This book provides a unique guide to value management and sustainability in construction to researchers and professional. The book provides a better understanding of the concept of value management, the basis of sustainable construction and thereafter, demonstrates how using the principles of value management can help to achieve successful construction projects that are financially viable, socially beneficial and do not damage the environment. The book serves as an introduction to value management for scholars and researchers at all levels; and also as a practical guide for construction professionals, employers and other stakeholders in the construction industry.

This book discusses environmental management and construction management approaches to the environmental problems that can emerge in construction projects. It sets a brand new standard for environmental management in mega construction projects in China and helps all construction project stakeholders establish a more compliant and efficient environmental management system. The authors systematically explore management systems and team management, offering managerial methods and tips based on international and Chinese practices. Outlining all the environmental challenges that can arise during construction, it is a valuable resource for company owners, construction contractors, and construction management consultants and companies. It also offers useful insights for engineers, project managers and project executives.

This book provides readers an understanding of the implementation of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) for international construction operations. In an extended case study, it primarily focuses on Chinese construction firms (CCFs) based in Singapore. In this regard, the book explains the differences and similarities between Risk Management (RM), Project Risk Management (PRM) and ERM in the construction industry, and examines their linkages for international construction operations in a broader context. The explanation elaborates on how companies may adopt and implement RM, PRM and ERM as appropriate in their various operations, both in their home market as well as in overseas host markets. The book also reviews the whole spectrum of work relating to organizational behavior (OB) as one of the key underpinnings for companies to evaluate and implement ERM. It will benefit practitioners from the industry as well as academics interested in the implementation of ERM practices in international construction operations.

This book explores China’s global competitiveness in the building of infrastructures with a particular interest in the resource-rich African countries. The book begins with a comprehensive literature review on total quality management (TQM) and national culture, followed by reviews of the construction industries in China and Nigeria. This provides better understanding of the linkages between TQM, based on the International Organization for Standardization’s ISO 9000 quality management systems (QMS), and national culture, based on Emeritus Professor Geert Hofstede’s national cultural dimensions. Premised on the culture-specificity and bi-directionality relationships between TQM and national culture, this book investigates the construction industries in China and Nigeria including their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) as well as an appraisal of their historical and emerging relationships. In its conceptual approach, this book presents different models in the lead up to its primary theoretical contribution of a quality management assessment model (QMAM) that was adopted during the study’s field work. The book also presents relevant lessons relating to cross cultural management and quality performance not only to the Nigerians but also other foreign players in Nigeria’s construction industry.

This unique book that deals with project communication management in complex environments, taking a leaf from China’s experience with a major earthquake in Sichuan, would be a timely contribution to fill this lacuna. Readers would be able to understand how companies and organizations that are unprepared for crisis management would react to their detriment. The lessons provided in this book are the only one of its kind to highlight the lessons for companies and organizations to prepare themselves for successful project communication management through the complexity-informed framework. Although the book is written by two building professionals, the concepts and lessons presented are generic and equally applicable for businesses outside of the construction industry; for example, for airports, resorts, hotels, shipyards, etc.

This book aims to provide knowledge on how infrastructure is planned and built in a typical developing country, and what key variables are there in the system limiting the efficient use of public investments in infrastructure. The book begins with a comprehensive literature review on construction and economic development, and trade and economic development. The focus of the book is on the case of Vietnam, with lessons drawn for other developing economies. The book employs the mixed use of data to provide a stronger basis for analysis and interpretation of related government policies. Based on the research findings, the book recommends significant capacity building work for Vietnam to develop capacities that would remove constraints on the efficient use of public investments in infrastructure. The general principles of significant capacity building work which are useful for policy implications are introduced in the book. Analysts, academics, public and private communities in developing countries can adopt the research findings as guiding principles to bring about changes in their current use of public investments in infrastructure, thus supporting their trade and economic growth in the long term.

This book focuses on the aspects of contracting contracts, basically related to road construction and management contracts. The book presents an analytical study of Performance-Based Road Management and Maintenance (PMMR), Funktionsbauvertrag (FBV) (Function-Based Construction Contract) and Public Private Partnerships (PPP). A separate chapter is also included about the comparative study of these contract types. The book provides useful material for university libraries, construction companies and government departments of construction.

Exploring complex and intelligent analytical and mathematical methods, this book examines how different approaches can be used to optimize program management in the construction industry. It presents an in-depth study of the different program management methods, ranging from simple decision-making techniques and statistics analysis to the more complex linear programming and demonstrates how knowledge-base systems and genetic algorithms can be used to optimize resources and meet time, budget and quality criteria. It addresses topics including decision-making principles, planning and scheduling, mathematical forecasting models, optimization techniques programming and artificial intelligence techniques. Providing a valuable resource for anyone managing multiple projects in the construction industry, this book is intended for civil and construction engineering students, project managers, construction managers and senior engineers.

This book focuses on the implementation of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) in the construction industry as a tool to help building designers arrive at optimal decisions for external envelope systems with sustainable and buildable design goals. In particular, the book integrates special features into the conventional QFD tool to enhance its performance. These features include a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making method, fuzzy consensus scheme, and Knowledge Management System (KMS). This integration results in a more robust decision support tool, known as the Knowledge-based Decision Support System QFD (KBDSS-QFD) tool. As an example, the KBDSS-QFD tool is used for the assessment of building envelope materials and designs for high-rise residential buildings in Singapore in the early design stage. The book provides the reader with a conceptual framework for understanding the development of the KBDSS-QFD tool. The framework is presented in a generalized form in order to benefit building professionals, decision makers, analysts, academics and researchers, who can use the findings as guiding principles to achieve optimal solutions and boost efficiency.

How to Care for Old and Historic Wood and Plaster What are the best methods for removing stains from wood finishes? How can you determine the type of finish on your molding? How can you repair the cracks in your plaster cornice? You’ve been told you have "alligatored paint": what is it and what can you do about it? … Answers to these questions and hundreds more are found in this detailed guide to caring for and reviving old wood and plaster walls and moldings. Carefully shaped woodwork, delicate plaster molding and colorful painted finishes give unique character to the interiors of old buildings. Walls and Molding describes the history of these key features and clearly explains how to save and repair them. Written for homeowners and others responsible for the care of buildings from 50 to 250 years old, and based on the principles of preservation expressed in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation and Guidelines for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings, this authoritative handbook offers practical advice for all aspects of caring for old wood and plaster walls and molding. Detailed methods are included for diagnosing, cleaning, repairing and reconstructing wood panels and molding as well as patching and replastering walls — all stressing the three-pronged approach of the National Park Service: repair, replace and, only as a last resort, re-create. The book includes extensive charts on finishes, wood and plaster problems, and safety precautions. Combining a look at past building techniques and modern rehabilitation procedures, Walls and Molding focuses on what can be done to preserve and enjoy the special interiors in old and historic buildings. Some 300 photographs and drawings, helpful checklists, a glossary of wall treatment terms, a suggested reading list and official preservation guidelines followed nationwide provide further ideas and guidance for planning an appropriate rehabilitation in your old or historic building.

This monograph presents an analysis of construction safety problems and on-site safety measures from an economist's point of view. The book includes examples from both emerging countries, e.g. China and India, and developed countries, e.g. Australia and Hong Kong. Moreover, the author covers an analysis on construction safety knowledge sharing by means of updatable mobile technology such as apps in Androids and iOS platform mobile devices. The target audience comprises primarily researchers and experts in the field but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

The book presents the development of the Construction Quality Assessment System (CONQUAS), Singapore's de facto quality performance measurement system, explains the application of the Quality Management System (QMS) to manage CONQUAS and identifies 33 critical success factors (CSFs) for achieving high CONQUAS scores. Through CONQUAS, the reader benefits from understanding how the Singapore government developed and implemented the first objective system for measuring what many building professionals have perceived to be elusive quality standards in the construction industry. The book presents both the theoretical concepts as well as the practical aspects to achieving strategic Project Quality Management that is anchored on the CSFs to building best practices. To realistically reflect the practical aspects and challenging issues faced by stakeholders in the construction industry, questionnaire surveys were conducted with building professionals to distinguish the importance level and extent of adoption of the 33 CSFs (identified from a comprehensive review of the extant literature) in influencing and affecting the achievement of high CONQUAS scores. These were further anchored by in-depth interviews with quality experts in the Singapore construction industry to provide a better understanding of issues relating to strategic Project Quality Management. Collectively, the empirical findings collated from the building professionals suggest that while the CSFs identified are known tenets of quality, these were still not being followed in their totality. A further case study was conducted through a formal set of in-depth interviews with the quality assurance team of a construction company who has direct involvement before, during and after their tremendous improvements in the CONQUAS scores attained. The strength of this book therefore represents a true account and reflections of real-life practices and experiences in the construction industry for contractors, quality managers and policy-makers to learn from. Although the context of this book relates to the Singapore experience, the lessons and recommendations are equally relevant and applicable to the global construction industry in both the developing and developed countries whose stakeholders (in both the public and private sectors) wish to understand how CONQUAS works, and how the CSFs identified can likewise be implemented for strategic Project Quality Management to building best practices. The book is therefore of interests to researchers, academia and practitioners in the construction industry as well as in other sectors of the economy (in Singapore and other countries) where learning points may be used for enhancing project quality management for buildings.

This book explains how to combine and exploit sensor networks and internet-of-things (IoT) technologies and Web-service design patterns to enrich and integrate Building Information Models (BIMs). It provides approaches and software architectures for facilitating the interaction with (and between) BIMs through Web services, and for enabling and facilitating the fusion of the information residing in such models or of information acquired from IoT technologies. The proposed software architectures are presented in the form of design patterns. This information fusion will facilitate many novel application fields ranging from emergency response, to urban monitoring and surveillance, and to smart buildings. The book consists of 8 chapters. The first 2 chapters focus on the basics of BIMs, while chapter 3 presents fundamental service-oriented architecture patterns for complex information models. Subsequently, chapters 4 and 5 elaborate on the hardware and software side of IoT, with a special focus on their use for BIMs. Chapter 6 provides advanced SOA patterns for BIMs, while chapter 7 details patterns for IoT, and for BIM and IoT information fusion. Lastly, chapter 8 summarizes the work and provides an outlook on promising future developments. Overall, the book will be beneficial for researchers and developers in the fields of building information models, IoT applications, and systems integration.

Covers the entire process of risk management by providing methodologies for determining the sources of engineering project risk, and once threats have been identified, managing them through: identification and assessment (probability, relative importance, variables, risk breakdown structure, etc.); implementation of measures for their prevention, reduction or mitigation; evaluation of impacts and quantification of risks and establishment of control measures. It also considers sensitivity analysis to determine the influence of uncertain parameters values on different project results, such as completion time, total costs, etc. Case studies and examples across a wide spectrum of engineering projects discuss such diverse factors as: safety; environmental impacts; societal reactions; time and cost overruns; quality control; legal issues; financial considerations; and political risk, making this suitable for undergraduates and graduates in grasping the fundamentals of risk management.

A close-to-ideal blend of suburb and city, speedy construction of towers of Babylon, the sparkling proportion of glass and steel buildings' facade at night showcase the wisdom of humans. They also witness the footsteps, sweats and tears of architects and engineers. Unfortunately, these signatures of human civilizations are swathed in towering figures of construction accidents. Fretting about these on sites, different countries adopt different measures on sites. This book firstly sketches the construction accidents on sites, followed by a review on safety measures in some of the developing countries such as Bermuda, Egypt, Kuwait and China; as well as developed countries, for example, the United States, France and Singapore. It also highlights the enormous compensation costs with the courts' experiences in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.

This study presents exploratory work and seeks to identify and evaluate the success and failure factors that could form a guideline for further study and to some extent help professionals to understand some critical aspects that impact project performance concerning construction in India. A total of 55 attributes affecting the performance of construction projects are analysed in terms of their level of influence on four key performance criteria - schedule, cost, quality, and no disputes - using a two-stage questionnaire survey. These attributes are then further analysed, interpreted and evaluated. Based on the critical success factors obtained from the study, a neural network model-based predictive model for project performance has been developed. The performance prediction models have been derived for all four project performance criteria. Further, a hypothesis that 'project success' is influenced by 'success traits' has also been formulated. The hypothesized positive inter-relationships between success traits and project success have been tested using the structural equation modelling technique. Besides supporting the intuition of past researchers in recognizing 'coordination' as a key success factor, this study has revealed that coordination is not an isolated and independent activity, but is a typical management function with an inherent role in all major management activities. Key elements affecting coordination have also been identified and their influence on coordination effort has been studied. Furthermore, the present study has also identified three broad skill groups required of effective project coordinators. The results are validated through case studies of live projects and structured interviews with experts in the field of construction management.

The FET College series is designed to meet the needs of students and lecturers of the National Certificate Vocational.

In recent years, a number of global claims have failed because they were presented without any systematic analysis, justification or proper calculation of losses. Hence, Global Claims in Construction highlights these issues as well as the importance of understanding causation, factual necessity and the courts' attitude and approach to global claims. Global Claims in Construction addresses the principles of global claims and their calculation methodologies in detail through extensive references to literature, case law and a real world case study. It aims to be a valuable resource for professionals working in the construction industry, as well as students in construction and engineering.

As a companion to books on project-management theory, this book illustrates, in a down-to-earth, comprehensive style, how to put that theory into practice. In addition to the many examples that illustrate procedures, the book includes over 25 case studies, each one addressing a specific theme. Key topics, such as project selection, negotiations, planning and scheduling, cost and budgeting, project control, human resources, environmental impacts, risk management, and financial evaluation, are discussed, using a step-by-step approach. Beginning at the grassroots level, some cases are solved by hand to illustrate the mechanics of a procedure, while others are solved using advanced computer programs. In this way the reader has a clear idea of the problem, how and when to raise the issue, information needed (and who can provide it), how to solve it by hand, when possible, and also its resolution using the latest informatics tools.

Greening Airports considers the "greening", i.e., more sustainable development, of the entire air transport system - airports, air traffic control, and airlines - that could be achieved by the development and implementation of advanced operations and technologies. A broad overview of the general concept is given at the start of Greening Airports, which then goes on to provide a system for monitoring and assessing the level of greening of both the air transport system and individual airports. These are followed by analysis and modelling of the potential effects of particular advanced operations and technologies on the greening of airports and their local airspace. These include: the development of a large airport into a multimodal transport node by connecting it to a high speed rail network; the use of operations supported by new and existing air traffic control technologies to increase landing capacity of existing runways; the use of liquid hydrogen as a commercial aviation fuel; and the improvement of airport ground accessibility by a light rail rapid transit system. Greening Airports is written for researchers, planners, operators and policy makers in air transport.

Die zwischen Angebot und Auftragsabwicklung im Bauunternehmen entstehenden Probleme lassen sich vermeiden. In diesem Buch findet der Leser das Angebots- und Ausfuhrungsmanagement systematisch strukturiert. Die Projektphasen des Angebotsmanagements( Akquisition, Angebotsbearbeitung und Vertragsverhandlungen) sowie des Ausfuhrungsmanagements (Arbeitsvorbereitung, Beschaffung und Bauausfuhrung) werden in den einzelnen Schritten dargelegt. Im Vordergrund stehen die Prozessverantwortung sowie eine zielorientierte Arbeitsplanung und Arbeitsorganisation fur eine ergebnisorientierte Takt- und Fliessplanung mit Bauprogramm, Arbeitskalkulation, Wochen- und Tagesplanung, Logistik, Qualitats- und Nachtragsmanagement. Alle wichtigen Aufgaben der Beteiligten werden beschrieben. Das Buch dient als Leitfaden fur eine erfolgreiche, prozess- und ergebnisorientierte Projektabwicklung in Bauunternehmen zur Erzielung des kalkulierten Gewinns und einer hohen Kundenzufriedenheit. Die UEberarbeitungen und Erganzungen machen diese Neuauflage zu einem umfassenden Planungs- und Steuerungshandbuch fur die Angebots- und Ausfuhrungsbearbeitung von projektspezifischen unikaten Auftragen.

Meant to complement rather than compete with the existing books on the subject, this book deals with the project performance and control phases of the project life cycle to present a detailed investigation of the project's time performance measurement methods and risk analysis techniques in order to evaluate existing and newly developed methods in terms of their abilities to improve the corrective actions decision-making process during project tracking. As readers apply what is learned from the book, EVM practices will become even more effective in project management and cost engineering. Individual chapters look at simulation studies in forecast accuracy; schedule adherence; time sensitivity; activity sensitivity; and using top-down or bottom-up project tracking. Vanhoucke also offers an actual real-life case study, a tutorial on the use of ProTrack software (newly developed based on his research) in EVM, and conclusions on the relative effectiveness for each technique presented.

Photorealistic rendering strives to generate images from computer modeled scenes with an image quality as close to real life as possible. A major issue in rendering is simulation of local and global light reflection in a scene. Both ray tracing and radiosity algorithms capture only some of the possible light reflection phenomena. Recently developed two-pass algorithms combine the ray tracing and radiosity approaches and are able to capture the whole range of light reflection. This book is a collection of papers discussing the latest developments, including a new range of improvements, in stochastic sampling strategies, radiosity form factor calculation, and parallel processing for ray tracing and radiosity. A number of papers on rendering applications in interior design, lighting design, and remote sensing conclude the volume. The contributions are revised versions of papers originally presented at the Second Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, held in Barcelona, Spain, in May 1991. The book fully reflects the state of the art in rendering and presentsa wide variety of novel techniques. It will interest researchers and students in computer graphics, as well as designers who want to apply rendering techniques for realistic simulation in lighting design, interior design, and architecture.

This book contains a selection of revised versions of papers presented at the Third Eurographics Workshop on Intelligent CAD Systems, which was held at Hotel Opduin on the island of Texel in The Netherlands, April 3-7, 1989. The workshop theme was Practical Experience and Evaluation. It included five paper presentation sessions, each followed by a discussion. The workshop closed with a general discussion. The book is therefore divided into five parts: design process, system architecture, languages, geometric reasoning, and user interface. A report on the discussion session, written by the session's moderator, concludes each part. These reports are not intended to be exact records of the discussion, but rather the moderators' summary of their contents. The aim of the workshop was to share the experience the participants gained by developing intelligent CAD (Computer Aided Design) systems, and to evaluate the developed systems to determine which features were still lacking. The workshop was organized as the last one in a series of three workshops under the same title. The first workshop focused on theoretical and methodological aspects, resulting in a sound theoretical basis for intelligent CAD systems. Implementational issues were discussed at the second workshop, paying attention to systems developed with reference to this basis. The experience and evaluation showed a dual outcome. Firstly, it resulted in the development of a new generation of intelligent CAD systems. Secondly, it led us to the development of new theories for intelligent CAD.

Increasingly over the next few decades, the oil and gas industry faces the complex task of decommissioning its offshore platforms, pipelines and sub-sea equipment as they reach the end of their operational capabilities. Decommissioning involves and integrates many distinct aspects: engineering, environmental, economic, legal, political and safety considerations. A practical strategy for removing and disposing these structures needs to be developed which best meets the demands of all of these different aspects. Specialists in these various fields have been brought together for this volume to contribute their assessments of the situation. The result is an important step toward the development of a co-ordinated approach to the subject. It is essential reading for all those who are involved with major decommissioning projects, their possible environmental impact and their implications in politics and law.