No abstract

Described in this thesis is a novel approach to 4D CAD. It involves a 2-way symbiotic relationship between 3D CAD software and a software implementation of linear planning that includes the ability to define a project product model and associate it with the process model. Strengths of the approach include the ability to readily modify construction sequences and examine their consequences using 4D CAD, and the ability to treat very large scale projects marked by significant repetition of their components. By building on a shared image of the project product model from both a design and construction perspective, the CAD model can be structured in a way that facilitates communication with the scheduling software and vice versa. Various challenges involved in making the 2-way process work are described, including consistency of product representation in the CAD and scheduling models, and the need to group CAD components at different levels of detail and locations to reflect the kinds of aggregation found in schedule representations of a project. The benefits of the approach include the ease with which different scheduling strategies can be explored and visualized, the links between 3D objects and activities can be maintained, and the completeness of the product model representations can be validated. An example is used to illustrate the approach adopted and challenges involved.

This article examines the link between local institutional quality in the home country and locational choices of international return migrants. We scrutinize the locational choices of Vietnamese return migrants to the south central and the south regions of Viet Nam in 2014. Binary and multinomial regression models are fitted to identify the influence of migrants’ individual attributes and the characteristics of regional destinations within Viet Nam. Our analysis reveals that both individual‐specific and region‐specific variables are significantly related to Vietnamese return migrants’ choices when registering for permanent residency back in their home country. More remarkably, we provide compelling evidence of the positive role of institutional quality at the local level in these migration decisions. Moreover, the effect of institutional quality differs with the characteristics of migrants: regions with better institutional quality are more attractive both to younger return migrants and to those who returned from host countries with better institutional quality.

Informed decisions on the efficacy of project and construction strategies to meet client objectives and satisfy project delivery constraints involve the three tasks of formulation, representation and assessment of alternative strategies. This need is present in not only the initial planning phase of a project, but during the execution phase as necessitated by changed objectives and conditions. Explored in this paper is a way of thinking about the concept of construction strategy and its interrelated parts (tactical variables and plan) in aid of the foregoing tasks, with particular emphasis on large scale vertical and horizontal building and civil infrastructure projects. This way of thinking has been pursued as a complement to other work directed at the visual representation and assessment of construction strategy alternatives in the form of 4D images, construction schedules, and related images, such as the distribution of resources in terms of time, space and physical system. Motivating this work is the pressing need to reduce impediments associated with exploring alternative strategies in a timely and insightful manner using existing scheduling and 4D modeling tools. Our strategy framework takes into account the dynamic factors of a project and consequences for strategy formulation and adaptation as positioned in the domains of time, space/system and project participant, and as driven by project directives. INTRODUCTIONThe successful planning and execution of the construction phase of a project can be measured in terms of fulfilling client objectives while coping with the complexity of the constraint set that accompanies today's projects. Developing and maintaining an effective project plan and schedule involves the consideration of a number of alternative strategies and their associated properties in terms of choice of tactical variables and related values, and corresponding plans at different levels of project definition, both during initial project formulation and then later as the project progresses, most likely with conditions different than those initially anticipated. Project strategy in a holistic sense involves a collection of strategies, some of which touch upon all aspects of a project (e.g. choice of procurement mode by the client) all the way through to the selection by individual trades of how best to proceed at the individual component level. The totality of the strategy used in pursuit of a project evolves during different project phases (planning, design, construction, etc.) and at different points of time in each phase. Our focus herein is on the construction phase

No abstract