Benchmarking, Benchaction, and Benchlearning: Rework Mitigation in Projects

The Australian government has issued several calls to improve the performance of the construction industry. A lack of available benchmark metrics has made it difficult, if not impossible, for organizations to identify areas to target for process improvement. A significant factor that has been found to contribute to poor organizational and project performance is rework. Using the results of a questionnaire survey, the paper presents and discusses a series of benchmark metrics for the causes and costs of rework for 161 construction projects. A generic framework for benchmarking rework at the interfaces of a project’s life cycle is proposed, and unstructured interviews are used to subject the proposed framework to validation by industry practitioners.     

Difficulties and Hindrances Facing End Users of Electronic Information Exchange Systems in Design and Construction

Since information and communication technology (ICT) was introduced into the construction industry over a decade ago, the once fledging technologies have now been well developed. ICT has been commonly adopted, particularly in places where speedy construction is the norm, e.g., in Hong Kong. At the time when ICT is seemingly well developed, this paper aims at identifying the difficulties and hindrances facing the end users of such information exchange systems during design and construction and the consequential effects on project performance. Through literature review, a series of structured interviews, and a questionnaire survey, it is found that industry users welcomed the advancement of ICT, but that the necessary technical and psychological supports from their organizations were insufficiently provided. In addition, significant differences on the hindrances and their consequential effects have been identified between end users in the private sector and those in the public sector. The study findings have also highlighted factors impeding the smooth implementation of ICT systems at the end-user level, which would help organizations to formulate effective strategies to cope with ever-evolving communication technologies and changes in working style.     

Paving the Way to the Vision of Digital Construction: A Strategic Roadmap

The paper provides a synthesis of the construction industry needs and requirements in relation to the adoption and use of information and communication technologies (ICT). This is based, on the one hand, on existing research and technology development initiatives commissioned at a national and European level, and, on the other, on a wide consultation with construction industry key players across Europe. A framework, used as a basis for capturing industry requirements, and formulating an ICT vision, has been defined. Five priority areas have been identified with the potential to solve the ICT related problems of the construction industry, namely: knowledge management, legal and contractual aspects management, quality and performance management, total lifecycle management, and human aspects management. The ICT vision, enabled by addressing these priority areas, has been formulated on a consensus basis, and a detailed roadmap has been developed providing a pragmatic implementation of the proposed vision.     

Benchmarking Initiatives in the Construction Industry: Lessons Learned and Improvement Opportunities

Benchmarking is a systematic process of measuring and comparing an organization’s performance against that of other similar organizations in key business activities. The lessons learned from other companies can be used to establish improvement targets and to promote changes in the organization. The benchmarking process can create a fertile ground for ideas, but only in a receptive environment; companies that share good practices and compare their performance against others benefit most. Recently, industry groups in several different countries have initiated benchmarking programs focused mainly on construction performance measures. This paper describes the scope of these initiatives and discusses the lessons learned and improvement opportunities that were identified in their design and implementation. This investigation is focused on four initiatives, carried out in Brazil, Chile, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This paper concludes by recommending some further directions on this research topic.     

Construction Contractors' Claim Process Framework

The management of construction claims is the greatest challenge that is facing contractors in today's vacillating business environment. Construction projects are becoming increasingly susceptible to a variety of factors that give rise to time extension and cost recovery. Although the construction business environment has moved toward partnering arrangements in recent years, the number of contractual difficulties continue to rise. Thus, the construction industry needs to develop methodologies for construction claim management that should overcome their current problems. While some practitioners have been using some kind of a procedure for claim management process framework measuring tool, a written exposition of such an instrument is not widely available in the literature. This paper presents the principles that underly construction claim process and gives a generic framework that aims at facilitating measurement of construction claim process as one of the strategies for improving construction business processes. It also presents a survey of Malawian construction contractors' performance on the construction claim process framework. The results show a low awareness of such a construction claim process-measuring instrument.     

Effectiveness of ICT for Construction Information Exchange among Multidisciplinary Project Teams

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) has been commonplace in the construction industry, with the increased functionalities of intranets and extranets in a web-based environment. Yet, human and organizational hindrances bring about consequences which affect the effectiveness of these online collaboration tools. Through a cross-sectional study of six construction-related organizations via interviews with ICT developers and users, these hindrances and consequences are highlighted against contextual backgrounds which depict a wide spectrum of ICT use in the construction industry. The results underpin a questionnaire survey which identified the most frequently encountered hindrances, such as self-discipline, technical support, and system capacity, both for internal and external information exchanges. These hindrances, together with undesirable behaviors such as the tendency to forward information to irrelevant parties and ignore information, would result in double handling and missing of time targets. Results also show that public organizations seem to be less prone to the discipline problems. While ICT advances, it is imperative that users make the best use of it by understanding and avoiding the pitfalls.     

Understanding Construction Industry Experience and Attitudes toward Integrated Project Delivery

Integrated project delivery (IPD) seeks to improve project outcomes through a collaborative approach of aligning the incentives and goals of the project team through shared risk and reward, early involvement of all parties, and a multiparty agreement. Although there has been a huge interest in IPD in principle, the current adoption status by the construction industry is unknown. Several professional organizations are supporting the advancement of IPD, and several projects have demonstrated its benefits; however, the amount of projects using IPD remains relatively small. This research is based on the results of a web-based survey that was designed to target a wide range of construction professionals in an effort to shed light on current status of IPD use and its future widespread adoption by the construction industry. The paper attempts to provide hard data concerning the knowledge and experience levels of construction professionals regarding IPD as well as their opinions concerning its benefits and problems as a project delivery method.     

Adoption and Use of Interorganizational ICT in a Construction Project

The objective of this research is to explain why actors are not using interorganizational information and communication technology (ICT) in construction projects in the intended way, by determining the mechanisms that influence the way actors use this ICT over time during a construction project. This explorative research results in a theoretical model that contains four key categories that explains the way actors use ICT in construction projects: (1) personal motivation; (2) external motivation; (3) knowledge and skills; and (4) acting opportunities. The model is compared with three existing influential models about the adoption and use of ICT: the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, the theory of planned behavior, and the technology acceptance model. In these models missing elements are found. In addition, it is found that fundamental characteristics of construction projects, such as the fragmented and temporarily nature of construction projects, and the different working practices, resources, and objectives of the organizations involved cause most of the barriers to the intended use of interorganizational ICT.     

Comparative Study of the Variables in Construction Project Briefing/Architectural Programming

Briefing is the process by which client requirements are identified, clarified, and articulated in the early design stage of construction projects. It is crucial to the successful delivery of construction projects. Considerable research has been conducted in briefing during the past two decades. However, researchers consider many current briefing practices to be inadequate, and little research has been done in sufficient depth to explore briefing variables in the construction industry. This paper introduces a comprehensive framework of the variables that have an impact on construction project briefing. A questionnaire survey was conducted to validate these variables among project managers and architects in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The results indicate that although no significant differences existed between the samples in the United Kingdom and the United States on the variables for construction project briefing, the views of the samples in Hong Kong deviated from the two Western countries. The Western professionals have more positive answers to most statements in the questionnaire. The findings have significant implications for industry practitioners in producing their guidelines for the briefing process and for writers in drafting how-to briefing guide for construction projects.     

Legal Aspects of Information and Communication Technologies Implementation in the Turkish Construction Industry: Applicability of eLEGAL Framework

With increasing awareness of gains and importance of the strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the implementation rate of ICTs in the construction sector is increasing. However, these technologies have not been covered by legal and contractual practices. The industry needs to implement application frameworks and legal restructuring of the existing related laws and regulations to use ICT in a legal and contractually valid environment. The EU-funded eLEGAL project, which defined a legal framework for ICT uptake in construction, is selected as a model project to address legal and contractual issues regarding ICT use in the Turkish construction industry. The applicability of this project’s results are discussed by using real cases and defining the barriers, opportunities, methods, and tools to use ICT in a legally admissible manner in the Turkish construction industry.     

Predicting and Evaluating Construction Trades Foremen Performance: Fuzzy Logic Approach

This paper illustrates a fuzzy logic model for use in predicting and evaluating the performance of construction trades foremen. The model assists in measuring the effectiveness of a foreman, monitoring improvements in effectiveness over time, and identifying areas where a foreman requires training or mentoring to improve his/her performance. This paper also discusses the factors that affect the performance of a foreman in each area of responsibility. The structure of the model and the use of fuzzy logic are described. The model is validated using data collected from an actual construction company, illustrating its high level of linguistic accuracy. This model is relevant to researchers and makes a contribution to performance evaluation by developing a methodology for evaluating and predicting the performance of construction trades foremen. The model provides a complete approach for handling uncertainty inherent in performance evaluation by using fuzzy logic. The use of fuzzy logic in the model allows users to express themselves linguistically and to make assessments that are subjective in nature. It is relevant to construction industry practitioners since it provides them with a useful technique for evaluating the performance of foremen and identifying the factors that affect their performance on a daily basis. Last, the model offers the advantage of benchmarking foreman performance, allowing organizations to develop plans to improve the performance of their foremen over time.     

Feasibility of national benchmarking of patient satisfaction with Australian hospitals

PURPOSE: This paper discusses the feasibility of developing national benchmark questions on patient satisfaction with hospital care in Australian hospitals. The research was undertaken for the Australian government under the National Health Outcomes Programme. DATA SOURCES AND SELECTION: The paper draws on a review of research with consumers to identify issues of importance to them about hospital care. The Australian sources were reports by consumer and community organizations, research reports by hospitals, governments and academics, and data from complaints authorities. The emphasis was on consumers' own views. The main debates on patient satisfaction methodology were reviewed. Published material from the USA and Britain highlighting organizational policy issues was reviewed, as well as literature on benchmarking. Material was obtained through journal searches and identification of organizations which undertake consumer-oriented or service development research. CONCLUSIONS: The paper argues that national benchmarking of patient satisfaction is not reliable because patient satisfaction is a poorly understood concept and not a unitary concept. Also, the paper argues that benchmarking is about processes, and that the link between survey results and hospital processes is not well researched or understood. While patient satisfaction surveys appear to promote consumer perspectives, they remain caught within a passive approach to consumer participation in shaping service development and improving the quality of hospital care. The task of government is to mandate consumer feedback, resource the development of expertise and technologies, trial and evaluate approaches to obtaining feedback, disseminate research and effective models, and resource consumer organizations to be participants at all stages. This is described as providing the resources for benchmarking at local levels.     

Managing Drivers of Innovation in Construction Networks

Various drivers of construction innovation are distinguished and classified in four distinctive categories: environmental pressure, technological capability, knowledge exchange, and boundary spanning. Innovation drivers in these categories are active at the transfirm, intrafirm, and interfirm level in the network of organizations in the construction industry. Empirical research in the Dutch construction industry illustrates that the innovation drivers are used by managers of the authorities, clients, architects, consultants, and contractors to stimulate and facilitate innovation processes. It also exemplifies that driving innovation on the transfirm, intrafirm, and interfirm level in the network of organizations is an opportunity for managers of both public and private organizations to develop, improve, and renew their organizations’ positions in the market, the quality of their organizations’ projects, and the cooperative structure of the industry as a whole.     

Learning Organizations in Construction

The transformation of organizations from production-oriented entities to proactive learning entities that continuously leverage the knowledge of the workforce is a primary objective of management researchers. This focus has significant relevance to the construction industry where production-related research has predominantly overshadowed organizational development research. As one effort to change this emphasis, the writers present a research effort designed to study current organization learning techniques and technologies fielded by organizations both inside and outside of the construction industry. Through a series of exploratory case studies, the writers developed a maturity model together with the Construction Industry Institute that provides construction organizations with a framework for developing a learning organization culture. The maturity model focuses on learning organization characteristics of leadership, processes and infrastructure, communication/collaboration, education, and culture at the organization, community, and individual levels. This paper introduces the results of that effort including a presentation of the learning organization maturity model, framework application, and the overall characteristics of a learning organization.     

Project Management Practices and Information Technology Research

Corporations of varying sizes and operations within the construction industry acclaim the contribution of project management applications that assist in business and operational practices. An integrated intelligent construction management application that enables process modeling and algorithmic analysis of construction process planning, interacts with a mainframe-based automated relational database system, and drives the project sequencing, scheduling, decision making and change management processes can introduce dramatic speed, simplicity, accuracy, and collaboration into existing project planning practices. Several research organizations and academic fraternities in concert with industry participation are focusing on the development of such futuristic tools as described above. However, evidence of such computing applications being used by the industry is minimal and a number of reasons have been cited by researchers for this. This study, through a review of the genesis, evolution, and future of computing applications in construction followed by an industry-wide survey, aims to study whether or not concurrent research agendas in construction information technology are truly sustainable from the industry’s perspective.     

Benchmarking of Construction Productivity

Construction productivity has been a cause of great concern in both the construction industry and academia. Even though many companies have developed their own productivity tracking systems based on their experiences and accounting systems, none have been successful in establishing common definitions and developing a survey tool that collects standard productivity data at the appropriate levels. This research was initiated to establish a common set of construction productivity metrics and their corresponding definitions. As a result of this research effort, the Construction Productivity Metrics System (CPMS), which contain a list of direct and indirect accounts and 56 data elements grouped into seven major categories, was developed. The Construction Productivity Metrics System is a standard construction productivity data collection tool and provides a framework to report industry norms to benchmark construction productivity. Input from 73 industry experts was used in determining the 56 measuring elements and their corresponding definitions. Preliminary findings from initial sample of 16 industrial projects indicate that the productivity metrics can be produced and should be meaningful for construction productivity benchmarking. Because of the small sample size, more than general preliminary conclusion would be inappropriate. Based on the analyses, the developed CPMS is believed to be a reasonable productivity data collection tool and when sufficient data are available should be capable of producing reasonable industry benchmarks.     

Performance Assessment of Construction Companies Integrating Key Performance Indicators and Data Envelopment Analysis

The web benchmarking systems broadly used in the construction industry (CI) are designed to provide results based on key performance indicators (KPIs). No insights concerning organization overall performance and improvements targets are available. This research aims to fulfill this gap using data envelopment analysis (DEA) as a method to complement the information provided by a set of KPIs. The methodology proposed is useful to all organizations involved in benchmarking routines. To enable a more realistic assessment of CI companies, two types of DEA models were used, one allows factor weights to vary freely and the other includes weight restrictions. These models assign an efficiency score to each organization, identifying efficient organizations and providing performance improvements targets for the others. To enable suggesting targets for all organizations, expert opinion was used to specify virtual units which were included in the efficiency assessment to define a practical frontier located beyond the productivity levels of the original DEA frontier. Based on a sample of 20 Portuguese leading contractors, the Portuguese web benchmarking system for CI, icBench, was used to demonstrate the advantages of integrating the DEA method with KPIs benchmark scores.     

Component-Based Framework for Implementing Integrated Architectural/Engineering/Construction Project Systems

Current practices and integration trends in the architectural/engineering/construction (A/E/C) industry are increasing the demands for the implementation and deployment of integrated project systems. Much of the research throughout the last decade was driven by the need to develop integrated project systems and standard industry-wide data models to support their development. This paper presents a multitier component-based framework that aims to facilitate the implementation of modular and distributed integrated project systems that would support multidisciplinary project processes throughout the project life cycle. The framework addresses the specific requirements of A/E/C projects, and highlights the required functionality and approach to develop integrated project systems. The framework defines a three-tier architecture: Applications tier, common domain-services tier, and project data-repository tier. The applications tier includes a set of function-specific software tools that interact with the domain-services-tier components via a set of adapters. Adapters map the applications’ internal proprietary-data models to and from a standard integrated data model. The domain-services-tier components implement a number of generic services, such as data management, transactions management, document management, and workflow management. The data-repository tier represents a centralized shared storage of all relevant project information. The paper also discusses the implementation of a prototype software system that demonstrates the use of the framework’s reusable components and the industry foundation classes data model in typical building projects.     

Empirical Investigation into Factors Affecting Exporting Construction Services in SMEs in Singapore

The Singapore government is encouraging construction enterprises to venture abroad for exporting their services and become global players since the local construction pie is shrinking and the global market is growing. The Building and Construction Authority of Singapore has revamped the contractors registration system with the hope of bringing about merger and acquisition of companies for improving the local contractors’ standing in the global construction scene. To diversify into new markets in a new environment, which is very different from local environment, requires diversification vis-à-vis exporting strategy. This study examines the attitudes and views of contractors, operating in Singapore (excluding foreign contractors), on how the strategic move should be focused for diversification vis-à-vis exporting services. The aim of this study is to establish the survival skills necessary for Singapore’s construction small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to venture abroad. A postal questionnaire survey was conducted and the results show that local construction SMEs who have diversified have reaped the benefits derived from diversification into new markets abroad. The main conclusions are that construction SMEs have to export their services in order to survive and they can enhance their export capabilities by forming a consortium with the help of local government.