Empirical Research on the Success of Production Control in Building Construction Projects

Abstract

The topic of this thesis was construction management and improving the production control processes in construction projects. The main goal of the research was to examine empirically how production is currently controlled and to establish the root causes for failure to implement schedules as they are planned. The second goal of the research was to improve the location-based management system and its processes. Three case study project teams were trained in the location-based management tools and processes. Production control data was collected systematically from the project teams from the beginning to the end of all the case projects. These data were used to assess the reliability of the plans on three levels of detail. The actual production control process was followed by direct, personal observation. The project teams were found to use the location-based controlling tools with a push methodology. It was found that cascading delay chains starting at the beginning of the interior construction phase continued until the end of the construction project. The cascading delays typically originated because of labor resource issues. The reason why the cascading delays did not affect the project finish dates was the long end-of-project buffers. These buffers were fully used up in all of the case projects. Many production problems could be forecast using the location-based controlling data. The controlling tools were developed to improve the forecasting of problems by changing the forecasting procedure, and incorporating the look-ahead planning of resources to the forecast. With these modifications, meaningful alarms could be generated earlier, and for more problems. The main contribution of this research was to identify cascading production problems to be a critical contributor to the poor reliability of construction project schedules. By using the location-based forecasts and alarms, it is possible to forecast these problems before they happen and to prevent problems from cascading. This research contributed an improved forecast and alarm system and proposed a systematic process for their use in construction. A practical contribution of this research was the implementation of the improved forecast system in the software package, Vico Software Control 2009.