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- All Subjects: Civil Engineering
- Creators: Arizona State University
- Status: Published
The objective of this dissertation is to identify a recommended balance between
leadership and management activities of a project manager who aims to rehabilitate a distressed construction project.
The data for this research was collected from 338 construction project professionals belonging to fifteen large construction companies who participated in leadership seminars originated by professors from Arizona State University. The seminars contained various leadership games and exercises that were designed specifically to collect data about leadership and management actions taken by the project managers.
The data from one of the games, called “Project from Hell” (PFH), was used in this research. The PFH game presents the participants with a set of fifty-two actions cards written on a deck of game cards and asks them to select the ten action cards they perceive as being most effective for turning a troubled construction project around. Each suit of the deck represents a different category of actions, focusing on either Traditional Leadership (Hearts), Best Value Leadership (Diamonds), Traditional Management (Spades), or Micro- Management (Clubs).
Statistical analysis of the results revealed that only sixteen of the fifty-two actions cards were selected with statistically significant consistency. Of these sixteen actions, six actions were form Traditional Management actions, five were Traditional Leadership actions, and five were Best Value Leadership actions. This rendered a recommended balance of 62% leadership activities vs. 38% management activities for project managers to rehabilitate distressed construction projects. It was also found that the same balance is recommended for the normal condition construction projects. The calculated weighted
i
scores for ranking the sixteen effective leadership and management actions revealed that the five Traditional Management actions are the top-most effective actions. This demonstrates the importance of stand still management actions in rehabilitating in trouble construction projects
The findings were converted into easy to implement guidelines about how project managers can change habits to increase their effectiveness by focusing on the right type of actions.
A generalization of the methodology for interpreting the results of any study based on selection of activities, was also developed.
The accurate prediction of pavement network condition and performance is important for efficient management of the transportation infrastructure system. By reducing the error of the pavement deterioration prediction, agencies can save budgets significantly through timely intervention and accurate planning. The objective of this research study was to develop a methodology for calculating a pavement condition index (PCI) based on historical distress data collected in the databases from Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program and Minnesota Road Research (Mn/ROAD) project. Excel™ templates were developed and successfully used to import distress data from both databases and directly calculate PCIs for test sections. Pavement performance master curve construction and verification based on the PCIs were also developed as part of this research effort. The analysis and results of LTPP data for several case studies indicated that the study approach is rational and yielded good to excellent statistical measures of accuracy.
It is believed that the InfoPaveTM LTPP and Mn/ROAD database can benefit from the PCI templates developed in this study, by making them available for users to compute PCIs for specific road sections of interest. In addition, the PCI-based performance model development can be also incorporated in future versions of InfoPaveTM. This study explored and analyzed asphalt pavement sections. However, the process can be also extended to Portland cement concrete test sections. State agencies are encouraged to implement similar analysis and modeling approach for their specific road distress data to validate the findings.
The blocks were also submitted to heating and cooling cycles. After 12 cycles, the specimens showed a reduction in strength, which further increased as the number of cycles increased. Finally, the thermal resistivity of fiber reinforced CSEB was found to be higher than that for clay bricks.