Development of Constructability Activity Survey Framework for Malaysian Contractors

Fundamental studies on constructability concept done in United States, United Kingdom and Australia illustrate the capability of this concept to influence the overall objectives of the construction projects. These studies have shown that contractors’ involvement in earlier stages of projects can lead to noteworthy cost and time savings and better final product quality by considering the contractors’ construction experience in conceptual planning and design phases. This study becomes much more notable since there has not been enough structured researches on this matter in Malaysia which can clarify and differentiate the constructability activities. The present research presents the constructability activities in all project phases separately based on the amount of contractors’ involvement in each activity and also the amount of gap that exists between the target and the actual effects of each activity on achieving the final objectives of the project in Malaysia. As the result, some activities are determined as the more critical activities than the others. Then more explorations are done on the critical ones in order to determine the type of contractors, contracts and projects that are involved in these activities. It also aims to find any significant difference in contractors’ involvement at each activity among various types of contractors, contracts and projects. The data needed to conduct this research is obtained from a questionnaire survey spread among Malaysian G7 building contractors. The acquired data is collected and arranged in tables; Then MCT, MD, ANOVA and T-TEST methods are used as descriptive and analytical methods of analysis. The results of this study show that Malaysian contractors are almost familiar with this term, but based on the barriers of implementing this issue in the projects, they are not able to participate in all of its activities entirely. This reduces the gap between target and actual effects of each activity on gaining the total aims of the project. Then it is found that the critical constructability activities are mostly among the ones in later project phases, which consist of pre-construction and construction phases. Finally, the amount of contractors’ dispersion among various types of contractors, contracts and projects in each critical constructability activity is determined and more explorations to find out the differences among various independent variables are tested

A Systematic Review of Prerequisites for Constructability Implementation in Infrastructure Projects

Success in infrastructure projects requires success in all phases of the project, including design, construction, and operation. One of the necessary actions for developing countries to construct their economic infrastructures, is implementing infrastructure plans. This industry should focus more on the construction process and utilizing creative tools and new concepts for construction development. The reason of it is because of delivering the project with certain quality, in time and with the given budget. Contractors should have new strategies for construction to optimize project completion, and constructability. Accordingly, constructability improvements have become the concern of construction industry practitioners. Considering constructability issues in the early stages of the project enhances identifying design limitations that prevent capabilities of contractors to take part in planning and improving project performance. The purpose of this study is identifying the prerequisites of constructability to resolve the current problems of projects, including inappropriate plans without implementability, poor decision making in design, and lack of sufficient implementation experience in the design engineering team. This study provides a list of prerequisites for constructability implementation in infrastructure projects. Accordingly, it identifies the prerequisites, using Systematic Literature Review (SLR) technique. The NVivo software is used to facilitate the qualitative analyses

Extending constructability concept to include operation and maintenance issues

The concept of constructability uses integration art of individual functions through a valuable and timely construction inputs into planning and design development stages. It results in significant savings in cost and time needed to finalize infrastructure projects. However, available constructability principles, developed by CII Australia (1993), do not cover Operation and Maintenance (O&M) phases of projects, whilst major cost and time in multifaceted infrastructure projects are spent in post-occupancy stages. This paper discusses the need to extend the constructability concept by examining current O&M issues in the provision of multifaceted building projects. It highlights available O&M problems and shortcomings of building projects, as well as their causes and reasons in different categories. This initial categorization is an efficient start point for testing probable present O&M issues in various cases of complex infrastructure building projects. This preliminary categorization serve as a benchmark to develop an extended constructability model that considers the whole project life cycle phases rather than a specific phase. It anticipates that the development of an extended constructability model can reduce significant number of reworks, mistakes, extra costs and time wasted during delivery stages of multifaceted building projects

Constructability obstacles: an exploratory factor analysis approach

Constructability is a concept with relative and not absolute value to increase optimization capacity of resources such as workforce, time, cost, quality, and working environment conditions. Given the growing complexity of projects and the increased number of failed and abandoned projects, the necessity to implement constructability in projects has become more tangible. Although the effects of lack of quantitative definition of constructability role in the traditional construction approaches are evident and have led to lack of coordination in performance of construction projects, so far no comprehensive quantitative approach has been considered to analyze the obstacles to constructability implementation. This study aims to identify and categorize the obstacles to facilitating the presence of contractors in the early stages of planning and design to implement constructability. In this study a comprehensive list of obstacles to constructability implementation is developed as a questionnaire. This questionnaire was presented to the experts, active in the field of construction. Finally, its results were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis method. Totally, 63 obstacles were questioned, then they were categorized by some of the experts of this industry into five categories of macro factors, including contractual, environmental, managerial, technical, and organizational. The significance of this study is due to this fact that identifying and categorizing the key obstacles to constructability implementation provides a useful reference for managers and owners of the construction industry to identify and develop solutions to resolve them. Identifying the obstacles to the presence of contractors in the planning and design stage and having a quantitative view toward this issue affects project implementability. In this regard, one can present more effective solutions to facilitate the presence of contractors in the early stages of design and also improves the effectiveness of constructability.Constructability is a concept with relative and not absolute value to increase optimization capacity of resources such as workforce, time, cost, quality, and working environment conditions. Given the growing complexity of projects and the increased number of failed and abandoned projects, the necessity to implement constructability in projects has become more tangible. Although the effects of lack of quantitative definition of constructability role in the traditional construction approaches are evident and have led to lack of coordination in performance of construction projects, so far no comprehensive quantitative approach has been considered to analyze the obstacles to constructability implementation. This study aims to identify and categorize the obstacles to facilitating the presence of contractors in the early stages of planning and design to implement constructability. In this study a comprehensive list of obstacles to constructability implementation is developed as a questionnaire. This questionnaire was presented to the experts, active in the field of construction. Finally, its results were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis method. Totally, 63 obstacles were questioned, then they were categorized by some of the experts of this industry into five categories of macro factors, including contractual, environmental, managerial, technical, and organizational. The significance of this study is due to this fact that identifying and categorizing the key obstacles to constructability implementation provides a useful reference for managers and owners of the construction industry to identify and develop solutions to resolve them. Identifying the obstacles to the presence of contractors in the planning and design stage and having a quantitative view toward this issue affects project implementability. In this regard, one can present more effective solutions to facilitate the presence of contractors in the early stages of design and also improves the effectiveness of constructability

An assessment on the parallel impacts of building information modeling and big data on project operation and maintenance

Operation and maintenance challenges have always been pronounced in construction projects. Many solutions have been proposed to mitigate the common problems but the solution are not sufficient to get over the challenges, therefore, many software-based concepts such as Building Information Modeling have been unveiled to evaluate the construction prior to initiating the project and envision the potential challenges which exist on the way. For higher accuracy IT solutions can be accompanied with Building Information Modeling to leverage the performance and precision of modeling such as Big Data, data mining and even RFID tags, this paper aims to carry out an in-depth literature review on how BIM alongside with Big Data solutions have parallel impacts into higher efficiency and performance of operation and maintenance in construction projects

Evaluating the Existing Barriers in Implementing Constructability

In fact, constructability is facilitating the construction of a project through integrating knowledge and experience to achieve the overall and common objectives of the project in all stages of it, but practically there is still a significant gap between design, construction, and achieving the desired project objectives. Studies show that separating the design and construction processes and lack of presence of the contractor in the design stage, prevent the effective use of experiences and specialty of the contractor to improve and develop design processes. This issue results in increasing project time and cost, poor relationships, and also increasing project waste and duplication. The barriers to implementing this concept can have major differences with each other in different locations all over the world, due to the unity of the executive conditions in various countries. This paper evaluates the existing practical barriers to implementation of constructability in the construction industry. A comprehensive literature review has been performed by the authors through using the Meta-Synthesis method and findings were used to form research assumptions. Three case studies of Mass Housing project (MHP) in Tehran were instigated. Outputs taken from nine interviews with different experts in this industry working in diverse areas, including owners, consultants and contractors are then ranked after theoretical saturation compared using the NVIVO Software and through pattern and descriptive analyses. The concept of constructability is focused on the early presence of contractors in the initial stages of the project. So that, through integrating knowledge and experience, problems due to lack of their presence in the early stages of the project can be reduced. Comparing the existing barriers to implementing constructability in Iran with those of the wider world, presents some effective solutions to facilitate the presence of the construction contractors in the early stages of projects

An FCM-Based Dynamic Modelling of Integrated Project Delivery Implementation Challenges in Construction Projects

Question: What are the Integrated Project Delivery Implementation challenges in construction projects, their interrelationships and their effects on the project time, cost and quality?Purpose: The Purpose of this study is applying an efficient method to determine the most important challenges to IPD implementation in construction industry, and also to evaluate the interrelationships among these challenges and their effects on the project time, cost, and quality.Research Method: This study models available Integrated Project Delivery challengesusing a real case data, through applying Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping technique.Findings: Results show that contractual factors have the major influence compared with others. This shows the significance of paying attention to why project stakeholders must be integrated throughout the project life cycle since early contract documentation stage.Limitations/Implications: This study is limited to the caseselectedfrom Tehran of Iran.Value for authors: This study is significantdue to identifying, classifying and determining the intensity of effects of IPD implementation challenges on cost, time, and quality of construction projects. It results in planning, resolving the challenges, enhancing the quality of constructions and lastly saving the construction cost and time

Assessment of the Impact of Design Documentation Quality on Construction Project Delivery

Extant literature indicates that poor design documentation quality often results in construction project inefficiency. However, there is less effort by researchers to identify and empirically assess the significant impacts of design documentation quality on project delivery. Therefore, this study seeks to empirically assess how poor design documentation quality impacts construction project delivery. This study is a sequel to a study by the same authors that reviewed literature on the impacts of design documentation quality on project delivery based on a meta-synthesis approach. Therefore, the outcome of the meta-synthesis was developed into a questionnaire and distributed to project managers, architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, and site supervisors based on purposive sampling which obtained 127 responses. Data were analyzed statistically by determining the Relative Importance Index (RII) of each factor. The findings indicate project delays, project abandonment and cost overrun as significant impacts on project delivery. Also, improving collaboration between design disciplines and specialists’ involvement during design are significant strategies to improve quality. The results provide pragmatic data to help enhance initiatives toward quality improvement. However, future studies should aim at developing a framework to improve design documentation quality