The study of project management spans all phases of the project life cycle, from preliminary feasibility analysis and concept development through to commissioning of the project. The study of construction management focuses on the construction or execution phase. Both of these disciplines contain interrelated processes that can be modelled and sometimes optimized. The challenge lies in recognizing and balancing their human and technical dimensions. Meeting this challenge requires a good understanding of the qualitative and quantitative principles of management, economics, computer science and engineering as applied to the domain of engineering projects. The development of this understanding constitutes the focus of the graduate program in project and construction management. The program builds on a core of courses within Civil Engineering that can be augmented with others from the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration and the Department of Computer Science as well as with cognate courses selected from the entire graduate program within Civil Engineering.
MEng, MASc and PhD programs are available.
Two themes guide the research program. The first deals with the design of integrated, computer-based decision tools to support project design, construction, and facilities management. The second deals with decision making about procurement and risk management strategies for large engineering projects.
Design of Integrated, Computer-Based Decision Tools
This research deals with the development of improved tools for modelling projects, representing and selecting construction technologies, encoding construction expertise into systems, automating the interpretation of construction records, and capturing multi-media project information, to name a few. Findings from this work have been put into practice on many construction projects. Thesis students’ research often involves direct interaction with local firms and projects to help ensure that findings are responsive to the realities of construction.
Other research within this area focuses on information sharing and the integration of project functions throughout the design, construction and facilities management life cycle. Active topics include designing standardized data models for describing fundamental project information (such as construction activities, resources, or project costs), using standard models to support communication and information exchange among various stand-alone computer applications (such as planning and scheduling, cost estimating, cost accounting, or CAD), developing flexible coding structures that allow one project management function to be mapped onto another (e.g., estimating to be integrated with planning and scheduling and vice versa), and integrated systems to support facilities life cycle cost analysis and maintenance management.
Procurement & Risk Management Strategies for Large Projects
This research focuses on generalized capital expenditure modelling of large projects, project financing, risk analysis (including risk allocation and mitigation strategies) and the analysis of alternative strategies for procuring large, public infrastructure projects. Of special interest are public/private partnership arrangements such as Design-Build and Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) that require engineering and construction firms to assume non-traditional roles such as project proponent, financier, and operator. Issues dealing with process design from both public and private sector viewpoints, risk assignment, economic evaluation, and the development of decision support systems provide the focus of the work.
The province is home to many dynamic and cooperative contracting and project management firms engaged in significant projects. These firms and projects constitute excellent laboratory facilities for testing concepts, verifying theories and providing input to the research program.
The department has excellent computing facilities, including numerous networked PC's and UNIX computers, and access to other University computing resources.
| Thomas M. Froese | Construction management, computer integration and applications for construction, information technologies and standards for the construction industry. |
| Alan D. Russell | Design of integrated, intelligent project management systems, project economics and risk analysis, construction engineering. |
| Sheryl Staub-French | Feature-based cost estimating, design for constructability, construction engineering and management, computer-integrated construction, and product and process modeling. |
| Barbara J. Lence | Decision analysis, systems analysis, data quality, modelling under uncertainty, environmental policy analysis. |
| Tarek A. Sayed | Intelligent transportation systems, traffic engineering, traffic safety. |
| Bryan S. Shapiro | Legal aspects of project and construction management. |
| Dana Vanier | Facilities management, municipal infrastructure,integration and information technologies. |
| Roger Woodhead | Project management. |
| Michael Roman | |
| Ron Mackinnon |
