Hammad, Mohammed (2018) Estimating, allocating and managing schedule and cost contingency in construction projects. PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, Australia.
Abstract
Central to project management, particularly in the construction industry, is the effective estimation and management of cost, schedule and scope/quality. The risk of cost or schedule overruns can be managed by introducing a contingency component to the project. One of the most popular methods used to indicate schedule/cost performance is Earned Value Management, which tells the project manager whether the project is behind or ahead of schedule and cost, but does not tell whether the difference is within expected (or acceptable) variability. This thesis contributes to the body of knowledge by presenting novel frameworks to allocate cost and schedule contingency during the planning phase, as well as managing the contingencies during the execution phase. New measures (i.e., Planned Updated Remaining Contingency (PURC) and Actual Updated Remaining Contingency (AURC) for cost contingency framework, and Buffer Performance Index (BPI) and Buffer Variance (BV) for schedule contingency framework) have been introduced in this thesis to manage contingency overruns. The main aim of the frameworks is to enable project managers to focus on appropriate corrective actions to keep the project on track. For the schedule component, the project manager's main concern is to manage the critical path and predict any variations during project execution, if only because the critical path predicts the project completion date. This thesis also presents a framework that allows project managers to predict the next critical path(s) and take extra care when planning and executing those activities that have the potential to cause changes in a project's critical path(s). The framework for predicting the next critical path(s) can be used in conjunction with the schedule contingency framework. All novel frameworks presented in this thesis were applied to a number of real-life projects in order to demonstrate that the frameworks and proposed measures can be robust and accommodate disruptions in the project environment.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Abbasi, Alireza and Ryan, Mike |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | schedule contingency; project management; cost contingency; critical path method; critical chain method |
| Index terms: | construction project, variation, body of knowledge, critical path method, estimating, cost performance, critical path, overrun, earned value management, buffer, construction industry, project management, variability, variance, project manager, estimation, schedule overrun |
| Subjects: | project management theory and practice, contractual condition, economics, statistical analysis, industry analysis, measurement and scaling, project controls, control systems, profession, financial and cost management, financial risk, production management, knowledge management, operations research |
| Topics: | Project Management, Time Control, Contract Administration, Roles and Professions, Information Management, Research Practice, Cost Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here