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Master of Science in Building Construction and Facility Management

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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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The effect of military construction transformation on project cost and schedule within the United States Army Corps of Engineers South Atlantic Division

2017-11-07 , Westcott, Matthew

The United States Corps of Engineers (USACE) has been the primary Construction Agent of the United States Army and Air Force. Its members are considered the experts in project delivery for the Department of Defense (DoD). In 2006, the Base Realignment and Closure Program (BRAC) and the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) led to increased workload which caused the USACE to adopt the Design-Build project delivery process as a primary means of project delivery in an effort to leverage the method’s ability to deliver projects at a lower cost and faster delivery time as compared to conventional methods. The focused use of the Design-Build process was to become the primary business practice of USACE after the BRAC/GWOT period, replacing the traditional Design-Bid-Build process that had dominated the USACE landscape for 50 years. The USACE Commander’s intent behind the Design-Build incorporation was to realize a 15% cost savings and a 30% reduction in delivery time over the traditional method. This measure of success would serve as a guide to the USACE for future business practices. Military Construction Transformation, or MILCON Transformation, was the name designated to the Design-Build process when it was approved as the primary form of project delivery in the USACE in 2006. Since then, the four-year spike in project workload brought about during the BRAC and initial GWOT period has been diminished, and the business practice has taken some time to incorporate refinements based on lessons learned during the BRAC/GWOT period. In 2009 the Engineer Inspector General (EIG) was commissioned to measure the performance standards given by the USACE Commander, but after conducting only interviews of district chiefs across the USACE, the EIG was unable to quantify any project data that was relatable to the Commander’s metric (EIG, 2009). Independent studies evaluating the performance of Design-Build in various domains of the public sector have been conducted in the past, however a measurement of this specificity has yet to be conducted. The scope of this thesis is to evaluate the MILCON Transformation performance of the of the South Atlantic Division during 2002-2014. Project data was gathered from the USACE-internal automated information system, Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). Only MILCON, vertical construction project data was collected from EDW, and four hypothesis based off cost and time were developed for testing. Five project milestones for 304 projects that qualified for evaluation were evaluated using 180 separate Welch’s T-tests to test for a statistically significant difference between Design-Bid-Build and Design-Build. Of the 180 T-tests conducted, 37 were in support of the alternate hypothesis, which stated that there was a statistically significant difference with 95% confidence between the two project delivery models. Projects were analyzed in three different ways. First, projects were distributed between the two project delivery populations and all performance metrics regarding cost and time were analyzed from the Division level. Next, projects were analyzed by building type, to find out if there were any specific types of buildings where Design-Build performed better than Design-Bid-Build. Finally, projects were analyzed by District, where projects from each of the 5 Districts within the South Atlantic Division were analyzed to determine if any one District executed Design-Build more successfully than another District. From this analysis, it was found that the 15% reduction of cost by use of Design-Build was realized from a Division level. However, in no circumstance was the target 30% reduction in time realized for the Division, any District, or any specific building type. Results were then presented to a focus group of leaders within the USACE South Atlantic Division to gather insight on why the USACE Commanders goals were not completely met. Since literature pointed to Design-Build as being a source of lower cost and time in the public sector, data results warranted further insight as to why the USACE struggled to gain full value from the Design-Build delivery model. The focus group validated the data and findings while attributing discovered performance metrics to operational tempo, manpower, and conservative management. From these results, the researcher submits recommendations on how the USACE can realize greater value from the use of Design-Build.

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Feasibility of implementing prefabricated U.S. products and methods for residential construction in Thailand

2014-06-24 , Ngoenchuklin, Chawin

Prefabricated construction has been a common construction method for American construction for more than a century. The concept of build it fast in the most economical way has not changed since the beginning; however, the new technologies have been developed to suit the modern world prefabricated construction. The new technologies are not only help contractors and owners get their building faster and more economical but they also help reduce construction waste and produce high energy efficiency buildings which result in a long term benefit to projects. On the other hand, prefabrication for residential construction has been used in Thailand for only less than two decades. However, the prefabrication construction in Thailand has grown rapidly from the past five years. Recently, there are many new developers, and contractors who have switched from a traditional construction to prefabrication to keep up the rising in Thai residential market. Moreover, the new minimum wage policy from Thai government has hit Thai construction business very hard. The labor cost has raised more than 40% in some area (Thai Department of labor, 2013) since 2012. Thai developers see prefabrication as a future and ready to invest more in this type of construction. (Krunthep Thurakit, 2013) Currently, there are many construction products from the U.S. which have been using in Thai construction. Thai people are familiar with American product, therefore, U.S. prefabricated products and methods can easily make a quick transition to Thai prefabricated construction. The intention of this research is to find the prefabricated residential construction products or method from the U.S. that can be used for developing the new or similar products that compatible with Thai market. There are a lot of strong potential prefabricated construction products and method in the U.S. which can be very useful in Thailand. Those can be benefit to both American investors and Thai construction. The selected products or method will be review and investigate in the categories such as performance, compatibility, availability, price and ability to adapt to Thai market.

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Alternative to low bid selection in Air Force reserve military construction: approach to best value procurement

2009-07-01 , Garner, Birtice A.

Best value is becoming one of the most commonly used procurement methods in the facility construction industry. The Federal Government and the Air Force Reserve predominant project delivery approach has been via the low-bid award. This process has not been successful, documented by large numbers of construction modifications, as well as project cost and schedule growth over the past sixteen years. Recently, federal procurement agencies have attempted to move toward construction awards based upon best value principles relative to performance and price. The United States Army Corps of Engineers best value procurement vehicle known as Military Transformation fails to deliver true best value. This pseudo best value delivery process: (1) fails to objectively rate and apply contractor past performance; (2) lacks the means to monetarily quantify contractor proposal risks; and (3) provides no means of transferring control and responsibility for risks and risk minimization to the contractor. Only a true best value project delivery system can provide the urgently required increased efficiency necessary for Air Force Reserve Command to remain a dependable military institution capable of erecting facilities contributory to our nation's defense by perpetually adding value to the project delivery process.

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Change order insurance policy (COIP) in the U.S. design and construction industry: Is there any likelihood of acceptance?

2016-11-15 , Ghaziri, Louay

Throughout the construction industry and for a long period of time, the issue of change orders poses as an undesirable problem in maintaining the efficiency and cost of construction projects. This research study will investigate a new mechanism for dealing with such problems. Accordingly, it will propose sharing the risk of cost overrun as a consequence of change orders, with a third-party insurance company, which can also be known as Change Order Insurance Policy (COIP). In order to check for the possibility of implementing such a policy in the U.S. market, this study will primarily test for the acceptance rate of design and construction professionals spanning the industry. Accordingly, participants were chosen from a list of 25 top construction firms found in The Atlanta Business Chronicle. Two anonymous surveys were then administered to assess the extent to which construction-affiliated professionals accept the concept of using COIP. Accordingly, results showed that the majority of participants do not accept the idea of using such a policy. However, program managers and owners did portray higher acceptance rates, as opposed to architects and contractors.

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Measuring sustainability perceptions of construction materials

2010-05-24 , Florez, Laura

As more owners seek to develop sustainable buildings, the construction industry is adapting to new requirements in order to meet owner's concerns. Material selection has been identified as an area where designers and contractors can have a significant impact on the sustainable performance of a building. Objective factors such as design considerations and cost constraints can play a role in the selection of materials. However, there may be subjective factors that could also impact the selection of materials. Building upon the potential impact of sustainability perceptions in an optimization model that can be used to help decision makers to select materials, this study defines and tests an instrument to identify and measure such perceptions. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a conceptual instrument that measures the user-based assessment of product sustainability and validates decision-maker's perceptions in order to evaluate the contribution of subjective characteristics in materials selection. A survey of design and construction students and practitioners is carried out to capture the subjective factors included in the instrument. A Factor Analysis approach is used to refine and validate the measurement instrument and predict decision-makers' sustainability appraisal due to the factors considered.

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Holistic Analysis of Fuel Cells for Residential Application

2007-11-06 , Ospina Alvarado, Angelica Maria

The development of an index to compare different sources of energy is presented; the index address the appraisal of the source of energy from its sustainable performance and also using the factors that influence the user's decision making process of adopting an alternative energy. The index is used to compare the fuel cell system and the traditional grid system powered by coal fired power plants, for a typical residential unit located in the rural Appalachian region in Ohio.

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Assessing the effects of augmented reality on the spatial skills of postsecondary construction management students in the U.S.

2016-04-18 , Kim, Jeff

There is a continual challenge within the construction industry to meet schedule, budget, and quality expectations. At the same time, there is an underlying problem where the older and more experienced workforce is retiring from industry at a faster rate than the newer workforce can replace them. As the more experienced workforce departs from the industry, they are taking with them much-needed skills and experience that fail to get transitioned to the newer and less experienced workforce. Among these skills are spatial skills. The construction industry has already caught on that this is a serious problem that they must contend with, and so, they have looked to the postsecondary institutions to help resolve it. However, the postsecondary institutions have a problem of their own, whereby they commonly default to passive teaching techniques that are not well suited to teaching spatial skills. So, therefore, there is a need to graduate construction management students with better spatial skills in order to meet the necessities of industry. Along with this, is the need for academia to reconsider teaching styles to better train spatial skills. Spatial skills, it has been found, are better retained when active and collaborative teaching engagements are arranged. Therefore, identifying and testing a practical and non-interfering classroom tool that students can easily use, would be the most favorable way to overcome academia’s tendency towards passive teaching. Spatial skills are needed in every part of the construction industry. In fact, everyday simple tasks require spatial skills and while these skills are honed over time, more refined skills, capable of interpreting abstract space, are required to assemble a complex construction project. Construction projects are getting more complex and often the design involves some measure of abstract thinking. Teaching these abstract-based spatial skills in postsecondary institutions has typically been done through drafting and plan reading courses, with some success. However, the need from industry is not being fully met with these skills and so an alternative solution is recommended. While Building Information Modeling (BIM) has become an adequate solution to aid in the understanding and planning of highly abstract designs, successfully using it requires excellent spatial skills. Consequently, it would be advantageous if those spatial skills were developed before students were introduced to BIM. Augmented reality is a collection of technologies that allows a user to view the “real” world with additional information that is intended to provide a better understanding of what is being observed. Augmented reality already has applications in many industries and is fast becoming a proven technology. With the availability of smaller and more powerful consumer mobile devices, augmented reality has the potential of becoming a more ubiquitous and practical tool. Recognizing that this technology can be practical, non-interfering, and known by the masses makes it an excellent solution for the classroom. Therefore, this research will study the use of an augmented reality tool to determine if there is an improvement of spatial skills in terms of accuracy, time to execute, and the retention of concepts over time. Furthermore, a separate analysis will be conducted to determine if the teaching tool is a benefit or disruption to the overall learning experience.

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Design build project delivery in the Air Force Reserve Command

2009-07-01 , Richardson, Kathleen

Design Build is rapidly becoming one of the most commonly used project delivery methods in the construction industry. The United States Corp of Engineers (USACE) has started implementing its own version of Design Build with the introduction of Military Transformation in April 2005. Per the Department of the Army (2008) Military Transformation is a term employed by the Corps to implement the use of alternate project delivery method as a means of achieving best value. The United States Air Force (AF) and the Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) are expected to establish a target of 75% of all future Military Construction Projects (MILCONs) executed when using the Design Build method. The use of this delivery method results in significant changes to the relationships between the various parties associated with facility project delivery compared to the traditional Design Bid Build method. AFRC construction project procedures and requirements must also change.

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