Research

The construction industry is critical to Canada’s national economy, and Alberta’s construction industry is particularly important. However, economic uncertainty, lower-than-expected productivity, high project costs and schedule growth, a skilled labour shortage, and pressure from international competitors have threatened future investment in this area, particularly with respect to Alberta’s oil sands. Because of the Albertan construction industry’s crucial contributions to the Canadian construction industry and the Canadian economy as a whole, innovations serving the industry in this area have far-reaching benefits. Within this context, the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Strategic Construction Modeling and Delivery (IRC in SCMD) delivered innovative tools and practices to help the Albertan construction industry enhance its competitive position through improved project performance.

Developing Practical Solutions for Industry

Under the leadership of Chairholder Dr. Aminah Robinson Fayek, the IRC in SCMD team developed hybrid decision support systems that incorporate fuzzy logic with other modeling techniques such as artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, and simulation. This approach allows the translation of ambiguous, linguistically expressed knowledge gathered from industry experts into numeric forms from which definite conclusions can be drawn. IRC in SCMD research changed the ways in which the construction industry models operations and decisions by providing more accurate and realistic representations of the human reasoning process. In turn, this resulted in improved methods for the planning, structuring, forecasting, control, and evaluation of construction projects. The systems, practices, and tools created by the IRC in SCMD support construction industry professionals by enabling them to better address issues such as labour productivity, workforce management, project management, contractor prequalification for surety bonding, and risk management.

Industry Partners

The IRC in SCMD strove to meet the needs of its partner organizations, with specialized solutions designed for individual parties as well as joint collaborative projects involving multiple partners. The IRC in SCMD was proud to count construction owners, owner associations, contractors, contractor associations, labour associations, and labour unions as industry partners. Read more about this collaboration.

Research Themes

To achieve its primary research goal and address the needs of industry partners, the IRC in SCMD research program focused on the following themes:

  1. Developing fuzzy hybrid techniques for construction modeling and decision support
  2. Developing advanced fuzzy simulation techniques for improved construction analysis and project delivery
  3. Modeling of complex decisions in construction management and development of construction industry best practices

We invite you to learn more about the people, projects, and publications of our completed research program here.

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