UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Negative Construction Sectors That Inflate Gross Domestic Product: An Economic Case Study of Seattle Commercial Construction(2014) Christianson, Jeffrey James; Cui, Qingbin; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was created as a way to measure US production of products and services. GDP was not intended to guide policy making or as an indicator of the country's welfare. The commercial construction sectors of asbestos abatement, soil remediation, and building demolition are tangential to the actual cost of constructing a building and the country would be better off if these construction sectors were not necessary, even at the jeopardy of a reduced GDP. This thesis examines the specific costs of these construction sectors in Seattle commercial construction industry and determines that 1.66 percent of a Seattle commercial construction project's cost is spent on asbestos abatement, soil remediation, and building demolition. This research challenges the use of GDP and emphasizes the need for a different means to measure economic progress in consideration of the incurred environmental and social costs in the production of products and services.Item VIDEO TEMPLATE MATCHING ALGORITHM FOR CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS---A HADAMARD DOMAIN APPROACH(2014) Yang, Xue; Haghani, Ali; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)One exciting prospect of modern construction projects is the potential for multimedia techniques, such as real-time video, to significantly affect the way of project delivery. Of all techniques in real-time video processing, template-matching plays the most essential role because of its high computational complexity and its ability to deal with considerable redundancy. However, commonly used template-matching techniques in spatial domain cannot meet all of the requirements for all construction applications. Some methods have heavy computational burden, others suffer from inadequate accuracy. Therefore, an adjustable template-matching capable of meeting all requirements is an exciting prospect. The proposed template-matching algorithm utilizes special relation between associated Hadamard determinants. Results indicate the proposed algorithm outperforms many popular algorithms without increasing computational complexity level. Moreover, the algorithm is capable of adjusting three parameters accordingly to meet different construction-related applications.Item Recycling Suburban Sprawl: Coming to Terms with an Existential Crisis(2013) Goldman, Julian Hulman; Bell, Matthew J; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The sprawl development which typifies the American landscape has an uncertain future. Mounting costs, changing demographics, and an inherent instability in value threaten to lift some neighborhoods, gut others, and expand sprawl into the countryside in a relentless, destructive march. This thesis seeks to develop a strategy by which increased density and additional land uses may be inserted into existing tract housing developments as a means of protecting and improving our previous investments, rather than bulldozing and replacing them or seeing them laid to waste. These changes to the fabric of sprawl may lay the groundwork for breaking down barriers to further development and modernization which have been put in place by policy, systems of finance and land ownership, and the very nature of the places we have created. Adding density to current settlements may also reduce pressures to sprawl further, protecting the undeveloped wilderness beyond the city limits.Item ESTIMATING THE IMPACT OF BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING (BIM) UTILIZATION ON BUILDING PROJECT PERFORMANCE(2012) Parvan, Kiavash; Haghani, Ali; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Many benefits of utilizing the Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology have been recognized and reported in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry literature. However, it seems that the construction industry still hesitates to fully adopt BIM. As some researchers suggest, the root cause may be in the lack of understanding of whether and how BIM improves project outcomes. This research aims to shed some light on this matter by studying the impact of BIM utilization on building project performance. This research follows a model-based approach as opposed to statistically analyzing the project outcomes with and without BIM utilization. The construction project supply chain is modeled at the design and construction activity level to represent the project behavior in terms of cost over time. As traditional project management tools as well as statistical methods are not able to consider the dynamic nature of the projects such as feedbacks, time delays and non-linear relationships, this research uses system dynamics methodology to model the project supply chain. The project supply chain model is calibrated with two sets of the projects; with BIM and without BIM. The two calibrated models, Non-BIM and BIM-utilized, are used to estimate the outcomes of a hypothetical set of the projects. The outcomes are compared in terms of the project performance indexes to analyze the BIM impact on the project performance. Since relatively few projects that utilized BIM were found, this research employs expert elicitation (EE) technique to capture the required knowledge from the industry to estimate the parameters of the BIM-utilized model. The EE is used to build a causal model to capture the impact of BIM utilization on the Non-BIM project model parameters in the absence of sufficient BIM-utilized project data.Item PROJECT MANAGEMENT MATURITY IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES (THE CASE OF ETHIOPIAN CONTRACTORS)(2011) Yimam, Abadir Hassen; Skibniewski, Miroslaw J; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research has studied the maturity of PM in the construction industry of developing countries; in the course, the research has also identified two major gaps in the existing maturity models and, proposed a PM maturity model to address the gaps and adapt it to the developing countries context. Using the model, maturity assessment of contractors in Ethiopia is undertaken and, low level of PM maturity (Informal practice of the basic processes) is found. Further, the research found ISO certified contractors‟ PM maturity to be higher than those which are not. Similarly, the PM maturity of contractors which took part in Capacity Building Program is found to be higher than those which did not take part .Likewise, Road contractors PM maturity is found to be higher than Building contractors. Moreover, the research found higher maturity level for material, procurement, cost, financial, time, and human resource management. Risk and safety management are found to be the least matured PM areas.Item EVALUATION OF WAYS TO RECOVER LATE CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS(2009) Aliabadizadeh, Yahya; Baecher, Gregory B.; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Delay in construction projects is a common issue. Considerable percentages of projects fall behind schedule causing damages to almost all involved parties. Owners may experience losses due to postponed completion dates and Contractors may face liquidated damages. Even Architects and Engineers may face additional challenges resulted by delays. In this thesis possible solutions to compensate delays before reaching the estimated end of a project have been studied. Effective usage of the remaining time to completion of the project has been the main concern, and advantages and disadvantages of each solution are studied.