Research Trends on Benefits of Implementing Constructability, Operability, and Maintainability.

Abstract

Despite allocating huge budgets to civil engineering projects, detailed planning, and employing human resources, project managers still face time, cost, and quality constraints. Most of these challenges are due to a lack of integration of different project phases and the limitations of the presence of construction and maintenance contractors in the initial stages of the project. Considering the benefits of applying constructability, operability, and maintainability (COM) concepts, many problems caused by lack of coordination, or duplications and weakness in management, and also time and extra costs due to lack of presence of construction and maintenance contractors in the early stages of the project are resolvable. In this regard, various studies have investigated the benefits of applying these concepts; however, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the benefits of COM. As a result of focus on the benefits of implementation of these concepts and evaluating the effect of each of these strategies and benefits, from different perspectives during various time periods, managers can increase project efficiency and productivity, and improve their performance, through using concepts and strategies of their implementation. This research aims to evaluate the trend of studies on the benefits of implementing constructability, operability, and maintainability in the construction industry. For that, the in-depth literature review method is applied. For qualitative analysis of the obtained information, descriptive analysis has been used. Then, the data was coded, and classified using Excel Software for quantitative data analysis. Finally, the charts presented were evaluated according to the classified fields of study. The necessity of performing such a study is significant because of the fact that a large share of a project's problems, such as lack of plans' integration and weakness of administrative system, and increasing time and cost, are due to lack of exchange of information and ineffective relationship between the design people and the construction and maintenance stakeholders, and ignoring the effects of design decisions on constructability and operability and maintainability implementation.

Operability and maintainability obstacles: an exploratory factor analysis approach

“…Therefore, paying attention to O&M features during the design phase can significantly reduce problems, so the presence of knowledge and experience of people in the O&M should be considered in designers' work plans (Kordestani Ghalenoei et al, 2018c). However, despite this importance, the knowledge and experience of the people of this phase in the initial stages of the project have received very little attention to date (Kordestani Ghalenoei et al, 2017, 2018c, 2018b. Currently, O&M capabilities in projects are in the focus of the designers with four criteria: providing the necessary access for O&M personnel, reducing complexity in features and simplifying forms, paying attention to the end consumer by creating creative design and using components with durability (Ganisen et al, 2015;Ismail and Mohamad, 2015;Zhu et al, 2018).…”

“…Therefore, creating management among all stakeholders during different phases of the project life cycle from beginning to end is something that should be considered to increase the success of the project (Kordestani Ghalenoei et al, 2018a). However, many previous studies examined the obstacles to sharing the O&M knowledge in the early stages of the project (Karim and Magnosson, 2008;Kordestani Ghalenoei et al, 2017, 2018b, 2018c, no research classify and prioritise them to show their importance. These studies find the obstacles and the solution that are beneficial for reducing the obstacles, or they focus on the necessities of integrating various stages of the projects.…”