Delay is the leading challenge in completing Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) projects. Delay can cause excess costs, which reduces company profits. The relationship between subcontractors and the main contractor is a critical factor that can support the success of an EPC project. The problematic financial condition of the main contractor can cause delay in payments to subcontractors. This research will set a model that combines the system dynamics and earned value method to describe the impact of subcontractor advance payments on project performance. The system dynamics method is used to model and analyze the impact of interactions between variables affecting project performance, while the earned value method is applied to quantitatively evaluate project performance and forecast schedule and cost outcomes. These two methods are used complementarily to achieve a holistic understanding of project dynamics and to optimize decision-making. The designed model selects the optimum scenario for project time and costs. The developed model comprises project performance, costs, cash flow, and performance forecasting sub-models. The novelty in this research is a new model for optimizing project implementation time and costs, adding payment rate variables to subcontractors and subcontractor performance rates. The designed model can provide additional information to assist project managers in making decisions.
Projects implemented under life cycle contracts have become increasingly common in recent years to ensure the quality of construction and maintenance of energy infrastructure facilities. A key parameter for energy facility construction projects implemented under life cycle contracts is their duration and deadlines. Therefore, the systematic identification, monitoring, and comprehensive assessment of risks affecting the timing of work on the design and construction is an urgent practical task. The purpose of this work is to study the strength of the influence of various risks on the duration of a project implemented on the terms of a life cycle contract. The use of the expert assessment method allows for identifying the most likely risks for the design and construction phases, as well as determining the ranges of deviations from the baseline indicator. Using the obtained expert evaluations, a model reflecting the range and the most probable duration of the design and construction works under the influence of risk events was built by the Monte-Carlo statistical method. The results obtained allow monitoring and promptly detecting deviations in the actual duration of work from the basic deadlines set in the life cycle contract. This will give an opportunity to accurately respond to emerging risks and build a mutually beneficial relationship between the parties to life cycle contracts.
The rapidly growing construction industry often deals with complex and dynamic projects that pose significant safety risks. One of the state-owned companies in Indonesia is engaged in large-scale toll road construction projects with a high incidence of workplace accidents. This study aims to improve safety performance in toll road construction by implementing the Scrum framework. The study uses a System Dynamics approach to model interactions between the Scrum framework, project management, and work safety subsystems. Various scenarios were designed by modifying controlled variables and system structures, including introducing a punishment entity. These scenarios were evaluated based on their impact on reducing incidents and the incident rate over the project period. The results indicate that the combined scenario significantly reduces incidents and incident rates in different conditions. The study also finds a strong relationship between Scrum framework implementation and improved safety performance, demonstrating a reduction in incidents and incident rates by over 50% compared to existing conditions. This research underlines the effectiveness of the Scrum framework in enhancing safety in construction projects.
Sustainability in road construction projects is hindered by the extensive use of non-renewable materials, high greenhouse gas emissions, risk cost, and significant disruption to the local community. Sustainability involves economic, environmental, and social aspects (triple bottom line). However, establishing metrics to evaluate economic, environmental, and social impacts is challenging because of the different nature of these dimensions and the shortage of accepted indicators. This paper developed a comprehensive method considering all three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, environmental, and social burdens. Initially, the economic, environmental, and social impact category indicators were assessed using the Life cycle approach. After that, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) were utilized to prioritize the alternatives according to the acquired weightings and sustainable indicators. The steps of the AHP method involve forming a hierarchy, determining priorities, calculating weighting factors, examining the consistency of these assessments, and then determining global priorities/weightings. The TOPSIS method is conducted by building a normalized decision matrix, constructing the weighted normalized decision matrix, evaluating the positive and negative solutions, determining the separation measures, and calculating the relative closeness to the ideal solution. The selected alternative performs the highest Relative Closeness to the Ideal Solution. Lastly, a case study was undertaken to validate the proposed method. In three alternatives in the case study (Cement Concrete, Dense-Graded Polymer Asphalt Concrete, and Dense-Graded Asphalt Concrete), option 3 showed the most sustainable performance due to its highest Relative Closeness to the Ideal Solution. Integrating AHP and TOPSIS methods combines both strengths, including AHP’s structured approach for determining criteria weights through pairwise comparisons and TOPSIS’s ability to rank choices based on their proximity to an ideal solution.
The interest in using project management office (PMO) services in organizations to manage their construction projects is growing in light of rising economic, technological, and social developments based on their ability to achieve organizational goals while avoiding risks. Accordingly, organizations use PMO services to manage their technical and financial project issues to periodically evaluate PMO performance and services in a scientific, practical, and measurable way to ensure successful project path via PMO. Therefore, this research aims to develop a performance evaluation system that enables organizations to follow up and evaluate the PMO performance to ensure that PMO manages the organizations’ expectations and goals successfully according to certain quality, scope, and cost. The study builds on significant findings in PMO competence indexes as evaluation matrix, which includes five basic categories with 136 indexes covering the project life cycle. The matrix was developed based on literature analysis and supplemented with experts’ interviews in construction management. The developed robust competency-based index (RCI) for directive PMO supports the organizations to conduct client satisfaction, correction, or partial/total change of the PMO’s competence flow within five construction project life cycle and process, i.e. governance, portfolio, information, execution, and contract issues.
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