Track: Construction/BIM/Sustainability

During the construction phase of project delivery, attention must be paid to the aims established in design including the needs and opportunities of the project site to ensure that the project is delivered in a sustainable fashion and that the outcome meets the design intent. This presentation describes opportunities in the construction phase of project delivery that apply to building projects. It begins with an overview of the changing nature of construction services, followed by a range of strategies that can be incorporated to improve project sustainability, from pre-construction through turnover of the project at the end of construction. A detailed case study of the first LEED Platinum hotel illustrates these strategies in practice.

Managing a project to increase its sustainability requires careful attention to construction operations and the way in which those operations are managed. Opportunities also exist for construction stakeholders to contribute to the project before construction begins.

Many practices can be employed in each of the following areas to improve the sustainability of a construction project, including:

Preconstruction services – activities undertaken by construction firms to support owner project development during earlier planning and design phases.

Construction engineering best practices – practices that pertain to the means and methods used on site to construct a building.

Project management best practices – practices that involve managing people, equipment, information and other resources to achieve the goals of a specific project related to schedule, budget, level of quality and sustainability.

PMI Talent Triangle: Technical Project Management

The construction or rehabilitation of elevated highway projects presents a spectrum of challenges to project practitioners. These challenges place a demand on the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) abilities of the project management team. Moreover, micro-scheduling of construction activities has been deemed important to the reduction of waste based on the lean paradigm due to the changing dynamics of the construction site. Choosing the project scheduling method that will facilitate value creation for the stakeholders becomes an MCDM problem and entails having a clear understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the different scheduling methods under consideration.  Choosing by Advantage (CBA) is an emerging lean construction MCDM method that has been successfully applied to the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry but with little application in infrastructure projects such as the construction of elevated urban highway projects. Decision makers using the CBA list the attributes and advantages of each alternative and then assign a degree of importance to each advantage relative to the one that is least preferred. The CBA helps to differentiate alternatives based on the decision context and reduces time to reach consensus, and it manages better subjective trade-offs by basing decisions on the importance of agreed advantages. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by applying the CBA in the selection of the micro-scheduling method in elevated urban highway projects.

PMI Talent Triangle: Technical Project Management