Measuring and Visualizing Integrated Project Interface Status

Abstract

The overall goal of this thesis is to develop and validate ways to effectively measure and visualize integrated project interface status in terms of interface health, workload, and engineering progress. Collaboration, communication, and interactions between project stakeholders have a high impact on the overall success of complex capital projects. Managing interactions between stakeholders, tracking deliverables, measuring workload, and measuring engineering progress is particularly important in the early phases of complex capital projects. Early phases include: (a) project definition, (b) conceptual plan and preliminary design, (c) detailed design, and (d) procurement. Due to the iterative nature of design and the cyclic nature of the communications and deliverables between project stakeholders, any decision made in those phases or any health problem between project stakeholders, such as misalignment or miscommunications, has a critical effect on the remainder of the project. These complexities are beyond the capabilities of traditional project management methods such as CPM (critical path method) scheduling and Earned Value Analysis. To manage these projects and their complex nature, new methods that can detect overloaded interfaces, identify unhealthy relationships between stakeholders and measure engineering progress are needed in addition to the existing traditional project management methods in the construction industry.

Consistent with the overall goal of this thesis, the objectives of this thesis are to (1) develop methods to measure and visualize health and workload between project stakeholders, and (2) develop methods to measure and visualize engineering progress by using BIM (Building Information Model) and IMS (Interface Management System) related data.

To address the first objective, a project monitoring method named Integrated Project Monitoring Method (Contribution-1, C1) that visualizes interface health and workload measurements within the stakeholder interface network is introduced. To populate this visualization for a given project, both quantitative (C2: Framework-A) and qualitative (C3: Framework-B) measurements of early-phase project health and workload are developed. The quantitative analysis receives its inputs from project electronic information management systems, including: Interface Management Systems, Project Schedules, Change Management systems, Document Management systems, and related information technology (IT), as well as workflow management systems. The qualitative analyses receives its inputs using a novel, simplified qualitative point system developed as part of this thesis.

To address the second objective, a novel connection between Interface Management Systems (IMS) and Building Information Management (BIM) data (C4: BIM+IMS Connector) is proposed and Model Maturity Index (MMI) definitions for Mass Rapid Transit domain (C5: MRT-MMI), as well as corresponding assessment and visualization tools (C6: MRT-MMI-AT) are developed.

The methodological contributions (C1-C4) of this thesis combine to form a holistic approach to measuring and visualizing project health and workload in the early phases of project progress, with the potential to give owners and managers early indications about where additional efforts might be best applied to support project success.

The validation of this thesis was done across several different projects in different domains. The two primary domains of validation were Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) and Nuclear Power Generation (NPG), with various subdomains in each being considered. It is concluded that measuring interface health and workload between project stakeholders in complex projects, such as MRT and NPG projects, and measuring engineering progress during the early phases of the MRT projects is feasible by using the tools and frameworks developed and presented in this thesis.