Quality and Change Management Model for Large Scale Concurrent Design and Construction Projects

Concurrent design and construction has been lauded for streamlining projects in terms of time. However, such an approach may actually make projects more uncertain and complex than the traditional sequential design and construction process. The main sources of risk that have been identified with concurrent design and construction are iterative cycles that result from unanticipated errors and changes and their subsequent impacts on project performance. As an effort to address these detrimental impacts, a framework for quality and change management that identifies those negative iterative cycles is proposed. The proposed framework is incorporated into the system dynamics model of dynamic planning and control methodology (DPM), which has been developed to evaluate negative impacts of errors and changes on construction performance. Relevant to practitioners and researchers, the potential of DPM as a robust design and construction planning methodology that could effectively deal with errors and changes inherent in the design and construction process is demonstrated through a case study involving the Treble Cove road bridge in Massachusetts.     

Use of Multimedia and the World Wide Web in Civil Engineering Learning

The case study method, which has been proven to be a very useful learning tool, can be further enhanced with the use of multimedia and the World Wide Web. This paper demonstrates multimedia and Web-based enhancement with the design and construction of a port, a large-scale civil engineering project. The main purpose was to create an educational tool that brings into the classroom a “real-life” design and construction problem, including the construction field, operation of equipment, and details of construction methods. This enables civil engineering students to better understand the details of the planning, design, and construction of a complicated project. Furthermore, through the use of evaluation tests, feedback on the students’ understanding of the case study can be provided to both the students and the educator. This application can be expanded beyond an academic environment for use as a learning tool in a business environment, which may be especially beneficial for new engineers.     

Quantifying Engineering Project Scope for Productivity Modeling

A poor scope definition in an engineering design project disrupts project rhythm, causes rework, increases project time and cost, and lowers the productivity and morale of the workforce. A quantitative measurement of the project scope is the basis for productivity modeling that involves the measurement, estimation, control, and evaluation of productivity. This paper proposes a conceptual model, the quantitative engineering project scope definition (QEPSD), to standardize the measurement of engineering project scope in construction projects, within a computer aided design environment. The QEPSD quantitatively measures engineering project scope, in terms of the complexity of design items by defining design categories and complexity functions appropriate to the particular discipline. The proposed method was originally verified and implemented specifically for steel drafting projects. Actual data was analyzed and used to demonstrate the benefits of historical data prepared using QEPSD for project scope definition. It was found that the new method led to increased utilization of previously untapped values in historical data, improving the accuracy of project scope definition, and productivity modeling. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential benefits of adopting the QEPSD method, and its implications upon various project management functions.     

Reliability Buffering for Construction Projects

Buffering is a common practice in project planning. Project managers or schedulers have used a time contingency to guarantee the completion time of either an activity or a project. This traditional buffering, however, often fails to protect the project schedule performance, resulting in an unnecessary resource idle time. To deal with this problem, reliability buffering, a simulation-based buffering strategy, is presented. Reliability buffering aims to generate a robust construction plan that protects against uncertainties by reducing the potential impact of construction changes. The effectiveness of reliability buffering is examined by simulating a dynamic project model that integrates the simulation approach with the network scheduling approach. The research results indicate that reliability buffering can help achieve a shorter project duration without driving up costs by pooling, resizing, relocating, and recharacterizing contingency buffers. A case study of bridge construction projects also demonstrates how construction projects can benefit from reliability buffering in real world settings. Although further validation is needed, reliability buffering can potentially impact the planning and control of construction projects by improving the consideration of construction feedbacks and characteristics in buffering, and serving as an input to a dynamic project model.     

Distributed Augmented Reality for Visualizing Collaborative Construction Tasks

Augmented reality is a visualization method in which virtual objects are aligned with the real world and the viewer can interact with the virtual objects in real time. In this paper, a new methodology called distributed augmented reality for visualizing collaborative construction tasks (DARCC) is proposed. Using this methodology, virtual models of construction equipment can be operated and viewed by several operators to interactively simulate construction activities on the construction site in augmented reality mode. The paper investigates the design issues of DARCC including tracking and registration, object modeling, engineering constraints, and interaction and communication methods. The DARCC methodology is implemented in a prototype system and tested in a case study about a bridge deck rehabilitation project.     

Innovative Final-Year Undergraduate Design Project Course Using an International Project

This paper describes the organization and conduct of a 4th year capstone project for civil engineering students at the University of Calgary that embodied a very significant international component and the difficulties inherent to that component. The project design education process results in numerous contributions to university, industry, and society by permitting students to develop innovative design solutions that reflect multicultural influences, while also recognizing that Civil Engineering design is universal. This paper explains the novel approach adopted for the final-year civil engineering design course in 2002–2003 using the largest urban renewal project currently underway in Europe, for which the students had the opportunity to develop designs. The concept, structure, challenges, and contributions as well as the successful outcome of the civil engineering design course are also explained in the paper. Overall, this design project provided the students with valuable experience in communication, design, professional practice, and organizational skills that will be useful in their future careers, in addition to the challenges of dealing with a real and international client of a complex project.     

Case Study in Engineering History Education: Robert Stephenson’s “Last Great Work”—The Victoria Bridge in Montréal

The Victoria Bridge across the St. Lawrence River at Montréal is one of the great engineering achievements of the 19th century. At the time of its construction it was the largest bridge project in the world. It was also the last major project of the last of the “legendary” engineering figures of the “Victorian” era of engineering, Robert Stephenson. There were many doubters as to the ability of the engineers of the day to construct a project of this size given the physical conditions of the site. The story of the construction of the Victoria Bridge is one that combines business imperatives, engineering design skills, and construction ingenuity with the enormous challenges presented by one of the world’s great, fast flowing rivers and with the severity of Canadian winters and the massive “ice shoves” that occur as a result. Following its completion controversy raged as to who deserved the most credit for the conception and design of the bridge. The bridge was constructed between 1854 and 1860 and was formally opened by the Prince of Wales in the summer of 1860. Starting in 1897, the original Tubular Superstructure was replaced by pin-connected through trusses designed to carry two rail tracks with a roadway and sidewalk cantilevered out on each side. The bridge was formally reopened on October 16, 1901 and renamed the “Victoria Jubilee Bridge.” It continues to serve rail and road traffic to the present day.     

Urban Freeway Bridge Reconstruction Planning: Case of Mockingbird Bridge

Urban freeway bridge reconstruction is a challenging process. Sites are often located in heavily populated areas and are always congested with traffic and construction activities. Lack of adequate planning on such projects can result in tremendous waste in project cost and schedule, traffic flow efficiency, and most importantly, safety to both the traveling public and construction crews. Accordingly, a need exists to develop techniques to help plan and construct urban bridge projects more effectively. This paper documents the process of replanning a bridge project, Mockingbird Bridge. The case describes a research effort that beneficially applied several construction engineering concepts to the project. For the project, the research resulted in sizable savings in cost and duration. For the industry, the case resulted in several lessons for future projects. Among these, the primary lesson is that the integration of bridge reconstruction sequence, constructability, and traffic control plans is crucial to project success.     

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.     

Risk Allocation by Law—Cumulative Impact of Change Orders

Change, defined as any event that results in a modification of the original scope, execution time, or cost of work, is inevitable on most construction projects due to the uniqueness of each project and the limited resources of time and money available for planning. There are many factors that may cause a change such as design errors, design changes, additions to the scope, or unknown conditions in the field. For each change, contractors are entitled to an equitable adjustment to the base contract price and schedule for all productivity impacts associated with the change. The focus of this paper is to outline the types of changes that can occur on a construction project and also to spell out the financial recovery possibilities that exist for the contractor for each type of change. There are many historical and current court decisions that shape the outcomes of such claims and determine who holds the risks associated with various project changes. Also, an effective cumulative impact claim contains certain vital elements upon which the final outcome will be determined by the legal system. Last, there are certain actions that a contractor and owner can do to either enhance or mitigate the effectiveness of a potential cumulative impact claim.     

Braced Excavations: Temperature, Elastic Modulus, and Strut Loads

Relationships between strut loads, earth pressures, temperatures, and the measurements provided by strain gauges are presented in this paper. A braced excavation up to 20-m deep, 9–20 m wide, and >650-m long constructed in competent glacially derived sand, silt, and clay soils (including glacial till) provided a significant amount of data for analysis. The excavation was supported by soldier piles and lagging with pipe struts and was covered with decking during construction. A direct correlation between incremental changes in strut load and temperature was observed during the course of the project. The few existing relationships between strut load and temperature were reexamined and were found to produce back-calculated elastic modulus values that were either without comparison or inconsistent with data from field tests and published sources. The relationships derived as a result of this work are supported by limited case-history data from other published sources and are consistent with practical application of elastic deformation concepts and published soil modulus values.     

Feasibility Study of an Automated Tool for Identifying the Implications of Changes in Construction Projects

Because of the fragmented nature of project information, decisions on changes in construction projects are usually based on project design instead of project requirements. This research proposes a new approach for coping with changes in construction projects: A change control tool (CCT) that will identify implications of a change as soon as it is proposed. The tool will ensure that the stakeholders involved in the decision process in which change proposals are evaluated will know in advance if a change could cause the project to stray from its original goals, as expressed in the requirements. The proposed CCT uses the building program as a link between client requirements and the building design and traces the different relationships that exist between the requirements in the project. The relationships are traced using requirement traceability capabilities on the level of a specific space in the project and on the level of the entire project. A preliminary CCT model was developed and pilot studies implementing the model have been conducted. The pilot studies have given positive results, indicating that the CCT could identify the scope of the proposed changes’ implications.     

Design Engineers' Responsibilities During Construction

A dilemma can face design engineers if they have to choose between their perceived and actual responsibilities during construction of the project they designed. This dilemma can be particularly significant for specialized underground construction involving soild‐structure interaction. Such construction represents unique and unusual situations in which design, inspection, and construction functions cannot be separated. Two cases in which specialized construction quality control was not provided by the designer of subsurface structures are reviewed. In both cases defective construction was later discovered and the projects were abandoned. The design engineer is placed at risk when the owner does not agree to engage a knowledgeable specialist for quality control of the construction work. The engineer should identify in writing the risks the owner is electing to accept by contracting for a lower level of quality control than, in the engineer's judgment, is less than prudent for the project.     

Pilot Study of Quality Function Deployment in Construction Projects

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a process that has been used for managing the development of new manufactured products. In this process, both spoken and unspoken needs of the customers are determined, prioritized, and translated to design parameters. Such design parameters are assigned specific target values and are frequently checked against customers’ needs throughout the development cycle to ensure customers’ satisfaction with the end product. This paper describes a pilot study in which QFD was implemented in a design-construction project. The project scope involved the preparation of a conceptual design for a modern large-size classroom for college students. The design was intended to become a model for the university’s future classrooms. The study proved that QFD could be successfully adopted in engineering-construction projects. However, the study identified a number of implementation challenges. In addition, more applications are necessary to take the process throughout the full project delivery cycle, as the pilot study involved only the preliminary engineering and conceptual design phase.     

Lessons Learned: Failure of a Hydroelectric Power Project Dam

The case of a hydroelectric power project is presented to show how lack of understanding and poor filter design, along with insufficient control of construction quality, caused the failure of a dam. This paper summarizes the forensic investigations and attempts to explain the conditions that led to the formation of sinkholes on the embankment slope and the subsequent initiation of progressive failure of the embankment. The steps necessary to restart the power project, including the final remedial design, are then detailed. This paper also discusses how the functions of various engineering design components are integrated in the context of failure of the embankment. This case serves as a lesson for practicing engineers concerning the difficult technical, professional, and procedural issues that may arise during the design and construction of critical infrastructures.     

As-Built Information Model for Bridge Maintenance

The transportation infrastructure is key to economic development in the United States. Providing a high level of serviceability through periodic inspection and maintenance is important in keeping the transportation system operational and in avoiding major replacement efforts. Of particular importance is the inventory of bridges in the national transportation infrastructure, due to their high cost and direct impact on public safety. The focus of this paper is on information management in support of bridge maintenance functions. Particularly, the research project discussed in the paper addresses the need for inclusion of construction as-built data in the bridge management database along with the periodic inspection and maintenance data. Attention to this type of data has been lacking. Therefore, the paper promotes bridge as-built data, discusses its role in bridge management, and demonstrates the proper design of an as-built information management model and system that is integrated with existing standard bridge management systems such as Pontis.     

Benefits of Small Projects Team Initiative

Ordinarily, minimum design costs are associated with all construction projects regardless of their size or complexity. Consequently, the design costs are a higher percentage of the overall costs for small projects. This paper presents an analysis of the effectiveness of the Small Projects Team Initiative (SPTI) developed and implemented by the Seattle district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. SPTI is intended to lower the design costs on construction projects where the design scope is simple and∕or the administrative and construction processes are somewhat routine. The Small Projects team consists of representatives from contracting, construction, engineering, and project management. This team produces specifications for selected projects with simplified design, design by shop drawing, and innovative contracting arrangements. Data from 77 projects completed within the Seattle district are compared with the data from 146 pre-SPTI jobs. Statistically confirmed benefits include reduced design costs and reduced schedule growth (when user requested changes are excluded). Lower median change-order rates are not confirmed, but further analysis of the nature of changes is recommended.     

Relating Cost Growth from the Initial Estimate to Design Fee for Transportation Projects

Intuitively, there should be a relationship between the size of the design fee for a transportation project and the quality of the resulting design. This study sought that relationship by looking at the fee expressed as a percentage of the construction cost and the final construction cost growth from the engineer’s initial estimate of the construction cost at the time the design contract was awarded. The research team analyzed 31 projects from the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority with a total construction value of $90 million. The projects were divided into road and bridge projects. Based on the results of the analysis, it seems that as the design fee decreases, the absolute percentage of construction cost growth from the engineer’s early estimate increases. The relationship is strongest for bridge projects, which tend to be more technically complex to design than roadway projects. This confirms for U.S. projects the result of an earlier study in Saudi Arabia. This paper concludes that the design fee should be viewed as an investment at a point in time where the ability to impact the project is the highest and can accrue the benefit of reduced cost growth.     

Outcome of 5 mm resection of one medial rectus extraocular muscle for recurrent exotropia

Linking natural and social sciences is required in engineering to communicate and solve problems. However, this linkage can be difficult to achieve in engineering education and difficult to reflect on in professional practice. Due to the difficulties, methods to bring social sciences into the engineering curriculum should be presented. This paper describes a project to construct a bridge in rural Guatemala. Engineers, students, and others volunteered to construct the bridge while learning about the culture. The study goal was to determine how the service activity supported social science and engineering education. Data including participant responses to written, free-response, and Likert scale questions were collected after project completion. The project was a positive experience for North American engineering participants in that they gained an increased understanding of professional and ethical responsibility. The experience enhanced the engineering profession, increased nonengineer’s appreciation of engineering, and supported educational items, such as increased understanding in engineering solutions in a societal context and the ability to function on a multidisciplinary team. Socioeconomic differences, food and diet, and the importance of infrastructure, for not only developing but also developed countries, is described. The bridge project also provides information regarding the positive, ethical work of engineers and serves as a pilot for developing new international engineering projects.