William John O'Brien

University of Texas at Austin | UT · Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering

Introduction: The design-build (DB) delivery method is used to deliver increasingly complex transportation infrastructure projects associated with higher uncertainty. As such, allocating risks in the contract between the owner and design-builder becomes challenging and often leads to higher initial bids, increased contingency, or claims. Learnings...

A construction schedule review is an essential aspect of schedule management for U.S. state departments of transportation (DOTs) to deliver transportation construction projects on time. Despite their importance, current literature pays limited attention to addressing schedule quality problems for highway construction projects. This research aims to...

To meet their short-term and long-term transportation goals, nationwide transportation agencies prepare infrastructure programs. Such programs, which consist of projects to be undertaken during the planning horizon, are developed in a highly complex and dynamic environment. Successful implementation of these programs is dependent on multiple uncert...

Purpose Over the last three decades, construction projects have increasingly been delivered through alternative delivery methods. As a result, many owners have a range of delivery methods to choose from and aim to use the right one for each of their projects. Researchers have developed several tools and decision-support processes to facilitate this...

The US Department of Transportation aims to comprehensively incorporate social equity goals into its nationwide programs and policies. Accordingly, state highway agencies seek to integrate social equity goals in their asset management plans. To better accommodate social equity goals in their decision-making, it is essential to quantitatively assess...

Good Supply Chain Visibility (SCV) is vital for on-time delivery and installation of materials on industrial construction projects. SCV is possible via the exchange of information about materials in the supply chain. Prior academic research has highlighted the importance of SCV. However, the literature lacks the detailed definition of visibility th...

Purpose Stakeholders of construction projects exhibit different perceptions regarding the visibility of materials in the supply chain, which affects the timely delivery and installation of materials. This study aims to quantitatively investigate the differences in viewpoints of owners, contractors, designers and suppliers about the visibility of ma...

While managing the transportation infrastructure, state transportation agencies (STAs) face multiple challenges. Primary among these are budgetary constraints and understaffing. One task that is impacted by these challenges is that of developing the plans, specifications, and estimates (PS&E) for construction projects. STAs often outsource this job...

The widespread adoption of automated materials locating and tracking technologies (AMLTTs) in the construction supply chain can positively impact productivity in industrial construction projects. Prior academic studies have identified the need, recommended the use and demonstrated the potential of AMLTTs using field trials and experiments. These st...

The effectiveness of a project delivery method selection depends on distinct characteristics, desired goals, institutional constraints, and the correct allocation of risk. The selection of the appropriate method is a complex decision. Within the highway sector, the choice between design-bid-build (D-B-B) and design-build (D-B) delivery methods is o...

Paper No: 20-04871

State highway agencies (SHAs) are tasked to provide short- to long-term plans for developing and maintaining transportation infrastructure. In line with this task, often multiple functional groups in SHAs are responsible for allocating funds from multiple categories to a range of infrastructure assets on the same network—a situation that demands hi...

Many highway agencies have several functional groups responsible for planning for safety, maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R), mobility, and other functions. The functional nature of State Highway Agencies (SHAs) can result in a siloed approach to planning. Such efforts are further challenged by functional groups utilizing legacy systems which lac...

State Highway Agencies (SHAs) have different functional groups that work towards improving the functional and physical performance of highway assets. These functional groups often propose multiple inter-related highway projects on the same network. However, the respective information systems of such functional groups lack interoperability capabilit...

Highway maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) planning is a multifaceted decision-making process that requires the consideration of multiple but often conflicting objectives. Traditionally, state highway agencies (SHAs) have focused on maximizing the condition of a pavement network or minimizing agency costs needed to keep the network at an acceptab...

With limited funds and an aging highway infrastructure network, agency decision-makers are tasked with making the most cost-effective decisions while accounting for the environment and social equity. Several studies have accounted for the economic and environmental considerations in infrastructure management decisions. However, there have been limi...

In maintenance and rehabilitation (M & R) programming, most budget allocation models in literature often assume one principal budget that can be used for funding all the different projects undertaken by the decision-making entity. For most agencies, this is rarely the case. This study explores the impact of formulating the M & R budget allocation p...

In delivering highway infrastructure projects, the private and public sectors have gone beyond the traditional design/bid/build approach. They now often implement alternative delivery methods, and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is no exception. TxDOT received legislative authority to use the design/build method of project delivery f...

The digital tools and practices that facilitate the collection, organization, and use of accurate data and information throughout the life cycle of a highway infrastructure asset are referred to as civil integrated management (CIM). The collective impact of CIM practices and agency policies on project and asset performance has yet to be established...

Additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing, fabricates components in a layerwise fashion directly from a digital file. Many of the early applications of AM technologies have been in the aerospace, automotive, and healthcare industries. Building on the advances in AM in these industries, there are several experimental applications of AM...

The work processes for highway infrastructure projects are undergoing significant transformations because of the advent of digital technologies for project delivery and asset management. Civil integrated management (CIM) encompasses the digital tools and practices that facilitate the collection, organization, and use of accurate project information...

With increasing urbanization, highway engineers have the arduous task of managing rapidly deteriorating highway infrastructure facilities with limited funds. For most of the budget allocation models proposed in the literature, there is the assumption of “one” central source of funding which can be used to fund all the different categories of mainte...

Highway safety continues to be one of the most critical issues facing highway agencies. This paper proposes a hybrid approach for the identification of safety projects via a combination of a conventional regression-based model and spatial analysis techniques. For many transportation agencies, safety projects are identified and prioritized via cost-...

A principal component of maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) planning is the allocation of limited funds to candidate projects to achieve optimal levels of system performance. This paper objectively compares three methods for budget allocation: cost-benefit analysis (CBA), integer-linear programming (ILP), and a "decision tree + needs-based" alloc...

Background This paper reports on a case study of the use of visualization of geospatial data that is distributed across data sets and requires integration over time and space to aid decision makers. Like many State Highway Agencies (SHAs) in the United States, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is organized along the traditional functio...

Construction work zones impose mobility constraints and remain major contributors toward incidents on our highways. Pro-active hazard identification and risk assessment is necessary in order to remediate the occurrences of incidents. The existing framework and applications in literature are not adequate in assimilating the hazards posed by both the...

Over the past two decades, highway agencies have been using geographic information systems (GIS) to store, visualize, and analyze highway-related issues. The fusion of projects information residing in disparate highway data sources can yield useful information to support highway maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) planning. Through a case study, t...

This paper highlights the integration challenges for Civil Information Modeling (CIM) in highway infrastructure projects and documents the principal data sources necessary for advancing its applications in project work processes. Researchers and practitioners have positively evaluated the benefits of CIM towards accomplishing several work processes...

Front end planning (FEP) is broadly viewed as an essential practice for project success. As a key deliverable of FEP, the project execution plan (PEP) is a fundamental document to guide project execution from design through construction and turnover to the client. However, the alignment aspects of PEPs are understudied. Construction Industry Instit...

The use of information modeling and digital data for highway projects has seen a considerable surge over the past decade. These tools have enhanced the predictability and performance of several tasks in the project delivery process. This study explores the implementation of civil integrated management (CIM) practices in four case studies and docume...

High levels of modularization have yet to be generally achieved by the construction industry. To suggest how such levels might be achieved, this study identified needed changes or adaptations in conventional project work processes. It did so by identifying and analyzing differences in how modular projects should be planned and executed. Nineteen re...

Multiple freight data sources, both public and private, are available to practitioners for understanding freight demand and evaluating current and future freight transportation capacity. The challenge of working with multiple data sources is dealing with the syntactic and semantic heterogeneity in these sources. To assist practitioners in addressin...

Modularization is a well-known method of enhancing project value by exporting a portion of site work to one or more local or distant fabrication or assembly shops/yards. Still, the industry is in need of additional guidance on how to more effectively exploit modularization. To help achieve wider and more effective use of modularization, the researc...

Delivering infrastructure projects through model-based workflow is becoming more common in recent years. Understanding the degree of information required for the elements in the model plays a significant role in ensuring its utilization for the intended purpose. Existing definitions of Level of Development (LOD) have helped the building industry to...

The Construction Industry Institute (CII) Research Team (RT) 300, a collaborative effort between CII and the Construction Users Roundtable (CURT), was chartered to define and document the full range of impacts that late deliverables to construction can have on a project, and to better understand the far-reaching impacts of late deliverables at the...

Modularization is a well-established technique in which a portion of site-based work is exported to fabrication shops, thereby contributing to an improved construction. When modularization is combined with design standardization, according to the literature of the shipbuilding and manufacturing industries, the result is a leveraging opportunity. Su...

In recent years, information and sensing technologies have been applied to the construction industry to collect and provide rich information to facilitate decision making processes. One of the applications is using location data to support autonomous crane safety monitoring (e.g., collision avoidance and dangerous areas control). Several location-a...

Emerging sensing technologies offer a solution to improve jobsite safety performance by providing location information to determine a worker's safety situation regarding proximity to dangers. However, due to the imperfections inherent in real-world sensor data, the collected location data might be imperfect (missing, uncertain, erroneous, and incon...

The construction industry has struggled with the adoption of information technologies at the field management level. A lack of knowledge has been recognized concerning the ability of field personnel to utilize these tools as well as the effects of the tools on their work activities. This research uses a model of cognitive work of a field manager to...

Modularization is a well-established technique that can improve the construction industry by exporting a portion of site-based work to fabrication shops. However, its application in the industry is limited. The Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) industry needs new approaches to reach higher levels of modularization. The purpose of this...

Given that a construction site is both temporary and unique, the outcome of every construction project is dependent on having all of the proper resources delivered to the site at the appropriate time. Although construction supply chains, logistics, and materials management systems have been scrutinized in recent years, the full range of potential l...

Right-of-way (R/W) acquisition, one of the most basic of preconstruction activities on a highway project, is an important subject by many state DOTs because the failure to make timely acquisitions of R/W causes significant delays and conflicts. Various management practices and strategies have been designed and implemented to deliver R/W acquisition...

Cognitive analysis techniques to document field personnel's knowledge have been a recent topic of interest in construction. However, the decision to utilize such techniques remains a difficult one, given their perceived complexity, their variety of scopes and means and their expected limitations for utilization in jobsites. This paper presents a cr...

Early sourcing decisions have a critical impact on the performance of industrial construction projects. However, the industrial construction sector has been relatively understudied, especially the sourcing and supply chain practices typically implemented in early phases of capital projects. This study reports on how engineering-procure-construction...

This paper investigates the indirect impact of IT use via work processes on construction project performance in the industrial sector. Specifically, using the project-level data in the Construction Industry Institute Benchmarking and Metrics database, the overall impact of 3D CAD use, including the direct impact of the use to project cost growth an...

This paper presents an information integration maturity model for the capital projects industry. Due to the trends of construction projects becoming more globalized and their processes being conducted more concurrently, information integration has been widely implemented in the capital projects industry. However, one issue for the planning of infor...

Traditional education programs often present work aspects such as safety, quality and schedule as separate entities. Cognitive models of expert field managers are capable of integrating these aspects in terms of the information used in work activities. This paper presents a design of safety supervision instruction based on these models. Such instru...

Construction is one of the industries with the highest fatality, non-fatal injuries and illness rates across the United States (CPWR, 2008). Although construction professionals have made great efforts to improve safety training, site supervision and design for safety (among others), the safety performance in construction is still not satisfactory d...

Information dependency may be the most important key for managing information exchange to reduce project risks. Studies to date have not successfully discovered objective and quantitative surrogate to measure information dependency. This paper suggests an approach to measure information dependency with the productivity relationships among various d...

Building from considerable empirical research in the general business literature, this paper quantitatively explores the view that the benefits of information technologies manifest themselves through improvement in work processes. In turn, better work processes lead to increased project performance. Using an overall sample of 133 projects ( missing...

This paper presents recent developments and applications of three-(3-D) and four-dimensional (4-D) modeling on two transportation projects and their added value for constructability reviews. Transportation projects are characterized by challenges, such as design complexity, right-of-way acquisition, utility relocation, and traffic management, which...

Knowledge of students' construction and technology background is an important input to the process of designing technology-enhanced instruction. Current literature in student background is either not specific for the construction/civil engineering student population or lacks direct implications for pedagogical design. This paper presents a survey s...

This paper presents a framework for developing technology-assisted instruction in construction engineering and management. A compilation of instructional principles, as well as interface features, is used to provide a structure for the process of developing instructional tools, and generating recommendations throughout this process. The framework i...

This paper presents a framework for developing technology-assisted instruction in construction engineering and management. A compilation of instructional principles, as well as interface features, is used to provide a structure for the process of developing instructional tools, and generating recommendations throughout this process. The framework i...

This paper presents the use of experts' knowledge for design of field management instruction. Learning scenarios and supporting tools are developed through cognitive analysis of construction superintendents. In particular, a safety supervision tool was designed to simulate jobsite conditions and aid learners' decisions. By providing a robust contex...

Capital projects are funded with the intention of meeting a business need. For the delivery of the facility to be successful, the interface between the owner’s business personnel and its project personnel must be effective. This paper outlines a quantitative approach for the measurement of this management interface; an approach which has not been a...

Field managers are exposed to large amounts of information at the jobsite. Their ability to process this information is key to the success of construction operations in a project. In this paper, a method of cognitive analysis, known as Applied Cognitive Work Analysis, is used to document superintendents' work objectives and the information needed t...

This paper presents a tool assessing the benefits and hindrances of specific information integration opportunities (IOP) identified by firms for potential implementation. Firms face numerous choices about which of many potential information integration opportunities to pursue. However, they lack guidance in selecting opportunities and preparing for...

This paper describes a conceptual approach to measure and compare productivity of resource utilization at the firm level, adapting a set of techniques known as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Within this approach, the paper addresses the issues of multiple inputs and multiple outputs of a construction firm, level of detail for data collection, and...

Engineering performance has a major impact on subsequent project phases, such as procurement and construction, and thus, has the potential to affect the overall project outcome. This study utilizes metrics and a database from the Construction Industry Institute (CII) benchmarking and metrics program to investigate relationships between factors thou...

Crane related accidents, caused by multiple factors such as a worker entering a dangerous area, is one of the major accident types in the construction industry. A vision for addressing this problem is through an intelligent jobsite, fully wired and sensed. Recent advancement in pervasive and ubiquitous computing makes autonomous crane safety monito...

Superintendents in construction jobsites face the complex task of coordinating a great number of resources to manage field activities. Their job demands that they process large amounts of information in order to perform successfully. As a result, dozens of decisions are made by superintendents in a given day at work, which imply heavy information p...

This paper evaluates the accuracy of several RSSI-based localization techniques on a live jobsite and compares them to results obtained in an operating building. RSSI-based localization algorithms were tested due to their relative low cost and potential for accuracy. Four different localization algorithms (MinMax, Maximum Likelihood, Ring Overlappi...

Construction superintendents have a complex job that requires comprehensive information about the site and the work to be done. To enhance their performance, the supporting tools should be able to reduce the cognitive demand and help provide information in an effective and logical way. Existing tools seem to have failed to achieve this goal. They e...

Falling from height is one of the major causes of fatalities in construction industry. The advancement and recent deployment of various sensing and mobile computing technologies on construction jobsite has provided an opportunity to achieve an autonomous safety monitoring system to prevent falling from height and hence improve safety performance of...

This paper presents an analysis of benefits and hindrances for specific information integration implementations in the industrial construction sector. A tool, developed by a Construction Industry Institute research team, detailed 37 benefit drivers and 34 hindrances that affect information integration implementation efforts. The tool was applied to...

This paper describes the results of an implementation of a decision support system to aid analysis and selection of engineered equipment suppliers in the early stages of capital projects. Procurement of equipment is a complex process which requires the evaluation of multiple suppliers against project targets. This analysis is usually performed manu...

This research presents a relative entropy method for improving agent-based negotiation efficiency (REANE) in a construction supply chain. REANE provides a path forward to help negotiators reach an acceptable solution when other methods fail; the key insight is the use of relative entropy to measure the relative degree of consensus among parties and...

This paper describes the development and implementation of a decision support system to aid the selection of engineered equipment suppliers in the early stages of capital projects. Procurement of equipment is a complex process, which requires the evaluation of multiple suppliers against project targets. Analysis is usually performed manually, is ti...

For the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), accurately predicting the duration of Right-of-Way (R/W) acquisition and utility adjustment processes in highway projects has been deemed as one of the principal capabilities that regional districts should possess. TxDOT has sought to establish an effective methodology for predicting the durations...

The Intelligent Job Site is becoming a reality as applications (e.g., RFID for materials tracking, laser scanning and GPS for surveying and layout) using sensors and mobile computing devices are being developed and deployed commercially. This creates an opportunity for workers to access sensors in an ad hoc manner as they move through a job site. H...

Since 2002, the Construction Industry Institute (CII) has been working to develop a standardized Engineering Productivity Metric System (EPMS) for benchmarking purpose. In this system, engineering productivity is defined as a ratio of direct engineering work hours to the engineering outputs as measured by Issued for Construction (IFC) quantities. T...

The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and initial results of a data collection instrument developed to assess student technology skills. These baseline data are believed to be important for the educators in the construction industry to incorporate technology knowledge into the academic curricula. The instrument is a questionnaire that...

This paper focuses on strategic sourcing and planning issues and describes a set of supply chain practices implemented by leading EPC firms and owners executing industrial projects worldwide. Industrial projects include suppliers who are located overseas, a major part of installed items are long lead engineered equipment, shop fabrication capacity...

This paper presents a comparative analysis of three different infrastructure assessment tools currently used by the U.S. Army's combat engineer small units (squad, platoon, company). The infrastructure assessment tools included one pen and paper checklist and two software-based tools based on specialized handheld hardware for data collection in com...

Construction projects involve a large number of participants with overlapping scope of work. Coordination of their activities is usually an iterative manual task undertaken by a general contractor that is often unaware of the detailed constraints of other participants. Project schedules play a key role in this coordination and form the backbone of...

This paper evaluates the use of information technology (IT) and its impact on project and company performance in the construction industry. Using project level data from 139 projects and company level data from 74 companies, the current state of IT use in the construction industry was studied and statistical analyses were performed to assess the co...

Integration and coordination of distributed processes remains a central challenge of construction information technology research. Extant technologies, while capable, are not yet scalable enough to enable rapid customization and instantiation for specific projects. Specifically, the heterogeneity of existing legacy sources together with firms’ rang...

Mounting emphasis on construction supply chain management (CSCM) is due to both global sourcing of materials and a shortage of labor. These factors force increasing amounts of value-added work to be conducted off-site deep in the supply chain. Construction Supply Chain Management Handbook compiles in one comprehensive source an overview of the dive...

The Intelligent Job Site is becoming a reality as applications (e.g., RFID for materials tracking, laser scanning and GPS for surveying and layout) using sensors and mobile computing devices are being developed and deployed commercially. This creates an opportunity for workers to access sensors in an ad hoc manner as they move through a job site. H...

Project participants typically maintain their own schedules for a given project. The multiple views of the participants are not easily reconciled due to varying levels of detail and different business processes. This in turn leads to poor schedule coordination in practice. The Process Connectors project seeks to enable distributed schedule coordina...

In today's highly competitive construction industry, there is a critical need for managers to continuously improve their firm's efficiency and effectiveness. More specifically, managers need to know which performance measures are most critical in determining their firm's overall success. Benchmarking, when done properly, can accurately identify bot...

This paper describes application demonstrations of a new middleware that supports dynamic decision support over networks of resource-constrained devices. For the purposes of our demonstrations, we tap into intelligent job site applications