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
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:HKU/oai:hub.hku.hk:10722/174489 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Xie, Hongbo, Brenda., 谢洪波. |
| Publisher | The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) |
| Source Sets | Hong Kong University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PG_Thesis |
| Source | http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B47753092 |
| Rights | The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works., Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License |
| Relation | HKU Theses Online (HKUTO) |
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