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Competition in global service markets is becoming very intense. Therefore, enhancing customer satisfaction has become a serious undertaking for service companies, especially for cross-nation providers, to exploit global business opportunities. However, few studies have compared customer satisfaction associated with apartment building management and maintenance services (abbreviated as BMMS) in different regions. Cross-region comparison of the customer satisfaction and service quality of the BMMS sector will give a better understanding of the strategies deployed by cross-nation service providers to improve and enhance service quality and customer satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to investigate service quality and resident satisfaction so as to explore strategies for efficiently enhancing resident satisfaction and identify the varying strategies applied in Southern Korea and Taiwan. Resident satisfaction models of the two regions derived according to the structural equation modeling approach were compared and discussed and the results of comparisons between the two models show that the complaints construct has the most significant effect on customer satisfaction. In addition, this study demonstrates a process for exploring appropriate actions to effectively improve residents’ satisfaction level.

Construction process acceleration due to the unreasonable construction duration frequently leads to construction accidents. In order to ensure the safety in construction sites and to avoid inevitable construction process acceleration, there is a need for objective standards to determine the appropriate construction duration for each construction process earlier in the process. To achieve the goal, a construction duration estimation model was developed by exploring those factors that affect the construction duration. Various statistical techniques, including multiple regression analysis and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were also conducted in order to predict proper construction duration for apartment housing projects. The results of the study will make it possible to avoid inevitable construction acceleration, and thus minimize the potential of construction disasters/accident.

The Korean construction market is constantly observing residential development projects performed together by developers and contractors. Although the development cost of the overall project is high, there are no standard methods to help contractors make decisions as to whether to participate in these residential development projects or not. This study proposes a simple and efficient model to assist contractors to determine successful projects with a more standardized and objective decision process. To achieve this goal, 31 project assessment items were selected and their weights were updated by AHP method with more sample sizes. Several independent samples t-tests were also carried out to identify the significant factors that affect the contractor’s decision for residential development projects. Using multivariate discriminant analysis (MDA), a prediction model was developed with 109 residential development projects. The results indicated that 82% of the original grouped cases had been classified correctly. Cross validation showed that 81.5% of cross-validated grouped cases had been classified correctly. The simple and efficient model suggested in this study will help contractors make better decisions regarding whether to participate in the residential development projects or not.

Few studies on crew productivity has been conducted, although the data is significant for time and cost estimation. Crew productivity data was collected for over 9 months from a nuclear power plant and analysed in order to identify factors driving the productivity. It was revealed that the crew productivity of form work and rebar work was 45.64(), 2.93() on average respectively. The study also found that 'nightwork' and 'total work amount completed' were identified as drivers for the both works. Moreover, 'complexity of daywork' can lead to crew productivity deduction of about 77% for form-work and 81% for rebar-work. The productivity data collected and factors affecting the productivity will help managers to plan and control their similar works. This study will also be beneficial for those performing related studies.

Korea has been promoting green-roof related industry with a great efforts, which leads many researchers to study and develop technology of economical and lightweight green-roof system. In this study, the industrial waste of 'Bottom Ash' produced inevitably from thermal power generation was researched in order to examine the possibility of using it as material for lightweight vegetative block for an economical and lightweight green-roof system. A production manual of the block containing material selection and delivery, mixing, maintenance; and a construction manual of the system are also proposed. From a study of two test-beds of the system, it was revealed material cost as well as maintenance efforts could be saved. Moreover, the system is believed to be a very environment friendly since the system is utilizing industrial waste. Findings from the study will be a great interest of the industry. This study will also be beneficial for those performing related studies.

VE(Value Engineering) is believed to be a very powerful tool for quality improvement and schedule reduction of a project as well as for cost savings. However, little of small and medium size construction companies adopt the VE into their projects, particularly those in private sector. The main reason is that the VE is commonly misunderstood to be complex and sophisticated process, thus it is only applicable for large and difficult projects. VE applied into two small and medium scaled private projects from design phase to construction phase in order to verify advantages of the tool and find the most optimized process of it. As a result, a P university project experienced a considerable reduction on construction cost by changing a construction method of its ground works and sizes of H-beams. In addition, a H motor exhibition hall project also achieved time and cost savings. It was also revealed that, for better application of the VE on a small and medium size project, building trust between owner and contractor is prerequisite. VE skill can be taken full advantage by all the small and medium scale enterprises, which will surely lead to a huge progress of the construction business.

In the United States, State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and other public sector owners of highway infrastructure have been facing poor road conditions, significant funding shortfalls, and increasing traffic congestion over the past decade. In response to the challenge, the U.S. road renewal industry is developing partnerships to explore ways to improve roadway performance while taking into consideration the overall lifecycle costs of rehabilitating countless miles of existing roads. To identify those pavement strategies that will likely have the most cost-effective and highest performance in the U.S. industry, the researchers developed a technology analysis framework that consisted of two analyses: economic and non-economic analyses. Furthermore, four pavement strategies that industry experts believe will dominate the U.S. road renewal industry during the next ten years were analyzed, including: Dense-Grade Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA), Stone Matrix Asphalt (SMA), Open Graded Friction Course (OGFC), and Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA). In the study, our analysis demonstrated the extent to which the four pavement strategies impact the quality and costs associated with highway construction and maintenance during the life of each pavement strategy. The analyses resulted in rankordering the pavements based on their economic and non-economic performance. The research ultimately combined the economic and non-economic benefits to achieve an overall rank-ordering of efficient pavement strategies as follows: (a) Stone Matrix Asphalt (SMA), (b) Dense-Grade Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA), (c) Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA), and (d) Open-Graded Friction Course (OGFC).

The current estimation system of construction equipment cost was first introduced in 1960`s when general contractors had ownership of equipment. However, most of construction equipment in construction sites has been rented from equipment leasing company these days. Therefore, the improvement of current cost estimation system is therefore inevitable in order to advance domestic construction industry. This study is aimed to suggest the improved system by analyzing nationwide market rental rates of major construction equipment. A user friendly prototype of actual database grounded on actual market rental rates collected from over 200 leasing companies in the nation was proposed. The database includes various rates and statistics analyzed by different form of contract as well as different region. Using the collected data, "The Cost Estimate System in Construction Equipment Database" was developed by using VBA(Visual Basic for Applications). The system makes users convenient to utilize the rental rates by choosing equipment and region, and various types of contract.

The steel fabrication and installation works in a steel-structured building project account for 20% of the entire construction cost. In estimating construction costs, a few parameters are more significant than work item productivity. However, the Standardized Productivity (SP) of steel works presented in Poom-Sam, which is the standardized estimating guide system used in the public sector in Korea, has rarely been updated since its establishment in the 1970s. In order to update and improve its structure and figures, 15 construction sites and 5 steel fabrication shops were visited over a period of two years. From the study, it was found that the structure of Poom-Sam was rather complex and outdated and that the average SP of the works analyzed from the research was approximately 85% of the current SP. Moreover, the effect of the productivity differences on total construction cost was approximately 10%. The productivity improvements and amended Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) are attributable to the technology advancements in equipment and construction methods over the past two decades. The results of this study will improve the reliability and accuracy of cost estimation in steel works.

Area Offices of Education in Korea assign and execute government budget based on the evaluation of school buildings` safety rating and degree of their deterioration. However, it is never easy to estimate the most appropriate investment amount for old buildings under consideration of their service lives and residual values together. A model of estimating optimum investment cost for obsolete school building is developed taking its life cycle cost into account. The model is also applied to six old buildings in five different schools and found that some of the facilities hardly needed further investment and were better to be rebuilt. The study results will be a great beneficial for officers to make right decision on maintaining obsolete school buildings and to maximize tax payers` money.

As the local economy has become stagnant, various policies have been made to revitalize the enormous construction industry. However, it is difficult for these policies to achieve their objective, as the construction industry is not an island unto itself but is interconnected in complex ways with diverse other areas of the economy. Interviews and surveys were conducted with experts in Busan, in order to identify the causes of the stagnant economy in the local construction market. The main findings were as follows. First, cost reduction and realistic master plans are needed as a solution for the problems of the redevelopment housing plan. Second, the alleviation of the construction policy is also necessary in order to overcome the problems of not considering the local construction industry. Finally, vocational training and quality education are needed to address the low awareness of construction feasibility analysis and the lack of highly trained human resources. The results of the study will help efforts to revitalize the local construction industry, and will provide an opportunity to reconsider the differences between the experts on issues of the industry.

With construction industry recession, many construction companies are increasingly conducting the development projects by themselves. However, housing projects requested by developers still stand large portion. Although many studies on feasibility analysis were released, they mainly focused on economic feasibility and lacked research on factors and criterions of overall project. Also, because previous studies overly break downed factors related to project, they rarely used in practice. Therefore, this study developed the feasibility analysis model of housing development projects to help main contractors to easily and effectively decide if it is feasible enough to promote the projects requested by developers, and verified the reliability of the model. In this study, thirty one driving factors were identified under seven different categories and the criterion of each factor was also developed. The survey on important index of each factor found `salability`, `economic feasibility`, `site location` and `method of raising fund` significant. 12 projects were tested by the model and its results showed resonable reliability.

In today`s construction industry, buildings have been more complicated and higher, the demands of steel works have been increasingly concerned, which makes the schedule planning and management more significant. However, in actual construction sites, management is more based on a manager`s construction experience than productivity data accumulated in previous projects. Moreover, most of the existing studies also featured a theoretical approach rather than an analysis of data straightforwardly collected in sites. In this study, a steel-erection site was visited to collect productivity data. The study found that there were significant disparities between aboveground work productivity and underground work; one tower crane operated work and two tower crane operated; and work productivity conducted in clear weather condition, cloud and rainy. However, the productivities of `first node on ground` and `second node on ground` were estimated similar. The productivity data collected and factors affecting the productivity will help managers to plan and control their similar steel-erection works. This study will also be beneficial for those performing related studies.

As use of construction equipment has been increasing continuingly, the proportion of equipment expense to the total construction cost has become higher. However, there is a difference between the equipment expenses section in `Poom-Sam` and practical data, because `Poom-sam` does not consider non-working days due to weather conditions, legal holidays and management conditions. Therefore, `Poom-Sam` does not present a reasonable standard for estimating construction equipment expenses. In this study, to estimate realistic construction equipment operating hours, firstly, construction equipment was classified according to work, and weather conditions, in which each work could not be executed, were established. Then, weather data on Seoul and Busan() and legal holidays were analyzed to suggest annual standard operating hours. The annual standard operating hours of earthmoving & excavating, compaction, and drilling equipment was estimated to be 1,430 hours, and lifting equipment, concrete paving equipment, asphalt paving equipment, concrete equipment, and crushing & conveying equipment were estimated to be 2,124 hours, 1,156hours, 1,188hours, 1,688hours, and 2,152hours respectively.

Both the importance and process of estimating highway construction time have increased in significance as roadway user costs themselves have become more significant. In estimating construction time, few parameters are more significant than work item crew production rates and factors significantly affecting those rates. A standardized data collection tool was used to acquire a total of 67 data points from 25 ongoing Texas highway projects between February 2002 and May 2004, for three selected critical work items: beam erection, bridge deck, and bridge rail. With the data, several hypothesized drivers of the crew production rates were analyzed. While the factor of shape of deck (straight versus curved) was identified as a statistically significant driver of bridge deck crew production rate, no statistically significant drivers were found for work items of beam erection and bridge rail. The study also found that both formwork and rebarwork crew sizes have significant relationships with bridge deck production rate. Findings from this study will enable highway agencies to enhance accuracy of contract time estimation for highway bridge construction. The methodology for obtaining field-based production rates will also be beneficial for future researchers.

Both the importance and process of estimating highway construction time have increased in significance as roadway user costs themselves have become more significant. In estimating construction time, few parameters are more significant than work item crew production rates and factors significantly affecting the rates. A standardized data collection tool was used to acquire a total of 93 data points from 22 ongoing Texas highway projects between February 2002 and May 2004, for selected critical work items: Footing, column-rectangle, column-round, and cap. With the data, several hypothesized drivers of the crew production rates were analyzed. The statistically significant drivers found from the analyses include: footing size ( m3 ∕ea) , excavation depth (m), and number (No.) of footings per bent for footing work item; column size ( m3 ∕ea) , column height (m), No. of columns per bent for column-rectangle; column height (m), diameter (m), and No. of columns per bent for column-round; cap size ( m3 ∕ea) , cap ...