Modeling, Benchmarking, and Maximizing Project Delivery Performance
Abstract
Selecting a project delivery system (PDS) is one of the most important decisions for an owner to make when embarking upon a capital facilities project (CMAA 2012). PDS is defined as “the system that defines the relationship between different contracting parties and the timing of involvement in that relationship” (Hanna 2010). There is a wealth of information in the public domain about various delivery systems. Most of the cited literature divide the alternative PDSs into three basic categories: Design-Bid-Build (DBB), Construction Management at Risk (CMR), and Design-Build (DB). More recent studies, including this thesis, add a fourth PDS: Integrated Project Delivery (IPD).
To varying degrees, much of the existing PDS literature has claimed that the more collaborative PDSs outperformed the less collaborative ones (Pocock et al. 1996; Songer and Molenaar 1997; Konchar and Sanvido 1998; Thomas et al. 2002; Rosner et al. 2009; Kulkarni et al. 2012; El Asmar and Hanna 2013; Olsen 2013 ; Hanna 2016). However, these studies have either studied the performance differences between the first three PDSs, or compared the performance of the fourth PDS to the three other ones collectively. No research studies have comprehensively investigated the statistical performance differences between the four PDSs. This study fills this missing gap by statistically examining the performance differences between DBB, CMR, DB, and IPD, with regard to 21 metrics spanning 8 different performance areas. Furthermore, this study takes the analysis process a step further by statistically examining the effects of unconventional stakeholder involvement, project leadership team integration, and the utilization of lean construction tools on project performance.
The results of this study show that there are statistical evidences of performance differences between the four PDSs with respect to 13 metrics spanning 5 performance areas: Communication, Change Management, Business, Quality, and Schedule. Furthermore, these results indicate that IPD is the best performing PDS while DBB can be considered the worst.
Furthermore, this study shows statistical evidences highlighting that regardless of PDS, project parties can greatly improve project delivery performance through being more involved early and throughout the duration of their projects, forming highly engaged and collaborative project leadership teams, and exploiting lean construction tools.
Subject
Management
Quantitative
Statistical
Construction
Benchmarking
Project leadership team
Stakeholder involvement
CM
DB
DBB
Lean construction
Project Performance
IPD
Project delivery