Effective framework for change order management in construction industry

Construction is a multi-trillion-dollar industry with a very complex nature involving a balanced combination of many human, non-human and other factors. The change orders are a practical reality of the construction industry irrespective of the magnitude, type or nature of the projects. The purpose of this project is to propose a framework for the change order management in the construction industry by studying and analyzing the various causes of change orders and their impacts on the duration, cost, and quality of the projects. The data for this project was gathered by a survey among construction industry professionals which was analyzed through statistical techniques of RII and Spearman‟s Correlation coefficient as well as multiple-objectives decision modeling technique of AHP. The results indicated that due to differences in relative importance of project objectives from one project to other, the rankings for the causes of change orders are different as well. The top three causes of change orders with highest cumulative impact on project duration, cost and quality were, “Change in specifications by the owner”, “Change of plans or scope by the owner”, and “Poor project planning by the contractor”. This research project possesses special significance for the international and local construction industry where massive infrastructure and stadium projects are underway to serve the goals and vision of nations

Changes and sentiment : a longitudinal e-mail analysis of a large design project

Changes are part of any project. Although previous research provides methods to deal with changes, understanding of changes in relation to sentiment is still unclear. This is important as people's mood can affect performance and decisions. We implement an approach to quantify "change language" in emails and study its relation to sentiment. We find that sentiment decreases when problems or changes emerge, and increases when changes are implemented successfully. We discuss the implications of our findings for research and project engineering practice, providing avenues for further work

Applying Systems Engineering Approaches to the Management of Electrical Engineering Projects

Electrical engineering projects are becoming increasingly complex due to the advances in technology. Traditional project management practices and approaches may not be the best method. Research has indicated that a large portion of electrical engineering projects are not completed successfully. Therefore, adopting new processes and methods in order to attempt to improve project success rates is worth investigating. Generally, projects have been viewed with a static approach. Modern electrical engineering projects, however, are complex dynamic systems and should be viewed and managed in a holistic way. A project can be viewed as a closed loop system with external and internal factors that can impact the outcome. Hence, this research project explores the application of systems engineering approaches to the management of electrical engineering projects. An initial investigation of the relevant literature revealed that there was a knowledge gap in applying systems engineering to the management of electrical engineering projects. The identified gap led to the development of the in-depth interview instrument. Five senior key domain experts were selected for in-depth interviewing with the purpose of acquiring experiential knowledge. From this extracted knowledge and literature review, a systems engineering model for electrical engineering project management was developed. The model was built on existing project management methodologies and was refined for electrical engineering based projects. The model was tested on a hypothetical electrical engineering project and verified by obtaining feedback from the domain experts. The outcome from the testing and verification suggested that the model has the potential to help improve the project management process in the electrical engineering industry. Project management is an ever growing, changing and challenging industry. Hence, the results from this research study help to contribute to the knowledge base of project management in the electrical engineering environment