Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Engineering Science

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

The construction industry invests significant time and money to improve quality and safety while reducing cost and schedule impacts. The industry has a sincere desire to improve construction project management methods to improve efficiency. Historically, quality and safety underperformances result from undermanaged quality control and safety activities. The cost and schedule impacts associated with poor quality work have always had an impact on construction operations. The unprecedented challenges and uncertainties of COVID-19 highlighted the need to improve the Earned Value Management (EVM) method within construction to reflect these quality and safety activities. The central goal of this dissertation is to present an improved EVM method, which is named the Earned Value Construction Management (EVCM) method. EVCM integrates quality and safety as scheduled activities to capture costs as they occur. EVCM incorporates a new index-linked to quality control activities and improves the accuracy of reporting on the project in normal or pandemic construction environments. The methodology used in this dissertation includes detailing engineering and administrative safety protocols during COVID-19, evaluating effective PPE during a pandemic, and statistically analyzing project data to demonstrate EVCM. The project data collected before and during COVID-19 of similar projects were statistically tested for significance using a one-tailed t-test. The p-values of the three tests were all less than 0.05, indicating a significant difference was found in actual cost, the actual cost divided by budget, and total project performance using EVCM compared to EVM. The results show, despite the known increase in cost associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the application of EVCM resulted in a statistically significant improvement in project performance. The contribution of this dissertation is field-validated information addressing the cost and schedule impacts in industrial construction during a COVID-19 environment. Additionally, EVCM was formulated to predict cost and schedule impacts aligned with quality and safety activities. The knowledge developed in this dissertation ultimately enhances the construction industry’s ability to respond to a pandemic and incorporate quality and safety activities in a schedule to economically track and manage progress.

Date

7-19-2021

Committee Chair

Friedland, Carol

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.5614

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