An alternative heuristic method for scheduling repetitive projects in which resources are limited and activities may be executed with multiple modes of resource demands associated with different durations is proposed. Unlike general heuristic methods that separately analyze each competing...

Reduction in construction project duration is generally linked to additional cost due to more expensive resources required. Hence tradeoff between time and cost is crucial to the efficiency of a construction project. The time-cost tradeoff (TCT) issue has been studied through various...

The hook times of mobile cranes are processes that are of non-linear and discrete nature. Artificial neural network is a data processing technique that lends itself to this kind of problem. Three common artificial neural network architectures - multi-layer feed-forward (MLFF), group method of...

Consultants' fees and technical submissions in two-envelope fee tendering are usually converted to scores. The fee scores and technical (quality) scores are then multiplied by predetermined weightings and aggregated. To preserve the desired influence of the predetermined weightings, the fee...

Very few construction companies and consulting firms in Australia measure their costs of quality. Consequently, it is difficult for them to prove that systems for preventing quality failures are cost-effective. Although the direct costs of a quality system can be quantified with some accuracy...

The briefing process is critical to the successful delivery of construction projects. Although a number of briefing guides have been developed, attempting to address the problems of briefing, they are often criticized as being too general and implicit. This paper describes a structured framework...

A remarkable disagreement/deviation between the rate of ISO 14001 registration and the rate of implementation of environmental impact assessment in the Chinese construction industry indicates that the contractors there might not have really applied environmental management (EM) in construction...

Learning from manufacturing industries is a useful approach to improving the productivity of the construction industry and to solve problems arising from construction processes. Through the use of virtual prototyping (VP) technology, the lean production process engaged in the IKEA business model...

Contractor selection is one of the main activities of clients. Without a proper and accurate method for selecting the most appropriate contractor, the performance of the project will be affected. The multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) is suggested to be a viable method for contractor...

Many construction organizations have misunderstood the reality that total quality management (TQM) based on continuous improvement requires a commitment to learning and that essentially it is the means to a learning organization. The paper argues that if the construction industry is to improve...