Matching Items (10)
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- All Subjects: Construction industry--Management.
- All Subjects: energy
- Creators: Sullivan, Kenneth
Description
Owner organizations in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry are presented with a wide variety of project delivery approaches. Implementation of these approaches, while enticing due to their potential to save money, reduce schedule delays, or improve quality, is extremely difficult to accomplish and requires a concerted change management effort. Research in the field of organizational behavior cautions that perhaps more than half of all organizational change efforts fail to accomplish their intended objectives. This study utilizes an action research approach to analyze change message delivery within owner organizations, model owner project team readiness and adoption of change, and identify the most frequently encountered types of resistance from lead project members. The analysis methodology included Spearman's rank order correlation, variable selection testing via three methods of hierarchical linear regression, relative weight analysis, and one-way ANOVA. Key findings from this study include recommendations for communicating the change message within owner organizations, empirical validation of critical predictors for change readiness and change adoption among project teams, and identification of the most frequently encountered resistive behaviors within change implementation in the AEC industry. A key contribution of this research is the recommendation of change management strategies for use by change practitioners.
ContributorsLines, Brian (Author) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Thesis advisor) / Wiezel, Avi (Committee member) / Badger, William (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Effective collection and dissemination of project information, including best practices, help increase the likelihood of project performance and are vital to organizations in the architecture-engineering-construction (AEC) industry. Best practices can help improve project performance, yet these practices are not universally implemented and used in the industry, due to the following: 1) not all practices are applicable to every project or organization, 2) knowledge lost in organizational turnover which leads to inconsistent collection and implementation of best practices and 3) the lack of standardized processes for best practice management in an organization.
This research, sponsored by National Academy of Construction, the Construction Industry Institute and Arizona State University, used structured interviews, a Delphi study and focus groups to explore: 1) potential benefit and industry interest in an open repository of best practices and 2) important elements of a framework/model that guides the creation, management and sustainment of an open repository of best practices.
This dissertation presents findings specifically exploring the term "Practices for Excellence", its definition, elements that hinder implementation, the potential value of an open online repository for such practices and a model to develop an open repository.
This research, sponsored by National Academy of Construction, the Construction Industry Institute and Arizona State University, used structured interviews, a Delphi study and focus groups to explore: 1) potential benefit and industry interest in an open repository of best practices and 2) important elements of a framework/model that guides the creation, management and sustainment of an open repository of best practices.
This dissertation presents findings specifically exploring the term "Practices for Excellence", its definition, elements that hinder implementation, the potential value of an open online repository for such practices and a model to develop an open repository.
ContributorsBosfield, Roberta Patrice (Author) / Gibson, Edd (Thesis advisor) / Chester, Mikhail (Committee member) / Parrish, Kristen (Committee member) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In today's era a lot of the construction projects suffer from time delay, cost overrun and quality defect. Incentive provisions are found to be a contracting strategy to address this potential problem. During last decade incentive mechanisms have gained importance, and they are starting to become adopted in the construction projects. Most of the previous research done in this area was purely qualitative, with a few quantitative studies. This study aims to quantify the performance of incentives in construction by collecting the data from more than 30 projects in United States through a questionnaire survey. First, literature review addresses the previous research work related to incentive types, incentives in construction industry, incentives in other industry and benefits of incentives. Second, the collected data is analyzed with statistical methods to test the significance of observed changes between two data sets i.e. incentive projects and non-incentive projects. Finally, the analysis results provide evidence for the significant impact of having incentives; reduced the cost and schedule growth in construction projects in United States.
ContributorsPaladugu, Bala Sai Krishna (Author) / El Asmar, Mounir (Thesis advisor) / Ernzen, James (Committee member) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
The construction industry is performing poorly regarding project management and service delivery. On average, global projects are over-budget, delayed, and met with unsatisfactory results according to buyers. To mitigate poor performance, the project management career path has been heavily researched and continually developed over the last century. Despite the published advances in project management approaches and tools, project performance continues to suffer. This research seeks to conduct an exploratory analysis of current project management and other approaches and determine how they affect project performance. Through a detailed literature search, the researcher identified a procurement model that is more heavily documented as high performing than all other approaches. The researcher proposed that this model may be a solution to assist project managers with the delivery of high performing services. The model is called the Best Value Approach (BVA). The BVA focuses on leadership, non-technical communication, quality assurance, and transparent project execution. To test the effectiveness of its practices, the researcher modified and adapted the BVA into a project management approach and tested it on a large-scale government project. During the case study test, the researcher observed that there were two primary project management roles in the supply chain; the buyer’s and vendor’s project managers. The case study resulted in the large government organization receiving more work and increased their satisfaction of the work received by 22 percent from the previous year. To further test the project management adapted BVA, the researcher conducted a classroom case-study in which students learned and implemented the BVA practices on real-time, small-scale industry projects. Results include cost savings of $100,000 for 10 companies over 24 projects, cost avoidance of over $4.5M, and a 9.8/10 customer satisfaction [in terms of the companies’ satisfaction with the deliverables produced on each project]. These results suggest that the BVA practices may effectively improve the performance of project delivery, and may be a viable new project management approach to train future project managers. Out of the two project manager roles, it is proposed that the buyer’s project manager may receive the most benefit. Additional research is needed on the other approaches to compare quantitative project performance, and run repeated testing on the potential new project management approach.
ContributorsRivera, Alfredo Octavio (Author) / Badger, William (Thesis advisor) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Thesis advisor) / Kashiwagi, Jacob S (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
For decades, load shifting control, one of the most effective peak demand management methods, has attracted attention from both researchers and engineers. Various load shifting controls have been developed and introduced in mainly commercial buildings. Utility companies typically penalize consumers with “demand rates”. This along with increased population and increased customer energy demand will only increase the need for load shifting. There have been many white papers, thesis papers and case studies written on the different types of Thermal Energy Storage and their uses. Previous papers have been written by Engineers, Manufacturers and Researchers. This thesis paper is unique because it will be presented from the application and applied perspective of the Facilities Manager. There is a need in the field of Facilities Management for relevant applications. This paper will present and discuss the methodology, process applications and challenges of load shifting using (TES) Thermal Energy Storage, mainly ice storage.
ContributorsWhitcraft, Daniel S (Author) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Thesis advisor) / Okamura, Patrick (Committee member) / Slife, Curtis (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
To present the importance of understanding American commercial influence through the utilization of geopolitics while referencing the economic viability and public policy in Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries nations, relative to oil production, consumption and the price per barrel. For the purpose, of successfully completing western led hydrocarbon construction activities Internationally. Additionally, this thesis will theorize several non-traditional strategies that will allow western led construction contractors and managers to effectively maintain and foster relationships with international trade labor. Allowing for more insight and project planning to complete successful and safe projects.
ContributorsApt, Michael (Author) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Thesis advisor) / Lines, Brian (Committee member) / Smithwick, Jake (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
The U.S. Army Medical Command has been testing a leadership based structure to increase the performance of delivering construction and facility services in its system of $600M of construction and 26 major hospital facilities in the U.S. The organizational requirement was to minimize the management and oversight of contractors and simultaneously increase project performance. The research proposes that a leadership based structure can supplement the perception, preplanning, and risk minimization capability of a contractor's project manager, thus increasing the project performance (on time, within budget, and meeting expectations) and decreasing client management requirement. The projects were delivered in a best value and low price environment. The major impact of this research was that proactive management by contractors was more effective than traditional management such as direction, control, and inspection by client's professional representatives. The results based on data collection and date analyses validated that a leadership based structure can increase the performance of an organization and reduce its management requirement.
ContributorsMalhotra, Neha (Author) / Kashiwagi, Dean T. (Thesis advisor) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Committee member) / Badger, William (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
The practice of Facility Condition Assessments (FCA’s) has received academic attention with over 20 condition assessment methodologies to date, focusing on condition gradients and scale ratings. However, little attention has been brought to the life cycle of an FCA, specifically how building owners and managers plan and conduct an FCA. FCA methodologies in academic research are complex, sophisticated and require time for implementation that a typical facility manager does not have. This work showcases the need for simpler, more practical planning variables for a facility manager to begin the process of planning for an FCA in their management of a facilities portfolio. This research is a compilation of two national studies, the creation of an FCA project lifecycle analytical framework, and the creation of an organizational FCA maturity self-assessment model. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews from facility managers and facility condition assessment service providers to gain in-depth insight and understanding of the current practice of facility condition assessments in the facility management profession. This data was used to develop national surveys for both facility owners/managers and FCA service providers. An FCA project delivery model was developed through a Delphi study, representing an FCA project lifecycle. The development of a multi-phased FCA project delivery method provides a relative position and sequence of phases representing an FCA project lifecycle. An organizational FCA maturity self-assessment model was created as the first step for organizations to measure their current state of FCA awareness, FCA practice, state of reliability, asset knowledge posture and historical capital spending. The resulting research makes two distinct contributions to the literature. The first contribution is the sequencing of FCA project phases provides an analytic framework for understanding an FCA project lifecycle, providing owners, FCA practitioners and researchers to acknowledge that an FCA project represents a lifecycle model. The second contribution is an FCA planning tool for building owners and managers that allows an organization to bring to light the current state of FCA awareness and help communicate the value proposition FCA’s can afford to an organization. Recommendations for future research on the role of an FCA are provided.
ContributorsHillestad, Derek (Author) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Thesis advisor) / Ayer, Steven (Committee member) / Hurtado, Kristen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The workforce demographics are changing as a large portion of the population is approaching retirement and thus leaving vacancies in the construction industry. Succession planning is an aspect of talent management which aims to mitigate instability faced by a company when a new successor fills a vacancy. Research shows that in addition to a diminishing pool of available talent, the industry does not have widespread, empirically tested and implemented models that lead to effective successions. The objective of this research was to create a baseline profile for succession planning in the construction industry by identifying currently implemented best practices. The author interviewed six companies of varying sizes and demographics within the construction industry and compared their succession planning methodologies to identify any common challenges and practices. Little consensus between the companies was found. The results of the interviews were then compared to current research literature, but even here, little consensus was found. In addition, companies lacked quantitative performance metrics demonstrating the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of their current succession planning methodologies. The authors recommended that additional research is carried out to focus on empirical evidence and measurement of industry practices surrounding talent identification, development, and transition leading to succession.
ContributorsGunnoe, Jake A (Author) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Thesis advisor) / Wiezel, Avi (Committee member) / Kashiwagi, Dean (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Construction Management research has not been successful in changing the practices of the construction industry. The method of receiving grants and the peer review paper system that academics rely on to achieve promotion, does not align to academic researchers becoming experts who can bring change to industry practices. Poor construction industry performance has been documented for the past 25 years in the international construction management field. However, after 25 years of billions of dollars of research investment, the solution remains elusive. Research has shown that very few researchers have a hypothesis, run cycles of research tests in the industry, and result in changing industry practices.
The most impactful research identified in this thesis, has led to conclusions that pre-planning is critical, hiring contractors who have expertise will result in better performance, and risk is mitigated when the supply chain partners work together and expertise is utilized at the beginning of projects.
The problems with construction non-performance have persisted. Legal contract issues have become more important. Traditional research approaches have not identified the severity and the source of construction non-performance. The problem seems to be as complex as ever. The construction industry practices and the academic research community remain in silos. This research proposes that the problem may be in the traditional construction management research structure and methodology. The research
has identified a unique non-traditional research program that has documented over 1700 industry tests, which has resulted in a decrease in client management by up to 79%, contractors adding value by up to 38%, increased customer satisfaction by up to 140%, reduced change order rates as low as -0.6%, and decreased cost of services by up to 31%.
The purpose of this thesis is to document the performance of the non-traditional research program around the above identified results. The documentation of such an effort will shed more light on what is required for a sustainable, industry impacting, and academic expert based research program.
The most impactful research identified in this thesis, has led to conclusions that pre-planning is critical, hiring contractors who have expertise will result in better performance, and risk is mitigated when the supply chain partners work together and expertise is utilized at the beginning of projects.
The problems with construction non-performance have persisted. Legal contract issues have become more important. Traditional research approaches have not identified the severity and the source of construction non-performance. The problem seems to be as complex as ever. The construction industry practices and the academic research community remain in silos. This research proposes that the problem may be in the traditional construction management research structure and methodology. The research
has identified a unique non-traditional research program that has documented over 1700 industry tests, which has resulted in a decrease in client management by up to 79%, contractors adding value by up to 38%, increased customer satisfaction by up to 140%, reduced change order rates as low as -0.6%, and decreased cost of services by up to 31%.
The purpose of this thesis is to document the performance of the non-traditional research program around the above identified results. The documentation of such an effort will shed more light on what is required for a sustainable, industry impacting, and academic expert based research program.
ContributorsRivera, Alfredo O (Author) / Kashiwagi, Dean T. (Thesis advisor) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Committee member) / Kashiwagi, Jacob S (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014