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The editor in chief of the Journal of Construction Engineering & Management will be stepping down from their position on September 30, 2024. They express gratitude for the opportunity to serve in this role since June 2011 and acknowledge the contributions of the Editorial Board and reviewers in maintaining scholarly quality. Dr. Carlos H. Caldas from the University of Texas at Austin will be taking over as the new editor in chief starting on October 1, 2024. The outgoing editor in chief also acknowledges the support of administrative staff and the ASCE Construction Institute. [Extracted from the article]

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a mathematical method based on production theory and the principles of linear programming. It enables one to assess how efficiently a firm, organization, agency, or such other unit uses the resources available (inputs) to generate a set of outputs relative to other units in the data set. Recent papers by different writers present different applications of DEA in the transportation engineering domain. All of these papers are published in transportation journals. These papers are mainly aimed at addressing the transportation-related issues and thus do not focus too much on the DEA concept itself. It can be asserted that DEA is very likely to be used more and more in the transportation engineering domain. Given this, there is a need for the transportation professionals to fully understand the DEA concept. It is essential for such a community to identify cases where the application of this innovative and powerful method can be useful to help the decision-making process, to accurately apply DEA in a particular setting, to derive meaningful conclusions from the obtained results, and to acknowledge the limitations of DEA in certain cases so as to approach the results with caution. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate to the civil engineering, more specifically to the transportation engineering community the use of this powerful approach in performing comparative performance measurement. Within this context, this paper will address a transportation-related problem by using the DEA approach. Different from the other papers containing transportation-related DEA applications (as mentioned above), this paper will discuss, in detail, the steps that need to be taken to generate the DEA model and solve it. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)TE. 1943-5436.0000069 CE Database subject headings: Data analysis; Optimization models; Decision making; Transportation management; Bench marks; Best Management Practice; Transportation engineering.

Under current scheduling practices, total float time is considered 'free' and does not belong exclusively to any specific party in the construction process; rather, it belongs to the project and can be used by both owners and contractors to mitigate the potentially negative impact of delays. Utilization of float is, hence, on a 'first-come, first-served' basis. Within this usage protocol and guided by the Common Law's Proximate Cause principle, the party that encounters critical delays in the later stages of a project is more likely to be held responsible for delays to the overall project completion time. Given these practices, float ownership and its utilization has continued to become a major source of disputes when project delays occur. The objective of this paper is to introduce the concept of float preallocation and management for critical path method based construction schedules. The principles for preallocating and managing 'total float' include recommending contract clauses to direct its use and to explain the manner in which responsibility for any resulting delay may be assigned. The paper also introduces a bookkeeping procedure to facilitate the application of this concept on project schedules. The proposed concept continues to recognize that total float is an asset for both parties. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9364(2007)133:11(836) CE Database subject headings: Construction industry; Contracts; Scheduling.

This study, evaluates the resource-constrained critical path method (RCPM). which the writers have recently proposed. RCPM establishes a critical path method (CPM)-like. resource-constrained schedule by resource-dependent activity relationships (or resource links) thai the five-step RCPM technique identifies. With its CPM-like feature. RCPM provides the critical path and float data that are not available in traditional resource-constrained scheduling techniques. In addition. RCPM provides more flexibility to the schedule through identified alternative schedules, which allow certain activities to be executed beyond their late finish times without delaying the project completion. This paper evaluates the RCPM's performance by comparing it with five related previous studies. A brief review of each study is also included in this paper. This comparison shows that RCPM performs well in identifying resource links and alternative schedules. compared to other methods. This study is of interest to academics because it highlights the advantages and disadvantages of different algorithms that have attempted to overcome present problems in traditional resource-constrained scheduling techniques. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9364(2005)131:5(522) CE Database subject headings: Scheduling; Critical path method; Resource allocation; Construction management.

This paper presents the critical path method forward and backward passes with multiple calendars. Multiple calendars are required in many construction projects to effectively represent various project conditions such as work properties, resource availabilities, weather conditions, etc. For this reason, major project management software packages such as P3 and MS-Project provide functions to handle multiple calendars. However, the background theory of handling multiple calendars has not been disclosed, so users of those software packages simply assume without clear knowledge that the time data generated by them are correct. This paper provides how multiple calendars should be handled in scheduling. Applying the theory presented herein, it has been noticed that the P3 operations with two calendars may generate a wrong answer for a start-to-finish with zero lag and inconsistent results in all negative lags when nonworking days are involved. The theory covers all tour relationships in the precedence diagramming method with lags of zero, positive, and negative values. This study should be of considerable benefit to the construction industry and academics because it details and advances the theory for scheduling with multiple calendars, which is real scheduling in practice. CE Database subject headings: Construction industry; Scheduling; Project management; Time factors.

This paper presents a resource-constrained critical path method (RCPM) technique that capitalizes on and improves the existing critical path method (CPM) and resource-constrained scheduling (RCS) techniques. A traditional CPM schedule is not realistic, because it assumes unlimited resources, some of which are highly limited in practice. Although traditional RCS techniques can consider resource limitations, they do not provide the correct floats and critical path, as the CPM does. The difference between the theoretical remaining total float and the real remaining total float is referred to as 'phantom float' in this study. Work sequence in a resource-constrained schedule could also be considerably changed with a schedule update, resulting in high costs to reorganize it. This is because in addition to technological relationships, a resource-constrained schedule contains resource dependencies between activities that are neglected in traditional RCS techniques. This study proposes a step-by-step RCPM procedure to consider those resource-constrained relationships. Hence, the method can identify real floats and correct critical paths considering both technological and resource relationships, making late start and late finish times more meaningful. In addition, because of identified resource relationships, the RCPM also provides a certain level of stability with a schedule update. CE Database subject headings: Scheduling; Resource allocation; Algorithms; Critical path method; Change orders.

One of the prominent trends in business organizations today is the attention placed on individual personality traits as a means of predicting job performance. As such, the current study investigates the relationship of personality traits with critical success behaviors in the engineering and architectural professions' project design services. The four project service categories measured are: conceptual design, contract documents, construction administration, and firm management duties. The measuremnt of the individual personalities is accomplished through the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This research found that those possessing a preference for Intuitive data collection (MBTI, N) and Perceiving structure (MBTI, P) outperformed individuals with preferences for Sensing and Judging, in both planning and construction. However, professionals with a personality favoring Judging (MBTI, J) outperformed in the duties associated with the design phase. Contrary to predictions, the decision processes captured in the Thinking/Feeling dimension (MBTI, T/F) did not influence the performance in any of the four service categories. The implications of the results of this research are discussed. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0742-597X(2002) 18:4(158) CE Database keywords: Architect/engineers; Design; Performance; Personnel management.

Building designers typically develop a set of drawings and specifications that graphically and textually depict the building. These documents contain implicit information about the rationale or reasoning leading to the final form of the design. Access to design rationale information avoids the need to speculate about or request for the implicit information stored in the design drawings and specifications. The main focus of this article is on the use of a parameter dependency network to represent design rationale. This paper details one possible data structure capable of generating a parameter dependency network. The parameter dependency network shows how one particular design decision affects other decisions that further affect other decisions. The structured nature of this network allows a computer program to act as a data verification assistant to the human designer. This article also outlines a classification scheme for design rationale systems. Finally, this paper summarizes the contributions of this research and concludes with descriptions of possible future research work.

This paper focuses on applying that part of the design-process knowledge referred to as 'design intent,' which is of essence to material selection and substitution. We have focused on the type of design intent that is related to architectural design. We express design intent in terms of function, user requirements, performance, and physical properties of a design description. This paper shows how design intent can guide the contractor's material selection and substitution when faced with a proprietary brand-name-or-equal specification. In such cases, the designer requires the contractor to use a specified material brand or any other material that is 'equal.' However, the conditions of 'equal' are usually not explicit. Five algorithms structured in pseudocode terms are provided for such equality interpretation. The paper concludes that a better understanding of design-process knowledge can strengthen the communication between design and construction.

This paper presents a technology transfer [T.sub.2] model for expert systems (ES). The [T.sub.2] model describes the stages of [T.sub.2] process as well as the factors affecting ES adoption in an organizational setting. The decision to adopt ES is heavily influenced by the top management's attitude toward technology and by factors of an environmental, organizational, and technological nature. However, the decision to adopt ES technology is not sufficient for the success of the [T.sub.2] process. For ES technology to contribute to the improvement of the organizational performance, the ES applications must be of real value to the organization, must be technically correct, and must be properly utilized by the end users. The paper also presents the methodology used for the development of the [T.sub.2] model and focuses on the flavors and mixins, that is, the alternative strategies from which managers can choose to introduce ES in their firms. The paper shows that for each stage of the [T.sub.2] process, there is no single way of performing it. Rather, a spectrum of options are available. Which options are chosen is a function of the characteristics of the firm.

University promotion and tenure committees use sponsored research to judge a faculty member's contribution to a discipline's body of knowledge. Sponsored research is usually a crucial indicator in making promotion and tenure decisions. CE Database subject headings: Research: Publications: Faculties; Universities.