Civil Engineering/Constr. Management and Eng.

In recent years, a variety of software alternatives and capabilities have been made available for project and portfolio management (PPM). However, very little research has focused on the use of project and portfolio management software in the construction industry. Degree of adoption of PPM software and the reasoning behind these selections may vary among contractors, as each project's unique situation may have an impact on the contractor's decision. The objective of this research is to determine the current trends in PPM software use in the construction industry, and to investigate the reasoning behind the decisions that are related to the PPM software use. A practitioner survey is conducted to reveal the current project and portfolio management software trends of international contractors along with the adaptation of building information modelling in PPM. The questions of the survey are grouped under four sections; project management software practices, portfolio management software practices, evaluation of the PPM software, and BIM use and habits in PPM. The survey findings are presented and discussed to reveal the current trends in project and portfolio management software use within the construction industry.

In recent years, a variety of software alternatives and capabilities have been made available for project and portfolio management (PPM). However, very little research has focused on the use of project and portfolio management software in the construction industry. Degree of adoption of PPM software and the reasoning behind these selections may vary among contractors, as each project’s unique situation may have an impact on the contractor’s decision. The objective of this research is to determine the current trends in PPM software use in the construction industry, and to investigate the reasoning behind the decisions that are related to the PPM software use. A practitioner survey is conducted to reveal the current project and portfolio management software trends of international contractors along with the adaptation of building information modelling in PPM. The questions of the survey are grouped under four sections; project management software practices, portfolio management softwa...

Intensive heuristic and metaheuristic research efforts have focused on the Pareto front optimization of discrete time-cost trade-off problem (DTCTP). However, very little success has been achieved in solving the problem for medium and large-scale projects. This paper presents a new particle swarm optimization method to achieve an advancement in the Pareto front optimization of medium and large-scale construction projects. The proposed Pareto front particle swarm optimizer (PFPSO) is based on a multiobjective optimization environment with novel particle representation, initialization, and position-updating principles that are specifically designed for simultaneous time-cost optimization of large-scale projects. PFPSO brings several benefits for the discrete time-cost optimization, such as an adequate representation of the discrete search space, fast convergence properties, and improved Pareto front optimization capabilities. The computational experiment results reveal that the new particle swarm optimization method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods, both in terms of the number of Pareto front solutions and computation time, especially for medium and large-scale problems. A large number of nondominated solutions are achieved within seconds for the first time, for a problem including 720 activities. The proposed Pareto front particle swarm optimizer provides a fast and effective method for optimal scheduling of construction projects.

Construction industry is one of the industries that makes a significant contribution to the national development and the economy of the countries. Besides, the low entry barriers as well as the rapid developments in the communication and information technologies make construction industry highly competitive. Therefore, construction companies are forced to differentiate and improve their operations by innovating in different fields to improve or at least to maintain their positions in the market. However, innovation investments require considerable amount of time and money, therefore, the performance of these investments should be assessed like other investments. As a result of in-depth literature review, it was revealed that available frameworks are not appropriate to assess the actual innovation performance of the construction projects at the project level. In this research, Innovation Catcher (IC) was developed as an innovation performance assessment framework that can be used to assess the innovations in the housing projects at the project level. Based on the findings from the literature the dimensions of Innovation Radar (IR) that is previously available model in the literature were modified specifically for the housing sector. The usability of IC was tested on 5 sample projects of a company by conducting a case study. 5 semi-structured interviews were carried out with an expert to collect data about the sample projects. In the light of these data, IC profiles of sample projects were drawn and the benefits, possible usage areas and improvements were discussed with the expert. As a result, it was concluded that IC is capable of reflecting the actual innovation performance of the housing projects at the project level and can be used as a supportive material in the documentation and decision making processes.