project. It is difficult to determine subsurface ground conditions even with a prebid site investigation. Nevertheless, such conditions must be included in the bid price. Due to this uncertainty, claims arise during the construction of a project. Many claims end up in litigation. This paper presents an analysis of legal cases dealing with differing subsurface ground conditions in construction contracts. By creating a database containing salient features from legal cases related to subsurface ground conditions, this research identifies the most important factors influencing the outcome of legal cases pertaining to subsurface ground conditions. Further, the most commonly used arguments by the litigating parties and the precedent cases supporting them are identified and categorized.     

Emerging Tools to Enable Construction Engineering

Those working within the domain of construction engineering—the planning and management of the construction of infrastructure assets—today employ a wide range of information technology tools. The vast majority of these tools are used on desktop computers processing tabular information associated with scheduling, tracking, updating statuses, reporting, and similar tasks. In spite of the significant penetration of information technology into construction engineering, there is little direct reuse of the engineering information created during the design phase. Likewise, access to rich engineering information and applications to exploit this information have yet to be extended to mobile workers on the construction jobsite in any significant way. This paper explores a sampling of some of the emerging information technology tools that may be effectively applied to support construction engineering in the field.     

Resistivity Survey of the Subsurface Conditions in the Estuary of the Rio de la Plata

An electrical resistivity survey was performed at the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, as part of more comprehensive geotechnical investigations of the subsurface conditions. The studies were required for the emplacement of a 3.5-m-diameter conduit proposed for the discharge of the treated wastewater of the city of Buenos Aires. The soil profile at the site consists mainly of clays and silts underlain by a layer of dense sand. The dense sand layer is a confined aquifer, and the project required that the depth to the sand layer be perfectly determined. Previous geophysical surveys at the site and the general geotechnical conditions showed the inadequacy of seismic methods, which are usually adopted in similar environments. The resistivity method was determined to be a reliable alternative, even though there has been little experience in surveying shallow depth water for geotechnical investigations. The four-electrode Schlumberger electrode array was adopted for the resistivity survey. Some of the test devices were developed especially for the purpose of this project. Calibration of the method was achieved with data obtained from boreholes. The results show that the resistivity technique performed satisfactorily to the 40?m depth required in this project. As a result of the survey, the next geotechnical investigation was focused on a more reduced area and the required number of boreholes was reduced substantially.     

Identification of Decision Drivers for the Strategy of Incorporating Utility Relocations into Highway Construction Contracts

The adjustment of utilities prior to highway construction is a particularly complex and challenging operation. One strategy that has been adopted in the last two decades is to incorporate utility adjustment work into highway construction contracts. In theory, this approach eliminates or reduces some of the complications and risks of utility adjustments. This paper aims to identify and analyze the decision drivers for selecting this strategy and help alleviate its implementation challenges. To this end, a comprehensive literature review and several interviews with experts from state departments of transportation and utility companies were conducted. Assessment surveys regarding the performance of recent projects that used the combined strategy were performed. Conclusions and recommendations for future research are presented.     

Multiple-Criteria Evaluation for Value Management in Civil Engineering

This paper presents a fuzzy set-based approach for representing and synthesizing information about the different kinds of variables involved in the evaluation of a project’s value. The variables considered can be quantitative crisp or fuzzy as well as qualitative ordinal. The information is given either by a single expert or by a team of experts. The proposed methodology for summarizing and normalizing values aims at contributing to decision-making analysis in the context of multiple-criteria evaluation and group decision making. The conditions that the aggregation function to be used must satisfy are also discussed. The weighted sum is characterized under quite restrictive assumptions, presenting a theorem based on Cauchy’s functional equation. The aggregation function proposed is the weighted sum, with weights computed by a well-known analytic hierarchy process. A design is given of a fuzzy system for evaluating a project’s value in the context of construction in civil engineering.     

矿区地下管线探测及数据库建设方案

地下管线是矿山基础设施的重要组成部分,采用先进方法对矿区管线进行探测,查明管线现状,获取管线的属性信息和空间信息,利用GIS技术建立管线信息管理系统对矿区管线动态管理具有重要意义。针对矿区地下管线的分布特点,从探测前期准备、探测精度要求、工程质量检查和内业数据处理等方面对矿区地下管线的探测方法进行汇总,从管线数据标准化、管线系统数据库设计及管线信息系统组成等方面探讨利用GIS技术进行矿区地下管线数据库建设和系统开发的思路。     

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.     

Application of Dependency Structure Matrix for Activity Sequencing in Concurrent Engineering Projects

The dependency structure matrix (DSM) has been identified as an apt tool to represent information flows between activities. Using this representation, information dependency attributes can be organized and analyzed in a structured manner to identify activity groups and sequences for concurrent execution. Current DSM methodology requires significant efforts from the experts to estimate information dependency attributes. The methodology can be more widely used if the estimating efforts are reduced. This paper proposes two concepts to reduce the estimating efforts required for the DSM methodology. The first concept reduces the number of information dependency ratings required and the second concept reduces the effort to estimate the rating. The proposed concepts are structured into a procedure. This procedure is applied to the design phase of an induced draft cooling tower (IDCT) project and discussed. The paper also discusses the shortcomings and future directions of the present approach and concludes that the present approach is applicable in IDCT projects and can be extended to other types of projects.     

Knowledge-Assisted Retrieval of Online Product Information in Architectural/Engineering/Construction

With a better understanding about the product market, industry practitioners can make more informed decisions for product specification, selection, and procurement. However, current approaches that support Architectural/Engineering/Construction (A/E/C) information acquisition do not provide a comprehensive market scan. While the Internet provides an ever-growing resource for product information, existing approaches have limited capabilities to make use of this virtual market. Therefore, the writers have developed a knowledge-assisted approach to specifically address the potential of the virtual market—help retrieve A/E/C product information, particularly information about different manufacturers, from the Internet. The paper introduces the building blocks of the developed approach, which includes domain knowledge utilization, information retrieval (IR) techniques, and strategies that incorporate domain knowledge into knowledge-supported IR approaches. Specifically, domain knowledge represented in the form of a thesaurus was used with query expansion strategies under the framework of an adaptation of the extended IR Boolean model. It was concluded from the prototype validation that domain knowledge can be extremely helpful when acquiring A/E/C product information from online resources using the developed approach.     

Incorporating Domain Knowledge and Information Retrieval Techniques to Develop an Architectural/Engineering/Construction Online Product Search Engine

This paper introduces a domain-specific search engine, which was developed to take advantage of the growing online product information for surveying the virtual product market. Knowledge about a product was uniquely incorporated with query expansion operations and the extended Boolean model retrieval approach to handle issues associated with the search engine development. The search engine was designed to (1) represent and utilize the represented knowledge in the product domain; (2) identify online product information; and (3) then evaluate the collected online product information. A prototype search engine for testing was developed and statistically validated with five data sets with each data set being derived from a different type of product according to MasterFormat (Alexandria, Va.) categorization. The validation results indicated that compared with the tested general search engine or aggregated information service, the prototype was able to identify more distinct product manufacturers for procurement-related decision support.     

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.     

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.     

Experience from Two Resistivity Inversion Techniques Applied in Three Cases of Geotechnical Site Investigation

The combination of in situ geotechnical testing and continuously measured geophysical data can be a powerful tool in geotechnical site investigation. In two cases from Sweden and one case from Denmark electric resistivity surveys are used successfully in geotechnical site investigations. The main contribution of resistivity results is the possibility to interpret continuous geological models. An improved methodology combines two-dimensional (2D) smooth inversion and 2D laterally constrained inversion (2D-LCI) to significantly increase interpretability. The 2D smooth inversion has high horizontal resolution and 2D-LCI high vertical resolution. The possibility to add a priori information from, for example, drill log data to constrain the 2D-LCI increases the confidence in the inverted model and limits ambiguity. In a site investigation for a railway trench in southern Sweden a geotechnical data set is used as a priori data to increase the reliability of the inversion of the resistivity data. From this combined survey a complex Quaternary geology is described in detail. A slope stability study from south of Stockholm, Sweden, employed resistivity data together with refraction seismic and geotechnical drill log data. The result gives necessary geometrical information for the important geological units, for example for stability calculations. Both these surveys were performed with a multielectrode system. In the third case a pulled array resistivity survey was used to map the uppermost 15–20?m to estimate the distribution of the geological formations for freeway construction in Denmark. The result enables a more accurate estimate of the total freeway construction costs.     

Multiple Device Collaborative and Real Time Analysis System for Project Management in Civil Engineering

Complexity in civil engineering projects has increased over the years, which has led to an increase in the number of organizations involved in those projects. In today’s environment, these organizations operate in different parts of the world requiring their personnel to be geographically distributed. However, current project management practices require project personnel to be geographically collocated and, thus, are unable to provide the infrastructure to support geographically distributed project management teams. In addition, current project management practices require access to personal computer (PC) based resources for project information, which is not always a feasible alternative for on-site project personnel, as it requires certain hardware and office configurations. Thus, alternatives to PC-based resources such as personal digital assistants (PDA) or phones are needed for information access. Moreover, once project information has been conveyed to all project personnel, the system should aid them in terms of providing data analysis tools and presenting technical or management solutions to the problems encountered by the project personnel. This paper presents a collaborative project management system with a knowledge repository, analysis resources, and multiple device access to support the infrastructure of distributed project management teams in complex architecture/engineering/construction projects. The primary goal for such a system would be to provide a platform where project information can be effectively shared with any of the project management personnel from anywhere and with a very few limitations on the computing device.     

工程项目中的安全生产管理案例分析

结合大冶有色金属股份有限公司阳极炉改造工程安全生产管理实例,分析了建立工程建设项目中安全组织保证体系、实行施工安全措施、制定安全应急预案的重要性。     

Exploring the Effectiveness of Chinese-to-English Machine Translation for CLIR Applications in Earthquake Engineering

Machine translation is able to support cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) applications given the availability of high-quality translation resources. This study explores the effectiveness of machine translation for the domain of earthquake engineering within the bounds of Chinese-to-English CLIR applications. The writers first defined and then applied a set of procedures to generate Chinese-to-English translation resources for the selected domain. The generated resources are unique and different from general dictionaries or corpora because they address the Chinese segmentation process and are especially oriented for information retrieval (IR) applications. To test the quality of the resources, the writers converted a test collection of documents from Chinese into English through machine translation and conducted trial retrieval runs on the translated documents using different retrieval models. For comparison purposes, the same retrieval runs were also tested on the expert-written English translations. The results suggest that IR-based machine translation was able to yield results comparable to that of human translation and the generated resources had the potential to enable greater sharing of earthquake engineering information across languages while reducing manual translation efforts.     

Risk-Based Safety Impact Assessment Methodology for Underground Construction Projects in Korea

Safety of construction projects may be affected by various factors such as types and scale of projects, construction methods, safety management procedure, climate, site conditions, etc. Among them is the quality of design in relation to safety. Presently, however, designers typically are not involved in construction safety. They are often uncertain of their responsibilities in relation to construction safety and fail to be responsible for avoiding or reducing safety-related risks. In this study, the concept of safety impact assessment to achieve “design-for-safety” in the design phase is introduced. For this purpose, a safety impact assessment model was devised, and a methodology using the risk-based safety impact assessment approach for open-cut type underground construction projects in Korea is suggested. The suggested methodology includes a safety information survey, classification of safety impact factors caused by design and construction, and quantitative estimation of magnitude and frequency of safety impact factors. A checklist which can be easily used for assessing the safety performance of design products is also proposed. A real-world case study on the safety impact assessment of a subway construction project in Korea is also provided in the paper.     

Building Information Modeling in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction: Emerging Research Directions and Trends

Currently, the architecture, engineering, and construction industry is facing enormous technological and institutional changes and challenges including the proliferation of information technology and appropriate application of sustainable practices. The 21st century engineer and architect must be able to deal with a rapid pace of technological change, a highly interconnected world, and complex problems that require multidisciplinary solutions. This paper focuses on research directions and trends around building information modeling (BIM) through interdisciplinary endeavors: how BIM research topics could be explored; their relevancy; and their potential future impact. It identifies BIM research topics that are considered to be important to a wide range of practitioners and future practitioners, both architecture and engineering students. It also assesses the relevance of current research projects to the industry and categorizes future BIM research topics. It aims to formulate research ideas and methodologies to pursue them and to explore how an industry/academic partnership for exploring exciting research opportunities could be established.     

Construction IT Decision Making Using Multiattribute Utility Theory for Use in a Laboratory Information Management System

This paper describes an objective process to select appropriate information technologies (ITs) for construction applications using the multiatttribute utility theory. Construction industry IT managers often find it difficult to objectively evaluate IT systems because each system has its own technical, economic, and risk considerations. This paper uses a multi-attribute utility theory to facilitate the decision-making process in such complex decisions. The theory’s basic premise is that the selection issue can be broken down into alternative attributes. Based upon the user’s tradeoffs among attributes, important weights are quantified and single-attribute utilities are measured. Finally, single-attribute utilities are combined to develop one single aggregate utility index for each alternative. A test is performed to use the utility theory to evaluate two different labeling approaches (radio-frequency identification and bar codes) for a construction material testing laboratory. Results showed that this technique has the ability to make decisions more objectively. Overall, the suggested model can also be adapted to evaluate other construction-related decisions, pertaining to other IT applications, equipment selection, and construction methods and techniques.     

黄金行业设备管理信息化建设的思考

简要介绍设备管理信息化建设的含义、意义和具体内容,着重分析目前黄金行业设备管理信息化建设的现状及存在问题;以黄金行业设备管理信息化建设的总体目标为指导,针对黄金行业设备管理的实际情况,提出了在信息化建设过程中的建议和措施。