Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 229-237). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 229-237). Also available on the Internet.

Infrastructure networks that provide basic services such as transportation, telecommunications, electricity distribution, and water supply and drainage are critical for the smooth functioning of a nation’s economy and its society. To provide efficient and uninterrupted services, these infrastructure networks need to be periodically inspected, upgraded, and maintained. However, infrastructure networks are expensive to operate and maintain; many infrastructure service providers allocate more than half of their total capital investments to network maintenance and improvement. With increasing customer expectations, intensifying global competition, and challenging financial environments, the infrastructure service providers need to develop models that can optimize all of the different factors that must be taken into consideration when making important decisions related to infrastructure network inspection and maintenance. This dissertation, which consists of three essays, focuses on some of the key decision issues associated with inspection and maintenance of these large infrastructure networks. Specifically, the first two essays, respectively, address a project management problem to maintain and expand a large-scale network and a periodic network inspection problem. The third essay, motivated by the computational challenges of the first two problems, addresses the network reduction and approximation problem within the same context. These problems are deterministic optimization problems over large-scale networks, which are very difficult to solve, and have not been extensively studied in the literature. In this dissertation, we introduce new optimization models for each problem, develop theoretical and algorithmic strategies that exploit problem structures to effectively solve the problems, and implement and test these methods on actual problems using data provided by an infrastructure service provider. / text

published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Briefing, where a construction client conveys his / her needs and aspirations to the design team, is described as the first and most important step in the process of delivering a building or other physical infrastructure. Due to the significant commitment of resources, it is recommended that clients carefully define and examine their needs in terms of project requirements, before and during briefing. Nevertheless, briefing is subject to many practical limitations. Many clients may overlook important aspects of briefing and various problems such as delays and cost overruns may ensue. Although the literature shows a substantial amount of studies that have addressed some briefing problems, briefing is still reported to pose continuing problems in the construction industry. Given the importance of improving the conceptualisation and implementation of briefing, a 'collaborative briefing approach' was developed in this study to improve the briefing process and its outputs, with particular reference to large-scale infrastructure projects, which involve multiple interfaces with many stakeholders. The above approach is designed to empower the traditionally mobilised briefing team to work collaboratively with a large group of multi-disciplinary stakeholders as an integrated briefing team in the form of a virtual organisation through a shared digital workspace created on a computer network. The workspace enables all members to work together remotely and asynchronously so as to achieve greater stakeholder participation in briefing. Since stakeholders contribute in bringing professional knowledge, experience and creativity to briefing, the enhanced stakeholder participation will increase their inputs and result in more fruitful briefing outputs. In this study, a comprehensive survey was first conducted to investigate and compare the strengths and weaknesses of common briefing practices in the Hong Kong construction industry, so as to establish a theoretical foundation for the research. An ‘Integrated Collaborative Briefing Methodology’ (INTERCOM) was developed to translate the described approach into a set of actionable methods and job plans for practical use. The INTERCOM comprises of five components: (i) a value based briefing methodology, (ii) a collaborative briefing job plan, (iii) an integrated briefing team, (iv) a collaborative briefing platform, and (v) facilitation service. The first four components were developed and validated by a group of well experienced multi-disciplinary industry practitioners. The fifth component merits a separate research and development exercise. The validation results reveal that the concept of collaborative briefing approach and the design of the INTERCOM methodology were well supported by the practitioners. In addition, it was concluded that the methodology would contribute to improve the briefing process by facilitating team management, enhancing requirement definition and promoting consensus building. It also improved requirement comprehensiveness, decision transparency, decision reliability, and decision satisfaction, as well as the value and quantity of the requirements specified in the brief. The validation also highlights some practical limitations including potential political barriers, time constraints, specialist facilitator and resources limitations. Moreover, the net benefits of the developed ‘collaborative briefing approach’ are concluded to be very worthwhile, both in principle and for practical purposes. The additional significance of this study is that it researched and developed a "panoramic view" of briefing practices from a practical perspective, linked the knowledge of briefing to the domain of collaboration through a “collaborative briefing approach” and developed the framework for a new generation of ICT systems for supporting and substantially improving the briefing process. / published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

In the past decades, while many countries planned and undertook more and bigger infrastructure megaprojects, poor performance has marred their delivery, for example through cost overruns, delays, disputes, and shortfalls in expected benefits. It is therefore important to improve performance levels, especially in infrastructure megaprojects that can considerablely influence the economy, society and environment. Project evaluation is an effective tool in project performance management as it provides stakeholders with a management process through which they can learn from the past and perform better in the future. Most of the traditional evaluation approaches emphasize the three basic success criteria of time, budget and quality. However, with the increasing importance of sustainability criteria and concerns, as well as the growing imperatives for stakeholder engagement, it has already been suggested to reconsider and redefine value by also evaluating other factors, such as those related to the environment and society. Therefore, an integrated whole life cycle value (WLCV) evaluation framework is proposed in order to improve infrastructure megaproject WLCV performance. In this study, whole life cycle (WLC) evaluation has a two-fold meaning: (i) the evaluation is based on a set of value factors drawn from a WLCV system; and (ii) this evaluation is a systematic continuous process from the start to the end of the project. However, considering the unique characteristics of every project, a totally fixed or static structure and content framework is neither sufficient nor suitable for the various types of infrastructure megaprojects. The recommended solution is to develop a semi-flexible framework that enables a pre-determined step by step dynamic structure formulation and a flexible WLCV system. In order to measure project WLCV derived from stakeholders’ expectations, from more objective and persuasive perspectives, the relevant value objectives/criteria/indicators, their weightings and targets will be identified, integrated and developed through this WLCV system. Cross-criteria relationships which have not been addressed adequately before, will be dealt with by assigning appropriate weightings. It is also proposed to build a database to store completed project information including various stakeholders’ expectations expressed in the form of value objectives. In order to develop the above proposed framework, a basic literature review was conducted to reveal and analyze the significant evaluation problems, identify trends in stakeholder engagement and develop the concept as well as typical criteria and indicators of project WLCV. Meanwhile evaluation practices, stakeholder engagement in the process of evaluation and WLCV perspectives in the Hong Kong construction industry were examined through a first round of interviews and the first of two focus group meetings. The first focus group meeting, second round interviews and the second focus group meeting were conducted to improve the proposed framework by investigating the importance of assigning an appropriate weighting to each value objective and each group of stakeholders; elaborating the various value criteria to measure value objectives at appropriate points of a project WLC. The findings from literature reviews, interviews, focus group meetings and a case study were integrated and injected into developing the aforementioned framework for building and administering the evaluation of project WLCV in ways that could improve desired project WLC performance. The outputs of the current research are expected to assist clients of infrastructure megaprojects to build a sense of ownership among all the key stakeholders at the outset, and to help motivate all stakeholders to be more co-operative, with a view to jointly targeting and monitoring an agreed project WLCV, thereby helping to achieve better WLC performance on infrastructure megaprojects. The main contributions to knowledge from this research are in developing a comprehensive evaluation methodology which combines and refines relevant components from existing evaluation approaches as well as injects the WLCV concept and criteria into a more holistic approach that is expected to identify and address current inadequacies in infrastructure megaproject delivery. / published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Public Private Partnership (PPP) procurement has developed in many countries, as an effective way for governments to allay their financial burden and/or improve the efficiencies of public services. However, PPP has also experienced many ups and downs in its applications. As a collaborative venture between public and private sectors, the quality of the relationship between them has been shown to be a key contributor to the success of a PPP project. However, no study has, as yet, conceptualized and tested an integrative framework for modeling and addressing the relational aspect in PPP projects. This study aims to fill this gap. Moreover, the revamping of PPP in the above direction, would align with what is found to be a much larger trend, in moving from traditional management to relationship approaches in project management in general and on built infrastructure projects in particular. The general purpose of this study is to make an original contribution to relationship research in PPP, by addressing the importance of this intangible side of PPP, through developing a strategic relationship management framework for parties engaged in PPP projects. Having examined relational research in joint ventures, alliancing and inter-organisational collaboration, it is found that game theory, transaction cost analysis and relational contracting have a direct bearing on inter-organisational relationships in infrastructure projects. Consequently, they are adopted as the theoretical foundations for this research. This study first investigates the ‘hard side’ of PPP relationships, analyzing their variables based on semi-structured interviews with PPP experts. Further, the ‘soft side’ of PPP relationships, is found to be influenced mainly by inter-organisational trust and commitment. This is also investigated in this research by intensive literature review of inter-organisational relationships. A relational variables and indicators model for PPP projects is then developed. Quantitative research data was collected from two questionnaire surveys, targeting international experiences. The first survey was aimed to examine the intensifying and/or moderating effects of various relational variables. The second survey was designed to identify the Critical Success Factors of relationship management in PPP context. Qualitative research data was consolidated from a case study and follow-up structured interviews. Findings from surveys, case study and interviews were then triangulated to develop a strategic framework for better relationship management for infrastructure PPP projects. The findings from this research make a specific contribution to relationship management research; while the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sides provide lenses for both PPP parties to examine their relationship with their respective partners. The proposed strategic framework consists of a Relationship Management Scheme and Guidelines to be implemented in different PPP phases, through addressing the sustainability of the relationship. It provides an initial scheme or base approach for project parties to manage the relationships proactively rather than reactively. Besides, this research also helps to identify relevant relational components that can be incorporated or directly used in criteria for pre-tender selection. Such screening and special attention to these critical components can also help to develop more sustainable relationships and attain better value for money through PPP procurement in practice. / published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

With a desire to increase the chance of success of major infrastructure and construction (MIC) projects, it is increasingly common to invite the public participating in the planning and design processes. Public participation requires the involvement of individuals and groups who are positively or negatively affected by a proposed intervention (e.g. a project, a program, a plan, a policy). An effective public participation program can be beneficial to the parties involved (i.e. the decision makers and general public) in many ways. As a result, a number of participatory approaches have been developed by various sectors to drive the process of agenda-setting, decision-making, and policy-forming. Many research studies focusing on various aspects of participation in policy-making in general have been conducted, but few have looked into its application in the construction and infrastructure industry in particular. On the other hand, the decision making process of contemporary MIC projects is becoming ever more complicated especially with the increasing number of stakeholders involved and their growing tendency to defend their own interests. Failing to address and meet the concerns and expectations of stakeholders may result in project failures. To avoid this necessitates a systematic participatory approach to facilitate the decision making and evaluation. This research, therefore, aims to develop a multi-stakeholder multi-objective decision making and evaluation model to help resulting in consensus and increasing the satisfaction among various stakeholders (or stakeholder groups) in MIC projects. In this research, an extensive literature review was first carried out to examine the salient elements of public participation in MIC projects and to identify the barriers to effective public participation in project decision making in different countries (e.g. Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, United States, South Africa, etc.). China being a developing country was selected for in-depth case study analysis. Through a series of interviews, the underlying reasons for ineffective participatory practice in China were revealed. A questionnaire survey was then conducted to unveil those stakeholder concerns pertinent to MIC projects at the conceptual stages through the degree of consensus and/or conflict involved. Finally, a multi-stakeholder multi-objective decision model and a multi-factor hierarchical comprehensive evaluation model were developed. These two models were founded on the decision rule approach and the fuzzy techniques respectively. Another round of interview was conducted to investigate the (i) influence of different stakeholder groups in making decisions related to MIC projects during their conceptual stages; and (ii) relationship between the satisfaction of a single stakeholder group and that of the stakeholders overall. The application of the two models was demonstrated by two cases in Hong Kong and their validity was confirmed through validation interviews. The results indicated that the two models are objective, reliable and practical enough to cope with real world problems. The research findings are therefore valuable to the government and construction industry at large for successful implementation of public participation in MIC schemes locally and internationally in future, especially when the construction industry is becoming increasingly globalized and the trend of cultural integration between the East and West is ever growing. / published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration