Civil integrated management for highway infrastructure projects : analyses of trends, specifications, impact, and maturity

Highway projects are delivered in a complex environment that involves the participation of diverse stakeholders with different objectives. Stakeholders have to deal with a multitude of information coordination and project execution challenges. Conventional solutions that often depend on traditional surveying methods, document-based design and construction work processes have proven inadequate to consistently meet the information requirements for project delivery processes. Over the past few decades, the advent of modern technologies in data collection, design, and in-field positioning systems have been transforming the work processes both in the planning and the execution of highway projects. Civil Integrated Management (CIM) is a terminology that encompasses all such tools and technologies that can facilitate the process of digital project delivery and asset management. Nonetheless, much of the advancements in digital delivery have essentially been limited to a few projects or particular phases. While owner agencies have recognized the significance of CIM technologies, widespread implementation and standardization of these tools remain a futuristic goal. Driven based on findings of a national state of practice survey, this dissertation compiles three chapters that studied principal issues concerning enhanced CIM implementation namely standardization of project work processes, empirical validation of benefits, and formulation of a reliable benchmarking tool. Chapters 5 and 6 examine utilization of CIM at the project level. Extensive inputs from selected case study projects from the U.S. and the U.K. helped identify unique practices and transforming specifications that the agencies deployed to streamline usage of these tools. These case study inputs were then methodically coded to analyze the combined impact of CIM technologies and supporting factors on project performance measures. Chapter 7 broadens the focus of the research to examine agency-level implementation issues. This chapter proposed a quantitative maturity model for benchmarking the usage. The model considers 16 pertinent attributes encapsulating technical, contract, legal, and organizational issues. A national survey of agency champions and other CIM experts helped assess the relative importance of these attributes towards CIM workflow and appropriately weight their usage levels in determining CIM maturity. The study contributes uniquely to the body of knowledge and also has considerable practical implications for the highway industry. The project-level objectives produced valuable insights in terms of distinct practices that agencies adopted to facilitate CIM. It also empirically validated the complex interactions between CIM and process factors for validating the performance improvements. The maturity assessment tool produced a trustworthy model and a repeatable general research framework for benchmarking CIM implementation at agencies.