Fateminia, Seyed Hamed (2023) Determining and managing contingency reserve throughout the lifecycle of construction projects. PhD thesis, University of Alberta, Canada.
Abstract
Managing risk events and uncertainties plays a key role in the successful delivery of construction projects. To cover the implementation cost of risk response actions as well as the effects of risks on project goals, contingency reserve must be calculated and considered in the project budget. Previous research on determining contingency reserve focused on the first steps in the risk management process, which are risk identification and assessment. However, incorporating risk response planning into risk identification and assessment can improve the accuracy of determining contingency reserve. The application of complex quantitative models such as optimisation methods to select and rank risk response actions for large-scale construction projects can be a complex and costly process because of the effort and amount of data required. Moreover, these models account for only a limited number of criteria, which can lead to the selection of risk responses that are cost effective but unfeasible in terms of technology, environment, and achievability. Previous research also has limitations on determining contingency reserve not only in the absence of sufficient quantitative historical data in construction projects but also in considering positive risks (opportunities). Fuzzy logic and fuzzy arithmetic can be employed to capture subjective uncertainty and take linguistic evaluations into consideration when numerical project data fall short of the amount or quality requirements for successful modelling. However, previous research has difficulty in determining the fuzzy membership function of linguistic terms used to assess the probability and impact of risk events. Previous research on risk assessment and contingency determination methods assumes that the probability and impact of risk events and risk response actions are independent and static. However, in practice these values change over the course of a project and depend on the occurrence and impact of other risk events. To address these limitations, a hybrid fuzzy arithmetic-based contingency reserve method (HFACRM) was proposed, combining four fuzzy models: (1) a fuzzy model consisting of a fuzzy rule-based system (FRBS) along with fuzzy ranking methods to evaluate the effectiveness of risk response actions and rank them; (2) a hybrid fuzzy model to determine the membership functions of linguistic terms used to describe the probability and impact of risk events, the causality degree among project components, and the effectiveness of risk response actions; (3) an adaptive hybrid fuzzy model to determine the degree of causality and formulate soft causal relationships between risk events and with risk response actions; (4) a hybrid fuzzy model to formulate hard relationships, stocks and flows of a quantitative fuzzy system dynamics model. The main contribution of this thesis is to propose a novel hybrid fuzzy method to determine the value of contingency reserve at different stages of construction projects at work package and project level.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Robinson Fayek, Aminah; AbouRizk, Simaan and Musilek, Petr |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | risk analysis; contingency reserve; system dynamics; fuzzy logic; fuzzy system dynamics; fuzzy analytic hierarchy process; soft causal relationships; time-dependent variables |
| Index terms: | fuzzy logic, package, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process, implementation, modelling, risk management, lifecycle, effectiveness, risk assessment, risk response, risk identification, accuracy, project data, contingency reserve, dependent variable, risk analysis, fuzzy method, system dynamics, construction project |
| Subjects: | production management, financial risk, decision-making and optimization, environmental hazards, contractual arrangements, analytical methods, performance management, professional development, statistical analysis, data collection methods, risk assessment, computing systems, data science, data analysis and analytics, project delivery |
| Topics: | Digital Applications, Information Management, Research Practice, Cost Management, Quality Management, Sustainability, Procurement, Risk Management, Engineering Principles, Project Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
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