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FT Students and Faculty Members Present Papers at PMI Conference 2021

06.04.2021

Faculty of Technology

Faculty of Technology students and faculty members present papers at Project Management Institute (PMI), Research and Academic Conference; 2021

PMI Research & Academic Conference (Virtual Conference 2021) was held at IIT - Mumbai from 3 – 6 March 2021 on the theme of "Enhancing project performance: Application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and decision science".

Four out of 25 high quality papers, from the overall domain of project management, were from CEPT.

The papers submitted and presented were:

Paper Title: Developing an integrated framework for Heavy Construction Equipment management platform

Authors: Nandan Kumar Da, M.Tech (CEM student) , Dr. Jyoti Trivedi (CEPT)

Abstract: There is a growing need for better project management techniques within the disciplines of engineering, business, and technology. With the advent of industrialization, the projects of humankind took on increasing complexity. To keep pace with the advances in information technology and business processes, the organizations must change their strategy of traditional work management, which will enhance project productivity. Contractor’s organization always suffers from productivity issues. Significant number of issues are reported from the equipment department, due to ineffective management. By emphasizing practical applications, the study targets the ultimate purpose of project management: to unify and integrate the interests, resources, and work efforts of many stakeholders to accomplish the overall project goal. There is a need of centralized solution to manage the equipment. A literature study extracts the factors which have a direct influence on EMS. To know the absence of factors in the study, a comparison study is made between factors of literature review and factors of commercially available EMS’s. It leads to generate a framework to include and combine all the factors which are missing in existing standalone EMS’s. The problem is around the real-world practice, a constructive based design-science research method is adopted for the research. A top construction company in India is shortlisted for the case study to extract the factors and incorporation of the EMS in the company. The research outcome is used in creation of an integrated framework for EMS, which is a set of guidelines that include, required inputs for EMS, visualization framework, user interface design, implementation plan, incorporating innovative ideas in the proposed framework.
Paper Title - Construction Project Risk management using change propagation method (CPM)

Authors - Vijayashree T M, M.Tech (CEM student) , Dr. Jyoti Trivedi (CEPT)

Abstract: The design development and planning phase has a major impact on the project, and the level of uncertainty is high with complex iterations among different disciplines involved. There is a high risk involved due to this complex and iterative nature leading to numerous changes that must be managed effectively. There is a need to predict the changes in the process to avoid rework and design waste. These changes have cost and time impacts, and there is a requirement for these changes to be forecasted in the planning process to develop necessary control measures. The general risk management techniques involve direct risk assessment, which does not consider the propagation of a change within the system. The Change prediction and propagation method is a combination of DSM and Risk Management technique. This study aims to validate the usage of Change Prediction Method (CPM), in a BIM applied design project of a commercial building, to predict the changes and the way it propagates and validate with the actual changes occurred in the decision-making process. The stakeholders of the selected project breakdown the design development process into tasks and score the dependencies between them. These scores are then used to generate heat maps with a simulation tool that predicts the changes, their spread, and their impact within the system. These results are then validated with changes that were recorded during the design development process by the stakeholders. This method is proposed to aid decision-making, by integrating the people and the processes of the system with technology and tools.
Paper Title: Development of a Feasibility Study Framework for UAVs in the Indian Construction Industry.

Authors: Georgie Jacob, M.Tech (CEM student), Dr. Bhargav Dave (VF, CEPT)

Abstract: Civilian applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) started very recently. Exploring the applications of UAVs in the construction industry has been of importance ever since. Finding the feasibility of UAVs in the Indian construction industry has been relatively unexplored. In this regard, a study has been carried out to find out different applications of UAVs in the construction industry, to find out the feasibility of UAVs in the Indian construction industry, and to develop a set of guidelines and a framework to use UAVs in construction.

Design science research methodology was adopted for this study as the method is very rigorous in testing the solution. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with professionals who are closely related to this field. Different applications of UAVs in construction were identified from interviews and literature studies. Interview data were analysed using thematic analysis and a deductive approach was used to find out different factors for the development of the framework and guidelines. The guidelines were integrated with the framework to make it handy and robust. The feasibility of UAVs in the Indian construction industry was established by analysing different factors such as legal and financial aspects in India considering the current scenario.

It was inferred that the UAV enabled method is feasible when the scope of the project is very large or when the time is a constraint. The study explored the benefits of UAVs in construction. Major benefits include visualization and ease in decision making in different stages of a project. Real-time visualization using UAVs helps in monitoring different aspects of a project like safety and quality inspections, progress monitoring, 3D mapping, volumetric estimations, material tracking, and even helpful in tendering purposes. This enhances the decision making capability of top management in a project without physically accessing the site. UAVs can save considerable amount of time, manpower, and money which ultimately leads to better project management. The framework can guide a professional through the financial, legal, and operational feasibility for adopting UAVs in construction which helps in choosing or declining the use of UAVs in a project considering the characteristics or purpose of the project. The checklists incorporated will ease the burden of the professionals as well as the operators in performing UAV operations.
Paper Title: Data Analytics to Evaluate Public Value from Megaprojects

Authors: Dr.Ganesh Devkar (CEPT), Shankar Sankararan (UTS) , Yongjian Ke (UTS), Johan Ninan (IIT Guwahati), Sandeep Mathur (Transport for New South Wales), Ivor Tsang (UTS) and Lauri Vuorinen (Tampere University)

Abstract: The unprecedented investment in megaprojects that has been witnessed in recent years seems likely to accelerate post Covid-19 with several countries, like Australia and the United Kingdom, announcing large infrastructure projects for economic revival. COVID-19 has also created social challenges due to increased unemployment that could result in increase in poverty which could be helped when these projects become a reality. However, some scholars caution that rapid urbanisation and inappropriate development of infrastructure could work against containing a pandemic like COVID-19. The creation of value delivered by megaprojects has been gaining a lot of interest by scholars studying megaprojects. Big data sets are increasingly used to help public managers derive real-time insights into behavioural changes, public opinion, or daily life. Big data has been used to evaluate customer agility and responsiveness for public value creation. Based on this need this paper we would like to address the following question in our paper: How can data science enable evaluation and monitoring of delivery of public value over the life cycle of a megaproject?. Some work towards this aim has already been carried out by the authors but more is needed.The authors have been collected and analyzed social media data from transport projects from Australia and India to see how large amounts data collected from these media can aid in the evaluation of benefits realized from these projects.