Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management; and, (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-160). / by William Aaron Gilchrist. / M.S. / M.Arch.

abstract: In this era of high-tech computer advancements and tremendous programmable computer capabilities, construction cost estimation still remains a knowledge-intensive and experience driven task. High reliance on human expertise, and less accuracy in the decision support tools render cost estimation error prone. Arriving at accurate cost estimates is of paramount importance because it forms the basis of most of the financial, design, and executive decisions concerning the project at subsequent stages. As its unique contribution to the body of knowledge, this paper analyzes the deviations and behavior of costs associated with different construction activities involved in commercial office tenant improvement (TI) projects. The aim of this study is to obtain useful micro-level cost information of various construction activities that make up for the total construction cost of projects. Standardization and classification of construction activities have been carried out based on Construction Specifications Institute’s (CSI) MasterFormat® division items. Construction costs from 51 office TI projects completed during 2015 and 2016 are analyzed statistically to understand the trends among various construction activities involved. It was found that the interior finishes activities showed a much higher cost of construction, and a comparatively higher variation than the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) trades. The statistical analysis also revealed a huge scope of energy saving measures that could be achieved in such TI projects because of the absence of energy management systems (EMS) found in 66% of the projects. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Construction 2016

Thesis (MTech (Construction Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017. / The study investigates the predominant factors responsible for increase in the cost of building materials and the effect of this cost increase on housing delivery in Western Cape, South Africa. Sustainable housing is buildings produced to meet the present housing needs of people without conceding the ability of the future generation to meet their future needs. However, a significant increase in the cost of building materials has been a major constraint to the delivery of sustainable housings, as made evident in the literature, leading to project cost and time overruns or even project abandonment. However, building materials consume up to 65% of the total cost of construction. This factor on cost has, over the years, threatened the ability of the construction industry to deliver projects within budgeted cost, at stipulated time, and at satisfactory quality. This prompted the need to proffer solutions to these factors identified which are causing increases in the cost of building materials towards sustainable housing delivery in Western Cape. Based on this research study, housing is termed to be sustainable when it is available and affordable for the masses timely and at quality expected. The research study adopted a mixed methodological approach, involving the use of semi-structured qualitative interviews and closed-ended quantitative questionnaires administered to construction stakeholders (architects, quantity surveyors, engineers, construction managers, project managers, site supervisors and material suppliers) in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. SPSS version 24 software was used for analysing the quantitative data collected and ‘content analysis’ method was used to analyse the information collected through the qualitative interviews. The findings revealed that the major factors responsible for increasing the cost of building materials are inflation, wastages of building materials by labourers, cost of transportation and distribution of labour, design changes, client contribution to design change and change in government policies and regulation. Moreover, the research showed that fluctuation in the cost of construction and high maintenance costs due to poor workmanship also impact the cost increase of building materials for housing delivery. In addition, research findings affirmed that for optimum materials usage for the enhancement of sustainable construction, the following criteria should be considered in the selection of building materials: maintenance cost, energy consumption and maintainability. The adoption of these findings by construction stakeholders in the South African construction industry would enhance the delivery of affordable housing at reduced cost, at the required time and at the expected quality. Therefore, an adequate implementation of the framework presented in this study will enhance sustainable housing delivery.

O processo de projeto, em Arquitetura, busca a interdisciplinaridade entre diferentes áreas de conhecimento e pressupõe a interlocução de diversos profissionais no diálogo com as propostas idealizadas pelo arquiteto. Assim, é exigido do profissional o exercício de múltiplas aptidões para solucionar os problemas adequadamente, com criatividade e mínima racionalidade, por meio das ferramentas que lhe dão liberdade de soluções. Uma dessas aptidões, de relação intrínseca à produção, está no enfrentamento do projeto arquitetônico com os custos da construção: tema amplamente discutido como um campo ainda a se desenvolver na Arquitetura. Neste contexto, apesar da disponibilidade financeira trazer limitações construtivas que afetam os valores arquitetônicos, a expressividade dos custos da produção comumente não dialoga com as questões valorizadas no projeto; pois este, em sua maioria, privilegia a definição dos espaços e suas respectivas formas para compreensão programática e volumétrica e não necessariamente analisa as especificidades construtivas indispensáveis para a execução do objeto arquitetônico. Para tal dilema, a pesquisa se propõe a analisar o enfrentamento entre projeto arquitetônico e canteiro de obras a partir dos custos da produção, do preço de venda e do valor da obra arquitetônica nas áreas de conhecimento correlatas à Arquitetura, como a Arquitetura dos Custos(na procura por orçar idéias a partir das correlações do espaço arquitetônico com os custos da construção), a Engenharia dos Custos (orçamentação tradicional da economia da construção, a partir do objeto arquitetônico definido, para obtenção e maximização dos lucros) e a Crítica da Economia Política que, ao trabalhar a teoria do valor-trabalho com investigação socioeconômica na produção, discute a possibilidade de incongruência entre o preço de venda inserido no capital global, e o valor de produção advindo do processo construtivo específico para a realização da mercadoria. / The process of design, in Architecture, searches for interdisciplinarity between different areas of knowledge and requires the interchange of various professionals in dialogue with the proposals devised by the architect. Thus, it is required of the professional exercise multiple skills to solve problems adequately with minimum rationality and creativity, using the tools that give him freedom of solutions. One of these skills, with intrinsic relation to the production, is the ability to deal with the architectural design in relation to the construction costs: theme widely discussed as a field yet to develop in Architecture, because the budgeting processes have little emphasis on the training of architects. In this context, despite the fact that the availability of finance bring constructive limitations that affect the architectural project, the importance of production costs do not dialogue with the issues valued in the project, for it mostly focuses on the definition of spaces and their shapes in terms of programmatic and volumetric - and not necessarily examines the constructive specificitys needed to implement the architectural object. For this dilemma, the research aims to analyze the confrontation between architectural design and construction site from the costs of production, selling price and value of architectural work in the areas of knowledge related to architecture, such as\' Architecture Costs \'(in the search for budget ideas\' from the correlations of the architectural space with the costs of construction), \'Cost Engineering\' (traditional budgeting economy of construction, from the architectural object defined for obtaining and maximizing profits ) and the \'Critique of Political Economy\', while working theory of labor value to socio-economic research in the production, discusses the possibility of inconsistency between the sale price - inserted into the global capital, and production value - coming from the building process for the realization of specific goods.

The diploma thesis focuses on reconstruction of the supermarket in city called Lelekovice. There are two different options of reconstruction. First option includes saving the old building and then do reconstruction and extension. For this case is made itemized budget according to project documentation. Second option is based on building totally new object including demolition the old one. Price of this option is based on itemized budget and budget indicator. In the end these two options are compared and evaluated.

The purpose of this research was to develop parametric Design-to-Cost models for selected major subsystems of certain helicopters. This was accomplished by analyzing the relationships between historical production costs and certain design parameters which are available during the preliminary design phase of the life cycle. Several potential contributions are identified in the areas of academia, government, and industry. Application of the cost models will provide estimates beneficial to the government and DoD by allowing derivation of realistic Design-to-Cost estimates. In addition, companies in the helicopter industry will benefit by using the models for two key purposes: (1) optimizing helicopter design through cost-effective tradeoffs, and (2) justifying a proposal estimate.

Sustainability has been heightened to a new level of importance, due to the current global race for commodities and conservation of our environment. Sustainable Buildings are of particular interest since buildings are significant contributors to consumption of resources. Since the inception of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) in 1993, USGBC has played a key role in providing guidance to the design and construction community in building“green" structures. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system is an industry accepted standard for the design/construction and measurement of green buildings. Although USGBC provides guidance on performance measurement, a streamlined process of performance tracking and measurement has not been formalized. This research focuses on identifying vital areas of required tracking and measurement; to allow for a systematic analysis of costs and benefits, over the life of sustainable buildings. A case-study based on the recently designed and constructed East Hall LEED-Gold Certified, dormitory building at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), was undertaken to create and assess a life cycle costs analysis framework. This research is aimed at understanding what the costs of building green at WPI truly are. Life Cycle Cost Analyses of the mechanical, electrical, plumbing and roof components were evaluated to generate percent savings or percent added cost. This research reviewed the various green and non-green costs of construction, consumption, and operations and maintenance costs providing a comparative analysis to leading researchers in the field of costs and benefits of building green.

Submitted in fulfillment of the academic requirements for the degree of Master of Technology in Construction Management, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2015. / On-time completion and conformity with assigned cost of every project are the most important factors in the success of project plans. Cost overruns and time overrun (delays) have been critical problems of many projects around the world in general and in South Africa in particular. The main objectives of this research are to assess the dominant causes of cost and time overruns, identifying possible and practical measures that can minimize overruns in office building construction projects around eThekwini Municipal area of Kwazulu-Natal. These objectives are achieved through the implementation of the research methodologies that are mainly literature review and questionnaire survey conducted to identify and evaluate the significant factors contributing to delay and cost overruns within the projects of interest. A review of literature identified eighty-five variables for delay, grouped in nine major categories and nine variables for cost overruns ranked in their order of importance in three sets based on the responses from the professionals working for the client, consultants and contractors. The agreement among the sets of rankings for delay and cost overruns has also been tested using statistical methods. The result indicates that there is strong agreement on ranking the importance of the individual variables of delay and cost overruns between parties. From each of the three sets of rankings, the twenty most important variables of delay and the three most important variables of cost overrun are identified as critical. Based on overall results, the top five most important causes are contractor’s cash flow problems, delay in progress payments by the client, poor site supervision and management by contractor, inefficient quality control by the contractor during construction leading to rework due to errors, and contractor’s difficulties in financing the project. Out of the 20 most important delay causing variables, three are found to be common between all parties. These are delay in progress payments by the client, delay in delivery and late ordering of material, and insufficient skill of labour. Furthermore, the study reveals that all stakeholders of construction parties are deeply involved in contributing to the causes of the problems. Thus, in order to eliminate or minimize cost and time extension of office construction projects in the eThekwini Municipal area, a joint effort based on teamwork is essential through effective project planning, controlling and monitoring which boils down to putting in place best practice construction project management.

Cette thèse étudie le rôle des coûts de construction et de réglementation de la sécurité sur la compétitivité de l'énergie nucléaire. L'analyse des coûts de construction est basée sur l'utilisation de données réelles provenant des parcs nucléaires français et américains. En particulier, nous étudions différents canaux à partir de laquelle des réductions de coûts pourraient survenir. Nous montrons que la normalisation est un critère crucial pour la compétitivité économique de l'énergie nucléaire, d'abord parce que les effets d'apprentissage positifs sont conditionnels à la technologie, ce qui signifie que les réductions de coûts ne peuvent venir que si le même type de réacteur est construit à plusieurs reprises, mais aussi parce qu'elle permet de réduire le coût indirectement par l'intermédiaire de courts délais de construction. Dans l'analyse du rôle de réglementation de la sécurité, nous évaluons d'abord l'effet du dernier accident nucléaire majeur (c.-à Fukushima Dai-ichi) de la probabilité de survenance d'un tel événement, puis les effets de l'incertitude concernant la façon dont les soins de la sécurité à réduire la probabilité d'un accident nucléaire dans l'établissement de normes de sécurité en vertu de l'aléa moral et responsabilité limitée. Nous constatons que la norme sera la moins stricte lorsque le régulateur adopte une approche pire des cas, et plus stricte lorsque le régulateur adopte l'approche de la robustesse de regret et il est optimiste quant à l'efficacité des soins de la sécurité pour réduire le risque d'accident. Toutefois, cette norme pourrait induire le non-respect par les opérateurs les moins efficaces. / This thesis studies the role of construction costs and safety regulation on nuclear power competitiveness. The analysis of the construction costs is based on the use of the actual data coming from the american and french nuclear fleet. In particular, we study different channels from which cost reductions might arise. We show that standardization is a key criterion for the economic competitiveness of nuclear power, first because the positive learning effects are conditional to the technology, this means that cost reductions will arise only if the same type of reactor is built several times, but also because it allows to reduce the cost indirectly through shorter construction lead-times. In the analysis of the role of safety regulation, we first asses the effect of the latest major nuclear accident (i.e Fukushima Dai-ichi) in the probability of occurrence of such an event and then the effects of the uncertainty regarding how safety care reduce the probability of a nuclear accident in setting safety standards under moral hazard and limited liability. We find that the standard will be stricter when the regulator is optimistic in the safety care effectiveness to reduce the risk of an accident, but simultaneously this policy might induce no compliance of the most inefficient operators.

The subject of the diploma thesis is the design of the intersection at the Kníničská street by Unihobby in Brno. The current arrangement is inconspicuous, capacitively inadequate and the intersection is a place of frequent traffic accidents. The solution includes a collision-free transit on the main road and the tram line. Traffic is linked to transport infrastructure, including pedestrian and bicycle transport. Part of the thesis is a road engineering assessment, an accident evaluation and an estimate of construction costs.