Construction relies on rapid, reliable information sharing among distributed teams to enable project success. This article presents an empirical exploration of eleven organizations that serve as early adopters of advanced information technologies for instantaneous, i.e., real-time or near real-time, project controls and reporting capabilities. The study employed a grounded theory approach, in which analyses informed subsequent steps. Constructs were coded from the transcription of interviews with corporate managers affiliated with owner, contractor, software developer, and manufacturing organizations. Contextual and processual findings were leveraged to support a theoretical model that captured the changes and implementation steps for successful technology diffusion. The study also defined the drivers that demand and justify an instantaneous or frequent reporting capability in the design and construction sector. Results offer actionable insights. Organizations can more effectively adopt advanced project controls by proactively planning and embracing necessary organizational changes. Researchers should consider both contextual and processual factors to support effective exploration of technology integration in construction.

Infrastructure vulnerability has drawn significant attention in recent years, partly because of the occurrence of low-probability and high-consequence disruptive events such as 2017 hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, 2011 Tuscaloosa and Joplin tornadoes, and 2015 Gorkha, Nepal, and 2017 Central Mexico earthquakes. Civil infrastructure systems support social welfare, thus viability and sustained operation is critical. A variety of frameworks, models, and tools exist for advancing infrastructure vulnerability research. Nevertheless, providing accurate vulnerability measurement remains challenging. This paper presents a state-of-the-art data collection and information extraction methodology to document infrastructure at high granularity to assess preevent vulnerability and postevent damage in the face of disasters. The methods establish a baseline of preevent infrastructure functionality that can be used to measure impacts and temporal recovery following a disaster. The Extreme Events Web Viewer (EEWV) presented as part of the methodology is a GIS-based web repository storing spatial and temporal data describing communities before and after disasters and facilitating data analysis techniques. This web platform can store multiple geolocated data formats including photographs and 360° videos. A tool for automated extraction of photography from 360° video data at locations of interest specified in the EEWV was created to streamline data utility. The extracted imagery provides a manageable data set to efficiently document characteristics of the built and natural environment. The methodology was tested to locate buildings vulnerable to flood and storm surge on Dauphin Island, Alabama. Approximately 1,950 buildings were passively documented with vehicle-mounted 360° video. Extracted building images were used to train a deep learning neural network to predict whether a building was elevated or nonelevated. The model was validated, and methods for iterative neural network training are described. The methodology, from rapidly collecting large passive datasets, storing the data in an open repository, extracting manageable datasets, and obtaining information from data through deep learning, will facilitate vulnerability and postdisaster analyses as well as longitudinal recovery measurement.

In many parts of the country, a resilient building envelope design needs to consider loads from extreme wind events such as hurricanes and tornados. These events not only create very large wind loads but also contain wind born debris that impacts a building envelope. From post event field observations, structures tend to be struck multiple times by multiple types of flying debris. A debris cloud can contain anything that is picked up from the ground such as vegetation or rocks to broken building components such as wood framing or roofing material.The Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering Department at The University of Alabama commissioned a four barrel debris cannon to simulate and study building envelope damage caused by wind born debris. The cannon can independently or simultaneously launch debris from each of the four barrels. Each barrel can be independently loaded with unique material, aimed, and fired at different speeds. The ability to launch four projectiles allows researchers to strike a structure at four different critical locations either simultaneously or in succession. Two high speed cameras track the speed of the flying debris as well as capture the impact area to study how the specimen failed. The lab will be equipped with a load frame that allows forces to be applied on a building components to simulate twisting or racking movements during wind events. The cannon can be use in a laboratory setting or mounted on a mobile platform in order to test specimens in the field.Building envelopes designed to resist exterior damage from debris will help protect lives, improve building performance, reduce economic loss, and reduce the time needed for a community to recover. In addition to building envelope studies, the debris cannon will also be used to study storm shelter and safe room components.

The current inability to timely ascertain cost and schedule outcomes in construction projects is highly detrimental to a construction industry characterized by endemic deviations. This study hypothesizes that organizational behaviors have a strong effect on the team's ability to generate accurate cost and schedule predictions early, as opposed to late, in the project delivery process. A mixed-method research approach sequentially combined nonparametric statistical analyses of survey responses to quantify the influence of behaviors on predictability and research charrettes with subject matter experts to assess the findings and characterize practical applications. Multiple behavioral factors, such as those associated with the design of incentives or the reporting environment, were documented to have a significant effect on predictability. This study contributes with a novel combination of behavioral and predictability focus to the body of knowledge in forecasting. Such knowledge has been constrained within the silo of estimating techniques and, hence, without the consideration of behaviors and their impact on timeliness. (C) 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Capital projects are increasing becoming more complex and shorter in duration while the engineering and construction industry remains fragmented. A knowledge transfer gap exists between large groups of retiring experienced employees and minimally experienced newly hired personnel. A need exist for an organization to facilitate sharing best practices and innovation between all project professionals (business, engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning) and stakeholders on capital projects (owners, contractors, suppliers, academics and students). A group of capital project personnel have created the first association for capital project professionals across the entire supply chain, Capital Projects Professional Exchange (CPX), the objective of this organization is to virtually connect capital project stakeholders as an online community to enhance professional development by supporting and encouraging sharing of best practices, resources and opportunities. The initiative is currently in its research phase which includes social media integration and crowdsourcing techniques as a method to exchange knowledge between various capital project stakeholders. Initial feedback indicates that such an organization can accelerate the learning curve of new professionals entering the capital projects construction industry and facilitate the exchange of best practices and innovation.

On April 27, 2011, the city of Tuscaloosa, AL was struck by an EF 4 tornado. The losses to the city were catastrophic; 43 fatalities were recorded, economic losses totaled more than $2 billion, and almost 13% of the city building stock was either damaged or completely destroyed.This paper describes a methodology conducted in the summer of 2016 to assess the resilience of the Tuscaloosa community. Tuscaloosa parcels were investigated and assigned one of six categories of functionality change described in this paper. Each functionality change category was assigned a functionality change value to describe the effects of the change on the community. Parcels were also assigned return-to-functionality dates. Based on the results of the resilience study, 28% of the parcels found in the 1500 acre affected area remained vacant five years after the storm. 2010 census data was used to document trends between census data such as per-capita income and housing demographics and parcel information such as vacant lots and return-to-functionality date and the results are reported. The systematic resilience assessment described will be useful in analyzing the correlation between community characteristics and resilience in order to model and predict expected resilience of communities for future disasters.

Renovation of an existing building is an accomplished stem of the construction industry because it supplies financial diversification for construction stakeholders. Although several construction planning tools and stakeholder alignment exercises have been developed, no tool exists to assist project owners to decide between renovating an existing building and new construction with a comprehensive decision criteria. The objective of this research is to create and test a renovation versus new building support decision tool for construction project stakeholders. The renovation versus new building support decision tool was created based on an extensive review of existing support tools and construction industry needs. The created tool was implemented to evaluate decisions of educational facilities by university officials experienced in project management. Results show the tool was effective in identifying relevant topics for discussion and guiding a group of stakeholders through an exercise in decision-making. Specifically, the tool was implemented by construction management personnel for university facilities currently under construction to evaluate the decision to renovate an existing building or new construction. The main contribution of this research is a framework and support decision tool readily implementable for construction project stakeholders desiring to determine if renovation or new construction is the optimal path for their specific objectives.

Robust assessment has become an expected, if not required, component academic programs in higher education. Most agree that a strong assessment program includes an evaluation of Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). Since the advent of ABET2000, assessment of SLOs has become a critical component of program assessment in engineering, technology, and computer science programs. Moreover, regional accreditation bodies, e.g., Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) and Western Association of Schools and College (WASC), have continued and broaden the use of SLO-based assessments. Assessment is an altogether too familiar activity for many engineering faculty, with detailed course-to-outcome and even assignment-to-outcomes maps being created within programs. However, students are often disconnected or distanced from the process. Few students read their academic programs' learning outcomes, and even fewer can clearly articulate how their curriculum and daily academic activities relate to the learning outcomes required for their degree or desired by their future profession.

The occurrence of events affecting project performance cannot likely be eliminated, and hence their early identification and communication become critical to efficiently mitigate their impact. This research devised a taxonomy for the classification of events that can influence a project with 36 event types grouped in 10 event categories. The frequency of occurrence of events, and their impact on cost, schedule, and predictability performances were statistically determined based on information gathered from 135 recently completed projects. The statistical results demonstrate and quantify the long-held perception that the frequency of an event is often inversely proportional to its impact on project performance. In addition, qualitative evidence collected from subject-matter experts was leveraged to provide complementary insights and explanations beyond the statistical results. The results of this study are of interest to both practitioners and academics.

The majority of pavements in the United States are made of asphalt materials. Many of these pavements are getting old and they require some form of rehabilitation. In many cases, recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) and recycled asphalt shingles (RAS) can be utilized to create a pavement system while saving money by conserving natural resources. There are four major asphalt production cost categories including materials, plant production, trucking, and field construction. In general, the materials are the most expensive category, in many cases up to about 70% of the cost to produce HMA mixtures. Several thousands of records of various field projects from 2008 to 2013 were obtained from South Carolina Department of Transportation (SC DOT) and all of the mixtures containing RAP or RAS were recorded and analyzed. The main objective of this study was to compare the upper quantiles of the unit cost between two groups of asphalt pavement mixes containing different percentages of aged binder using a Harrell-Davis estimator of the quantiles. In most cases, the asphalt mixes containing more than 15% aged binder actually appear to have a negative effect on cost predictability at higher quantiles.

The ability to timely forecast accurate project outcomes is fundamental in an industry marked by endemic cost and schedule deviations. Indeed, owners and contractors alike make key strategic decisions about individual projects and capital investment programs alike based on forecasted values. As a departure from current cost and schedule assessments solely based on deviations at completion, this article introduces the Predictability Index, a novel performance metric that also considers the project team's ability to timely predict outcomes at completion. This article conceptually explains and defines the index and, based on the statistical analysis of retrospective data from 135 completed projects, identifies threshold values of predictability performance. Complementary, lessons learned and observations collected from the adoption and assessment of predictability by industry organizations are also discussed. A significant cultural shift within an organization is necessary for project teams to focus on predictability performance. (C) 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.

As a departure from the current state of practice, this study proposes to evaluate cost and schedule performance based on the early and accurate prediction of final outcomes, as opposed to the prevalent and reactive evaluation of final cost and schedule deviations at completion. Getting to know early in the delivery process the actual outcomes of a project enables project and corporate managers to undertake informed and proactive actions in a timely manner. To enable the assessment of predictability performance, a novel Predictability Index metric is proposed, investigated, and discussed. Based on the statistical analysis of data for 135 completed projects representing $29 billion in total installed costs, the Predictability Index measure is characterized and the major influencing factors on project predictability performance are unveiled. Also, actual case studies are discussed in order to illustrate the tangible benefits associated with the assessment of predictability performance to the project delivery process. MOTIVATION The construction industry has historically had a prominent role in the economic and social development of the US, for which construction is a major indicator for economic health. In 2012, despite the recent economic downturn, the construction sector employed more than five million workers (BLS, 2013), construction spending amounted to excess of eight hundred billion dollars (US Census, 2013) or an equivalent of 5.5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, despite this importance, the delivery of a capital project, fundamental to the wellbeing of the industry, frequently turns into an unpredictable endeavor that results in cost and schedule deviations at completion (Flybjerg et al., 2002; Back & Grau, 2013; Mulva & Dai, 2012). Such deviations, either above (overruns) or below (underruns) the initial baselines or target values, result in a lost opportunity to 2306 Construction Research Congress 2014 ©ASCE 2014

Incentive plans are predetermined contract strategies designed to motivate project personnel and/or organizations to achieve prescribed project performance objectives. Incentive plans may be designed in a variety of ways and can be used singularly or in combination, allowing project sponsors to apply several different motivational strategies concurrently on a given project. This article addresses the issue of incentive effectiveness and investigates the actual influence of incentive strategies on measures of project performance. Data was collected in two phases and included capturing case study information from multiple project organizations and a subsequent detailed survey instrument that included over 90 project respondents. The findings indicate that the implementation of contract incentive strategies can have widely varied levels of effectiveness and may not actually yield the assumed benefits to overall measures of cost and schedule performance. Furthermore, some projects reported that incentives actually created unexpected or adverse consequences or lost their viability during project execution.

The improvement of pile driving productivity has been, for the most part, consistently neglected in the literature. In particular, the investigation of equipment technology improvements for pile driving activities has yet to be addressed. This study reports the process, benefits, limitations, and lessons learned associated with the definition, development, and implementation of an innovative extreme-batter (23.3° from the vertical) pile driving technology for the construction of a levee. The project team, in a collaborative effort, investigated alternatives to traditional extreme-batter techniques in order to minimize equipment and craft labor needs to complete the levee, and also to minimize the risk of safety occurrences. After holding brainstorming and technical feasibility analysis sessions, the project team decided to adopt an innovative fixed lead approach, the design and production of which was subcontracted out to a pile equipment specialist. Also, instead of subcontracting the piling activity, the team decided to self-perform it in order to have a tighter control on the levee construction process. The fixed lead technique resulted in a 40% cost reduction per unit length of driven pile when compared to traditional extreme-batter piling techniques. This paper also discusses the shortcomings associated the fixed lead pile driving technique.

The timely and effective transfer of knowledge and information among project disciplines is of paramount importance for project success. As such, strategies aiming at the incorporation of construction expertise in the design process can significantly improve the likelihood of successful project endeavors. To date, however, the impact of on-site design-the translocation of design activities to the project site-on project performance is not yet understood. This research has identified 29 project performance measures and 50 design activities across project phases to assess the influence of on-site design on project performance. On the basis of statistical analysis of 115 capital projects data representative of $9.2 billion in total installed costs, this study reveals that projects with intensive on-site design strategies not only surpass projects with moderate or null on-site design strategies for a majority of the project performance measures but also exhibit similar levels of accomplishment for the rest of the measures. To complement these results, this study also characterizes and details the utilization of on-site design. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000097. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.

The City of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, developed a strategic citywide plan for renewal and rebuilding in response to the devastating effects of a direct tornado hit on April 27, 2011. In addition to causing significant personal injury and loss of life, the tornado completely destroyed facilities and residences spanning 6.5 square miles, representing 12% of the city’s total square area. The city engaged in an inclusive, multidisciplinary planning process to address land use, housing, sustainability, infrastructure, and public facilities. Areas of focus in planning included a greenway path for revitalization, connected model neighborhoods, village centers, coordinated facilities, and integrated public functions. University engineering and business students participated by forming multidisciplinary teams tasked with the challenge of resolving particular issues within the city’s proposed plan as part of their senior design studio experience. These students had the unique experience of working directly with city officials and private consultants to resolve complex urban and engineering problems. This paper summarizes the experiences and lessons learned from this unique partnership with the city and provides guidance for other university programs that may wish to enrich the educational process similarly, even in a noncrisis environment.

A total of 1,625 tornadoes occurred in the United States in 2011, resulting in economic losses that exceeded $25 billion. Two tornado outbreaks stand out because they caused more than half of those losses. The tornadoes that cut through Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on April 27 and Joplin, Missouri, on May 22 were responsible for a combined 223 fatalities and more than 13,000 damaged buildings in the two cities. Although the economic losses associated with tornado damage are well documented, the writers argue that the overall impact should encompass longer term, broader considerations such as the social disruption and psychological effects that impact communities. This paper examines observations by tornado damage assessment teams led by the first author in these two medium-sized cities and suggests that the evolution of building codes and past approaches to construction have led to conditions that made this extent of damage possible. The authors outline a multidisciplinary path forward that incorporates engineering research and social and economic studies into a new design paradigm leading to building code changes and social practices that will improve resistance and mitigate future losses at a community level from tornadoes.

This study investigated the influence of a construction management educational intervention on the expertise and work practice of nonconstruction engineers affiliated with a premiere U.S. engineering procurement and contractor (EPC) firm. In this experimental study, nonconstruction engineers with a supervisory role in the delivery of capital projects were instructed in three fundamental construction management subjects, i.e. front-end planning, contracts and project execution, and project completion and team dynamics. These subjects were independently instructed in a traditional classroom-style setting. To capture the sustained impact of the educational intervention, a self-assessment survey tool was designed and distributed to the instructed engineers 4 months after the intervention. The educational intervention resulted in a significant gain in construction expertise among the engineers. The intervention also induced positive changes in the work practice of the instructed engineers and of their organization, such as the development of solid intercommunication skills across engineering disciplines. Overall, the results of this study indicate a significant opportunity for transferring construction management principles and techniques to the engineers in the U.S. construction workforce. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.1943-5541.0000088. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.