ASCE has honored the writing team of Ashtad Javanmardi, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE; S. Alireza Abbasian-Hosseini, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE; Min Liu, A.M.ASCE; and Simon M. Hsiang, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE,with the 2021 Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize for the paper “Improving Effectiveness of Constraints Removal in Construction Planning Meetings: Information-Theoretic Approach,” published in the April 2020 issue of Journal of Construction Engineering and Management.
The authors developed a theoretical framework for ordering construction planning meeting agenda topics with a methodology that included in-person observations of job site meetings as well as reviews of meeting minutes, weekly look-ahead plans, schedule updates, and comparisons between actual and budgeted work hours. An analysis was conducted that tied meeting activities to successful constraint removal and advancements of the project percentage complete. A statistical analysis highlighted the most effective approaches to ordering topics in meeting agendas, resulting in convincing conclusions. The results show that practitioners should start with agenda topics that are likely to remove constraints in subsequent topic areas, thereby shortening the required discussion in those subsequent areas.
Javanmardi, Abbasian-Hosseini, and Liu are in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. Hsiang is with the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
The Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize recognizes papers whose author describes in detail accomplished works of construction or which are valuable contributions to construction management and construction engineering.
