Project-Specific Web Sites: Friend or Foe?

Recent research has shown that one of the keys to project success is effective communication. Today, project communication is becoming increasingly complex, and the rapid transmission of project information is vital to project performance. Unfortunately, our current information network is based on project “push”—where information is moved sequentially to and from each member of the project team. The alternative to push communication is “pull” communication, where individuals access project information from a single central source. Project-specific Web sites (PSWSs) give construction personnel new ways of pulling the information needed to design and build today's complex projects. This paper will describe information push and pull, and discuss its applications in project-specific Web sites. Additionally, the paper will outline a case study approach that uses a social network analysis to study push∕pull on three major construction projects. The research found that PSWSs can speed information flows on construction projects, but can also generate information “overload” that limits its effectiveness. More important, the study found that the success of new Internet-based technologies depends on the participation of key members of the project team. When one of these key players refuses to participate, then Internet-based project management systems quickly lose their effectiveness.     

A comparison of sevoflurane with halothane in outpatient adenotomy in children with mild upper respiratory tract infections

Our educational efforts produced several intersecting interdisciplinary groups: faculty, students, faculty/students and our community sites, with faculty, clinical staff, and students. As we worked through the issues, these interdisciplinary teams found that commitment to change, caring for patients, and open, honest communication were essential to keeping the project teams on track. We have increased our understanding of both the complexity and value of interdisciplinary collaborative education. The LIT faculty provided the initial guidance and support, the students energized the process, and our community sites made our learning and our contributions readily available to our patient populations. It is not easy to learn and teach the language and tools of continuous improvement, but doing so infinitely improves the educational process and the clinical outcome. We must learn to carefully listen to each other so that our patients can fully reap the benefits of our interdisciplinary team efforts. As a result of what we learned, the members of the George Team have expanded our motto to "Blessed Are the Flexible--and the Perseverant!"     

The Essential Management Manual

As companies keep restructuring, reorganizing and downsizing, it is important that standard operating procedures be identified and documented in a simple and usable format, such as a project management manual. This information is critical in project management, where corporate policies for the project delivery process need to be defined clearly. The Engineering Department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey compiled this type of comprehensive manual. Training sessions were held with staff to review the responsibilities and procedures required of the project team members The manual's framework should include a clear mission statement, simplified project delivery procedures, responsibilities of team members, information systems controls, and effective communication methods.     

Personal Construct-Based Factors Affecting Interpersonal Trust in a Project Design Team

Interpersonal trust is an important factor affecting the performance of the design team in a construction project. To improve the team’s performance, factors affecting interpersonal trust need to be identified thereby increasing trust between team members. A questionnaire survey of architects in project design teams is conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, and Qingdao, People’s Republic of China. Based on the personal construct theory, the survey collects personal construct-based factors which may affect interpersonal trust. Then the factors are tested using structural equation modeling method. Two significant factors i.e., “social interaction” and “attitude on work” are identified. The results suggest that team managers should enhance the social interactions between team members and provide guidance to team members about the correct attitude on work such that the level of interpersonal trust can be improved.     

Design and Build Project Success Factors: Multivariate Analysis

This study aimed to identify a set of project success factors for design and build (D&B) projects and examine the relative importance of these factors on project outcome. Six project success factors (project team commitment, contractor's competencies, risk and liability assessment, client's competencies, end-users' needs, and constraints imposed by end-users) were extracted from factor analysis of data provided by 53 participants of public-sector D&B projects through a questionnaire survey. Project team commitment, client's competencies, and contractor's competencies were found to be important to bring successful project outcome from the multiple regression findings. Contractor's competencies also contributed to project time performance. Project team members should also recognize that time and cost performance as well as quality of design and workmanship represent the key elements of overall success of D&B projects. Practitioners are advised to focus on teamwork and partnering for successful project completion. More research should be conducted to further explore the relationship between procurement method and project success factors.     

Monte Carlo Simulation Approach to Support Alliance Team Selection

The alliance concept is similar to the design build project delivery system. However, it is denoted by a special form of partnership between the owner and the design-build team, where the owner is very involved in the project. This type of delivery systems is gaining popularity as many infrastructure projects require the owner to order materials ahead of time, before engaging the design-build team in the project. As in design-build, the selection of the engineer-procure-construct team depends not only on the price but also on qualitative factors. This paper lays out the framework that facilitates selecting the best alliance team for a project by quantifying the evaluation factors and combining them into a single score. Using a Monte Carlo simulation and varying all the factors relevant to the decision problem can reveal biases present in the evaluation to assist in making the best possible decision. A case study dealing with a large utility project illustrates this methodology.     

Project Organizations as Social Networks

High-performance teams achieve outcomes that exceed the expectations of the project and often demonstrate unique or innovative approaches within a final solution. The foundation of this high performance is the ability to focus on the success of the team over individual objectives. However, the recognition of this emphasis is based on the establishment of professional trust and strong communications between the team members. The social network model of construction introduced a dual-focused approach to enhancing these elements and creating high-performance project teams. The approach emphasizes balancing both a traditional project management emphasis on efficiency of communications with a focus on the social factors that move the project team from efficient to effective. In this paper, the model is extended to present the results of four studies of organizations that are full-service engineering companies that also provide construction oversight services. The paper presents the results of these studies in terms of the social network model and the achievement of high performance in the project teams. Analytical and graphical results are presented based on social network analysis techniques to provide a multiperspective analysis of the project teams.     

Exploring the Potential for Predicting Project Dispute Resolution Satisfaction Using Logistic Regression

The success of a construction project depends on the coordinated efforts of project team members. This is especially crucial when a project is in dispute and hence the achievement of satisfactory project dispute resolution is critical to project success. This proposition has been empirically demonstrated a previous research that studied project dispute resolution satisfaction (DRS) using multivariate discriminant analysis (MDA). This paper reports on a study that builds on that research, with the specific aim of predicting project DRS through the use of logistic regression (LR). In this study, a LR model of project DRS (Model 1) is developed, and then compared with the MDA model. The findings suggest that the LR technique provides a higher hit rate and thus a higher proportion of correct classification. With the wider acceptance of the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods, the effect, on the LR model, of changing the demarcation between adverse and favorable project DRS is also examined. For this examination, another LR model (Model 2) was developed. It is believed that Model 2 may reflect the prevailing sentiment that ADR is viewed as an amicable way to resolve disputes. Both the MDA model and LR models (Model 1 and Model 2) indicated that “design changes” are the root cause of adverse project DRS. Within the scope of the project data, these findings suggest that design changes are not just disruptive to project progress but also a critical cause of construction disputes.     

Optimal Project Organizational Structure for Construction Management

This study relies on the trend model to investigate various modes of coordination among team members of construction projects. According to the project network developed based on the characteristics of a project, the trend model establishes an activity relationship matrix (ARM) to identify the activity relationships within the construction process. ARM is used to construct an organizational structure for project management and a communication resistance matrix that shows the efficiency of communication and coordination among the members of the project team. To evaluate various organizational structures and their coordination efficiencies, this study utilizes the analytical hierarchy process to quantify the strength of an organizational structure and identify the optimal structure for project management. Through quantitative modeling of communication efficiency among organizational team members, an objective function for calculating the total resistance index is used to determine the optimal organizational structure available to execute the project. This study demonstrates how the trend model may be applied in the future for evaluating the coordination efficiencies of various organizational structures.     

Alternative Dispute Resolution Techniques: Design Professional's Perspective

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques offer members of the design‐construct community the opportunity to resolve disputes without having to resort to expensive and lengthy litigation. Disputes inevitably arise because elements of the design‐construct process, such as contracts, specifications, and personnel, are not perfect. Even with a qualified project team that is dedicated to the construction of a quality project, some disputes will occur. Knowing this, a project team's primary objective should be to anticipate circumstances which might generate a dispute and to develop proactive strategies for dealing with such circumstances. When a dispute does occur, internal negotiation should be tried first. This process involves decision makers—those involved financially and those who understand the ultimate impacts of the dispute on the quality and long‐term success of the project. Lawyers should not actively participate in internal negotiation except as a last resort. If this process does not generate a settlement, mediation and arbitration should be tried before commencing litigation proceedings. ADR is an approach to dispute resolution that may be less expensive and time‐consuming, and is more likely to yield “win‐win” settlements than other dispute resolution techniques.     

Settling Velocity Grading of Particle Bound PAHs: Case of Wet Weather Flows within Combined Sewer Systems

The elaboration, management, and design of the sedimentation devices require an improved knowledge not only on the suspended solids (SS) settling velocity but also on the distributions of these particulate pollutants by category of SS settling velocity. Nevertheless, there is currently a lack of available data regarding the settling velocity grading of particle bound pollutants. As a consequence, this study investigating the settling velocity grading of particle bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in wet weather flows within combined sewers was launched. The pursed objectives were to compare the SS and PAH settling velocity grading curves and hence to assess whether or not PAHs were associated with a specific settling velocity category. Investigations were carried out for three storms at two sampling sites within the Parisian combined sewer. Results indicate that most of PAHs seem to be preferentially associated with particles with a settling velocity >0.3?mm?s?1.     

Leadership and Organizational Vision in Managing a Multiethnic and Multicultural Project Team

To meet the demands of managing complex projects, project leaders face challenges of daily leadership behavior and organizational vision to manage a project team. The challenges are compounded when the task of creating a project culture is also influenced by cultural, ethnic and corporate differences. A program management team involves many disciplines: project management, planning and engineering, cost estimating, scheduling, material procurement, program controls, management information systems, administration, construction inspection, and others. Different personality types often gravitate to predictable areas of function during the course of their careers. Managing these differing personality types is one challenge of program leadership. Another equal challenge is managing people of widely differing cultural and ethnic backgrounds. What is regarded as a routine order by one culture can be considered as an extreme insult by another. Good natured American jokes about one group can deeply offend members of that group even though the intentions may not be malicious. In addition to these ethnic and cultural sensitivities, the personalities attracted to the individual disciplines can be even more magnified. The greatest challenge of leadership lies in identifying strengths and similarities while valuing the differences to accomplish the common program management goals. The program management team used as an example in this paper consists of native born Caucasian Americans, African-Americans, African-Caribbeans, Middle-Easterners, Asian-Indians, Mexicans, Cuban-Americans and other Latin-Americans. The paper discusses the experiences of adopting different leadership styles, behavior and communication links to improve the performance of individual leaders and management team.     

Comparing Procurement Methods for Design-Build Projects

The design-build delivery method is increasingly used in the United States due to numerous advantages it can offer a project. An important issue associated with design-build delivery is the procurement method used to select the design-build team. It is a critical decision that involves several key project team members, including the owner, designer, and contractor organizations, and requires the owner to carefully choose the design-build procurement method that will be used to select the team that will deliver the project. This research quantitatively analyzed the correlation between the design-build procurement method and the performance of the design-build project with regard to cost, time, and quality metrics. The procurement methods studied were sole source, qualifications-based, best value, and low bid selection. Data were collected through surveys from 76 design-build projects in the United States. Based on the patterns and relationships identified from these data, a better understanding of the procurement process and how it influences project performance is achieved. The impact of project-specific factors and guidelines are presented to assist owners in selecting the design-build team procurement method that responds to their project goals.     

Goal congruence in project teams: Does the fit between members' personal mastery and performance goals matter?

Research on team goals rarely considers the impact of congruence in perceptions of personal goals of self versus other members. In this study of 324 members of 64 short-term project teams, polynomial regression analysis was used to explore how congruence in personal and perceived team mastery and performance goals affected individual outcomes. Results indicated that congruence in perceived performance goals elicited greater individual satisfaction and contributions, regardless of goal strength (i.e., high or low personal performance goals). Conversely, perceived team mastery goals had a greater effect on individual outcomes than did perceived congruence in self- other mastery goals. Congruent self-actual team goals showed weaker but similar relationships to individual outcomes, but contrary to hypotheses, this effect was not mediated by congruence in perceived self-other goals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Web-Based Decision Support Systems: Case Study inProject Delivery

The decentralized nature of the construction industry contributes to difficulties in the implementation and dissemination of project management-based decision tools. The majority of decision support systems (DSS) are contained in-house with private developers and users, or on researchers stand-alone computers and academic journals. Current World Wide Web technologies provide the appropriate means for large-scale implementation and continued development of DSS for the architectural, engineering, and construction community. This paper documents a DSS developed specifically for design∕build project selection among United States public sector agencies. The system, the Design∕Build Selector (DBS), is Web enabled, allowing for easy access and large-scale dissemination. Design∕build project procurement is rapidly expanding throughout public sector agencies in the United States construction industry. As public agencies turn to design∕build, appropriate project selection is a primary consideration affecting successful delivery. Prior to the implementation of DBS, there was no systematic or formalized method for selecting projects appropriate for design∕build. Since 1997, the Web site that houses the DBS has been visited by over 4,000 people, and the DBS tool has been used on 102 projects representing over $4.8 billion in construction. This paper reports on the application and potential for Web-based DSS in civil engineering. The architecture of the program, data collection, model weighting, and output interface are explained.     

Global Dimension of Robust Project Network Design

Managing the increased complexity, emerging uncertainties, and diversity of cultures on global projects is creating significant challenges for architecture, engineering, and construction firms. In global projects, differences in “institutions”—including language, beliefs, values, group norms, work practices, professional roles, industry organizations, and legal frameworks—among team members from different national backgrounds can lead to misunderstanding and conflicts that cause delays, increase costs, and reduce quality. Previous research has examined risk factors associated with international project execution. However, little research to date has explored whether reconfiguring project networks might mitigate such risks. Project organizational simulation tools have been combined with “robust design” experimental techniques to design robust project networks that can perform reliably in uncertain conditions. This paper extends project network design research to examine whether robust designs for given project networks differ between “domestic” and “global” projects, given differing organizational uncertainties. The results demonstrate that robust project network designs may differ for global project networks. This finding has significant implications for the design of project networks in an industry where firm participation in global project networks is increasing, both domestically and abroad.     

Managing the Decision-Making Process during Project Planning

In today's projects, the project team's decision-making process is critical to project planning. When making these decisions, however, the team must contend with the insidious elements of uncertainty and demand for speed that so often affect project performance and success. The project manager's principle role is to manage his∕her team's decision-making and not to make the decisions. By defining the constraints under which the team must operate, he or she can influence their decisions. A valuable tool is suggested to manage the decision-making process, in an atmosphere of uncertainty, with instructions for its application to any project. The tool is a dynamic table that is continuously modified as the project progresses. It is not only a prioritized checklist, but also gives a total view of the project so that the team can collect missing information and make timely decisions to ensure project success.     

Integrity: Marketing Yourself for Success

Incorporating the elements of professional ethics, quality of work and efficiency into your company's marketing strategy will enable the company to win public trust. By marketing that trust, the company can become successful. Engineers can uphold their professional ethics by performing services only in which they are competent, avoiding conflicts of interest and endeavoring to continue their professional development. Quality of work can be achieved when the project manager has the necessary skills and experience to adequately staff a project and have a good working relationship with the client. To maintain efficiency, quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) should be a top priority. This can be accomplished by having a team of professionals who have used QA/QC techniques direct each project. Also, weekly meetings should be held and attended by key team members to review and resolve issues. All documents, reports, etc. should be submitted to a QC reviewer to verify accuracy of the project with respect to the design, state and federal regulations and professional evaluations.     

Improving Design Coordination for Building Projects. I: Information Model

Detailed design of building projects is a complex multidisciplinary process highly dependent upon effective aggregation of individual designs to produce a coherent set of final design documents. Throughout the detailed design process, changes are frequently introduced and need to be properly managed among the various members of the design team. This paper presents an information model for storing design information, recording design rationale, and managing design changes. The proposed model is built around a central library of generalized building components that can be used to describe a complete building project hierarchy. Each component allows the designer to store desired performance criteria and related design rationale. Each component is also sensitive to its own changes and automatically communicates such changes to affected parties through preset communication paths. The model, as such, provides improved design coordination and control over changes, thus helping to increase the consistency and productivity of the overall design process. Conceptual details of the model are described in this paper, and model implementation into a collaborative design system is presented in a companion paper.