Construction Industry Institute

State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) require reliable early construction cost estimates for project budgeting. Typically, project budgets are established early in the development process before finalizing a project’s scope of work. Due to the inherent incompleteness of scope definition and specifications, early estimates of construction costs are hardly accurate, necessitating the estimation and usage of a contingency. However, most DOTs use a predetermined approach to estimate construction cost contingencies without considering project-specific risks and uncertainties. Furthermore, few research studies have been focused on improving construction cost contingency estimation in the early phases. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by laying the initial foundation for a project-specific and risk-driven approach for DOTs. Significant risks affecting construction cost contingencies were identified, prioritized, and then mapped with common project types by applying a hybrid research methodology of reviewing and analyzing DOT manuals, risk checklists, and risk registers and conducting and analyzing questionnaire surveys with DOT experts. The subjectivity and vagueness of survey responses affecting risk prioritization were addressed using fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic approaches.

Project information management in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) projects can be a challenging endeavor due to the complex nature of projects and the numerous sources and types of information required, including drawings, plans, specifications, and building information modeling (BIM), among others. AEC projects require stakeholders to develop temporary teams, develop work processes, and collaborate across organizational boundaries. Additionally, the numerous technologies used in information management, such as project management software, scheduling software, and BIM, require contractual agreements among project stakeholders to address these technologies’ potential risks while still allowing stakeholder collaboration to benefit project execution and delivery. Contracts are used to define project requirements and can be used to define different aspects of project information management, like required deliverables or stakeholder roles and responsibilities. While recent research has evaluated the relationship between BIM and contracts, there is a gap in understanding the relationship between contracts and information management more holistically. The objectives of this research were to gain insight into how contracts impact information management, identify barriers that exist in contracts related to information management, and to develop potential contract-related strategies to improve information management on AEC projects. Researchers implemented a qualitative analysis approach through semistructured interviews with 38 AEC professionals and the application of a systematic and iterative qualitative coding process. This research found that contracts can be used as a tool to influence the development and execution of project information management strategies. Specifically, contracts can be used to define deliverables, workflows, and software, as well as templates and forms. While interviewees discussed many contract-related challenges, they also proposed potential contract-related strategies to improve project information management. These strategies encompass three main categories: improving contract compliance, contract flexibility, and setting expectations. These findings provide insight into how contracts can impact project information management and provide practitioners with specific contract strategies to improve project information management.

Benchmarking is a systematic process of measuring an organization's performance against recognized leaders for the purpose of determining best practices that lead to superior performance. Benchmarking has been widely used by the private sector of the U.S. construction industry to improve their delivery of capital projects. While some studies have investigated the benchmarking of public transportation projects (e.g., highways and bridges), most of these focused solely on operations. This paper examines benchmarking efforts for public transportation projects delivery. Subsequently, this analysis is used to provide a framework of the opportunities and potential challenges inherent to benchmarking transportation projects delivery. This paper contributes to the foundational development of benchmarking standards for public transportation projects.

Globally, many large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies invest significant amounts of money to build manufacturing and laboratory facilities. One common concern amongst these companies is whether or not these facilities are efficient in their design and their use of human and financial resources. The Construction Industry Institute (CII) has worked with 12 of these pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies over the past seven years to benchmark the performance of their capital projects. In order to benchmark absolute cost performance (e.g., dollars per square foot), the projects’ costs need to be normalized to account for location, time and currency. However, no single cost index is available to meet this need of normalizing global facilities. As a result, CII and the companies developed a procedure using established cost indices to reliably compare the cost performance of capital projects from different companies. This paper also discusses the issues and challenges of normalizing the costs associated with pharmaceutical and biotechnology capital projects. This paper contributes to a better understanding of cost normalization amongst global capital projects.

Abstract Performance measurement is essential to controlling and improving capital projects. Increasingly, industry sectors demand an industry-specific performance measurement system because their unique processes can result in significant differences in performance outcomes. This paper presents the development of a performance dashboard for a pharmaceutical project benchmarking program. The proposed approach adopts a relative comparison method and uses weighted key performance indicators (KPIs) to compare project performance. The dashboard generates an overall performance score both at the project level and at the company level, as shown in tabular and graphical formats. The dashboard provides flexibility for comparing the performance of projects even when the project types or KPIs are different. Although the study focuses on a performance dashboard for pharmaceutical industry projects, the dashboard development process described in this paper can be applied to other industry projects.

Development of a national healthcare facilities benchmarking program is described. As the first effort of its kind, a framework of facilities is presented. The methodology and systems used to compare measures of capital project performance are discussed. These include the development of questionnaires, databases, data mining structures, and executive dashboards. The benefits of benchmarking healthcare facilities are discussed along with several lessons learned from other, similar efforts. Future extensions of this research are discussed.