Yujie Lu

During the past few decades, construction and demolition (C&D) waste has received increasing attention from construction practitioners and researchers worldwide. A plethora of research regarding C&D waste management has been published in various academic journals. However, it has been determined that existing studies with respect to C&D waste reduction are mainly carried out from a static perspective, without considering the dynamic and interdependent nature of the whole waste reduction system. This might lead to misunderstanding about the actual effect of implementing any waste reduction strategies. Therefore, this research proposes a model that can serve as a decision support tool for projecting C&D waste reduction in line with the waste management situation of a given construction project, and more importantly, as a platform for simulating effects of various management strategies on C&D waste reduction. The research is conducted using system dynamics methodology, which is a systematic approach that deals with the complexity – interrelationships and dynamics – of any social, economic and managerial system. The dynamic model integrates major variables that affect C&D waste reduction. In this paper, seven causal loop diagrams that can deepen understanding about the feedback relationships underlying C&D waste reduction system are firstly presented. Then a stock-flow diagram is formulated by using software for system dynamics modeling. Finally, a case study is used to illustrate the validation and application of the proposed model. Results of the case study not only built confidence in the model so that it can be used for quantitative analysis, but also assessed and compared the effect of three designed policy scenarios on C&D waste reduction. One major contribution of this study is the development of a dynamic model for evaluating C&D waste reduction strategies under various scenarios, so that best management strategies could be identified before being implemented in practice.

Abstract
With an increasing American public desire to regulate carbon emissions from stationary and mobile sources, and with more states adopting renewable energy standards and green building codes as an effort towards green environment initiatives, there is an imperative need to evaluate the effectiveness and equity implications of using different mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions in the construction and facility management industry. After all, building construction and operation contributes more than one third of the carbon emissions in the United States (US). However, the impact of emerging carbon regulatory policies on the construction industry is still unclear. This paper presents a carbon regulation based duopoly model to evaluate the effectiveness and equity of various carbon policies including emission standards, carbon tax, and emissions trading. An empirical analysis of the US housing industry is conducted to illustrate the impacts on the industrial production, emission reduction target, market structure, technology selection, and carbon cost allocation etc. The results encompass emission reduction contributions from large and small firms, the extent of carbon cost burden pass-through to consumers, changes in house price, industry output, and market share. Especially, the analysis shows the market-based mechanisms outperform the emission standards in terms of effectively achieving emission targets while maintaining a stable industrial production. To meet the 17% emission reduction target, a carbon price of $22.3 per metric ton is expected for construction firms. About 54% of carbon cost will be passed through to the end consumers at this carbon price.

Highlights
► The study establishes an integrated carbon policy analysis model. ► Market-based policies have less negative impact on industry structure, output, and price. ► Large firms take greater responsibility for emission reduction and adopting Low Carbon Technologies. ► Carbon price is $22.3 per ton to meet the 17% emission reduction target. ► Contractors bear increasing cost burden as carbon price goes up

Keywords:
construction industry; emissions; carbon tax; emissions trading; emission standards; duopoly model

PPP projects usually involve more risks than other traditional procurement models because of their complexity.  This paper presents the third stage of a funded study, which aims to develop a practical and computerized risk evaluation model for PPP projects. In the first and second stages, a risk hierarchal structure composed of 17 weighted risk factors is developed to describe risk profiles of PPP projects. The weightings and membership functions for risk factors are established using the Delphi survey technique and Fuzzy Set Theory. The risk evaluation model is then developed using a fuzzy synthetic evaluation approach. In the third stage, an automated decision support tool based on the risk evaluation model is designed for PPP practitioners by using Visual Basic for Application (VBA). The computerized tool can not only assist PPP participants to assess a PPP project’s overall risk level for auxiliary investment decision, but can also help practitioners to identify the most risky areas of a PPP project for effective risk response. To demonstrate the applicability of the computerized model, an illustrative case is finally provided.

Stakeholder management is essential for project success. Previous studies have explored project stakeholder management process and the success factors while the practice is unsatisfactory. Few have further explored the interrelationships of the success factors, which is obstructive to the in-depth understanding of project stakeholder management. This paper employs interpretative structural modeling (ISM) to develop the hierarchical structure and investigate the interrelationships of these success factors. Moreover, matrice d’impacts croises-multiplication appliqué a un classemen (MICMAC) analysis is conducted to identify the dependency and driving power of the success factors. ISM, as well as MICMAC analysis, provides a useful tool for practitioners to understand success factors for stakeholder management in construction. This study discovered that 6 factors among 16 factors have a weak dependent power but a strong driving power while 6 factors have a strong dependent power but a weak driving power. Managing stakeholders with social responsibility, keeping and promoting a good relationship, and communicating with and engaging stakeholder properly and frequently have been found to have the highest dependence on the other factors and have been placed on the top level of the hierarchical structure. The results facilitate the managers to gain an in-depth understanding of project stakeholder management and pay due attention to achieve the success. It can also be generalized to provide good references for investigation of success factors for project stakeholder management in other countries.

Key words: Stakeholder management, project organization, success factors, interpretative structural modeling (ISM), matrice d’impacts croises-multiplication appliqué a un classemen (MICMAC) analysis, China.

As a radically distinct wireless communication approach compared to traditional narrow band systems, ULTRA-WIDE BAND (UWB) technology has been applied in various sectors and is gaining in popularity, but there appears to be a lack of systematic summary of the potential of this technology. To provide insights into UWB technology for the uninitiated reader, this paper explores the state-of-the-art research and development of UWB applications in many sectors including the construction industry without concerning the technological details. First this paper presents the key concepts related to UWB technology and a brief history of UWB. Then it summarizes the UWB's technical features which enable its popularity in industry. Finally, application examples of UWB technology in many sectors, including construction, are presented to analyze and highlight the impact on the industry performance. In the near future UWB technology is expected to become a very important component and have far-reaching impact in ubiquitous computing.

Social network analysis (SNA) has been widely used to explore the existence and strength of connections among various actors within an organization. Recently, understanding and interpreting social aspects in project organization have gained great interest in project management research. Consequently, there is a need to analyse complex project organization (CPO) by using SNA with increasing numbers of large-scale and complex projects. The goal of this research is to better appreciate the social network relations in a CPO environment and to improve the organizational efficiency and team performance through new organizational control mechanisms (OCMs). This study first discusses a multi-level social network framework with a focus on the CPO where major analytical components of the framework are presented including modelling elements and structures and preferred parameters. Next, social network-oriented OCM and strategies are illustrated and compared with regular organizational controls. To examine the mentioned SNA framework and strategy, this study employs a construction case of EXPO 2010 Shanghai China and analyses the information transmission, role and positional analysis, clique analysis, management power and leadership of the network. The result of the case study provides insightful suggestions for controlling the complex organization, including enhancement of organizational learning ability, standardized working protocols and regulations, and reinforces the management of key information intermediaries, professional requirement for centrality position units and the power shift in some ‘special units’. The case also reveals that the informal relations have more significant impacts on the organizational power, leadership and control, especially for complex projects.

Green projects continue to expand rapidly as a result of growing concerns about environment and energy efficiency. According to the Engineering News Record (ENR), green retrofits and new green building construction will probably represent 20%-30% of the non-residential market by value in the next five years. At the same time, green elements are increasingly incorporated into infrastructure planning, design, construction, and maintenance. Along with the growth of green market, going green in the AEC industry not only demonstrates corporate social responsibility, but also can yield significant economic benefits. However, the actual cost and benefits of going green have not yet been thoroughly measured. The issue is even more pressing under the current economic recession when many companies are forced to cut costs and close unprofitable operations. This paper provides an empirical analysis of the financial performance of green and conventional companies. The companies are selected from the ENR top contractor and design firm list, Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI) series, and Newsweek 500 green U.S. companies . The DuPont method and Economic Value Added analysis were used to evaluate the performance of green and conventional companies based on several aspects: profitability, financing, activity, tax, and operation. A comparison analysis of the 12 pairs of conventional and green firms shows a significant difference in return on equity (17.44% vs 8.72%) and economic value added (1.08% vs -0.743%) between green and conventional AEC firms. The results of the analysis also raise an important question of how one can determine a green contractor, and what are the green strategies for construction firms.

With an increasing American public desire to regulate carbon emissions from stationary and dynamic sources, and with more states adopting green energy and building legislation as an effort towards green environment initiative, there are imperative needs to evaluate the efficiency and equity implications of using market based mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions in the construction and facility management industry. After all, the facility construction and operation consist of more than one third of carbon emissions in the U.S. This paper develops models of market supply, price, capacity, and technology selection on a duopoly market structure to address these research questions. The U.S. housing market is used for theoretical analysis of emission reductions and industry fairness effects of carbon regulatory policies, e.g. carbon tax and pricing. The Nash-Cournot Equilibrium is determined to assess the behavior of the various sizes of builders. The analysis shows that 1) carbon tax will be an effective policy in terms of reducing emissions effectively and avoiding large fluctuation of the construction industry; 2) effects implications of the carbon regulations on small contractors are greater than large ones; 3) house market price will rise as a result of carbon tax and will be shared by contractors and customers; and 4) the reduction of carbon emissions is primarily due to the adoption of available cost-efficient technologies.

The national infrastructure is the most essential society component serving for civil activities, economic prosperity, and public safety every day. Its absence or failure will result in tremendous devastation to nation's growth and competitiveness. Nevertheless we can't manage and drive the infrastructure to a right direction unless the infrastructure conditions and risks are properly evaluated. And current researches mainly focus on single or multiple projects, seldom study the risk evaluation from the overall national level. This paper first constructs a national‐level risk evaluation framework from four levels: ultimate outcome, immediate determinants, underlying determinants, basic determinants; then assesses the infrastructure condition based on ASCE quadrennial infrastructure report card case. Various methodologies, assessment objectives, evaluation breakdown structure, gauging criteria and data sources are discussed though the case. The result of this research can be used for investigating national infrastructure risks systematically, supporting the national infrastructure funding allocation, and assisting to policy decisions making.

The incorporation of sustainability principles into project design and operation processes has been profoundly changing the construction industry. This change has caused an increasing number of projects to pursue a green certification, such as the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) and Green Globes certifications for building projects or the Green Leadership In Transportation Environmental Sustainability (GreenLITES) and Illinois-Livable and Sustainable Transportation (I-LAST) certifications for transportation and highways projects. While a great body of knowledge has been established at the construction project level, little is known regarding social and environmental responsibility at the construction corporation level. As many modern construction projects have started to favor green contractors and encourage green processes, such ignorance is cause for concern. Therefore, based on the extensive review of sustainable rating practices in other industries, such as financial services, retail industries, universities, and standardization organizations, this paper proposes a framework for a Sustainability Rating System for Construction Corporations (SRSCC) and 77 key sustainability indicators covering three dimensions of sustainability (social, environmental, and economic) and four elements of construction corporation (service/product, operation process, administration, stakeholder). With comparing this framework to existing sustainable rating systems in the construction industry, this paper delivers four insightful results, which could be used to improve the sustainable performance measurement both for the entitle construction industry and the individual corporation.

Infrastructure provides the key facilities to the nation’s economic prosperity, public safety and security, and social development. To improve the physical condition of infrastructure, the status of a nation’s infrastructure should be continuously and properly evaluation. This study discusses the principles of national level infrastructure condition assessment, and then proposes a comprehensive assessment metrics in fifteen infrastructure objectives. The result provides a practical guideline by which a nation can conduct a viable infrastructure assessment.

Along with projects' increasing size, more complex structures, more unpredictable and dynamic circumstances, especially in AEC and Aeronautics & Astronautics industry, a new complex project management methodology is needed since traditional project management theories, methods and tools are no longer sufficient and unadaptable. The study certificates that the uncertainty, openness, sociality, relationship, interdependency, and dynamic arising from projects or organization are the original causes of project management complexity as well as the characters distinguishing from traditional projects. Therefore the complexity science and sociology should be regarded as the basic methodologies of the complex projects management (CPM). Based on above researches, this study treats the complex projects organization (CPO) as a dynamic and complex-related social network, analyses social characters of the complex projects and CPO; identifies the CPO's social network factors; establishes the integrated organizational social network model (SNM) by using social network analysis (SNA) method; and verifies the SNM through EXPO 2010 Shanghai construction case study. The further research and potential application for project organizational SNM are outlined in the end.

In Social Network Analysis (SNA), the centrality and Centralization are key performancing indicators for measuring person's (organization's) position and power in a organizations. This paper focuses on connecting the organizational power with organizational relationship, and quantify the power by three major indictors including degree Centrality, betweenness centrality, and clossness centrality. Followed by the SNA algorithm, the 2010EXPO are further studied for a case to compare different types of power in traditional organizations and the complex ones. And the final conclusion comes out to show that the power belonged within the traditional organization structure and the project organization network are different, and the following style is more close to real practices.

Traditional cost control information system fails to meet the requirements of the complex construction project, since it requires more interoperability with various managerial works and extensive data integration with other information sources. Those imperative challenges require a new cost control module incorporated with the existing Project Management Information System (PMIS). Based on the real case of EXPO 2010 Shanghai construction project, this paper develops a new project cost control information system with three major functions including cost information integration, cost control analysis, and intelligent reporting. To illustrate this system, the study is structured by three steps. First, the logic relationships among different integrated information objectives are discussed and organized in a static structure diagram described by Unified Modeling Language (UML). Then the sequential data workflow is analyzed based on the optimized communication and collaboration behaviors. Finally, various types of cost analysis reports are generated in light of project owner's specific requirements. This research not only proposes a new methodology to study the cost control system in complex project environment but also provides a successful practical toolkit for the real construction projects.

This research designs a concept of integrated cost control, contract management and information collaboration in the Project Management Information System (PMIS), based on the EXPO 2010 Shanghai construction project. In our model, the “Basic Unit of Public Information (BUPI)” and “Contract Control Unit (CCU)” are originally discussed to create the relationship between the cost control and the contract management, and to meet various demands from project managers and owners in mega projects. A static framework in the context of web-based project information platform is introduced later to examine this concept, where different information of project level, contract level, and CCU level can be shared and integrated effectively. This research initially bridges the gaps between the cost control and contract management especially for mega project in the construction industry, and the result can be applied in both academic and practical fields.

The abstract should not exceed 300 words. Nowadays, multi-national program can easily be found worldwide especially for those boosting countries with construction sites spreading all over in virtue of the global corporation and inflowing financial investment. Therefore, cultural interactions, financing methods, dispute resolution and other different aspects caused by multiple nations might result in ill-influence such as lower construction productivity, overdue projects period, even for projects fail. This paper, based on the World Expo Shanghai 2010 construction program case studies, describes influence and the challenge of construction sites, program management and organizational model characters affected by Multi-nations Cooperation. After the comparison and contrast, the paper brings forward the proper and practicable model for multi-national program’s organization as well as some suitable suggestion.