Grant: Industrial Research Chairs

The construction industry operates in an environment of considerable risk and uncertainty, due largely to the fact that construction processes involve human activities and subjective judgment. Construction projects frequently represent large investments from numerous parties, but modeling and predicting the ways in which they will unfold is a difficult task. Experts struggle to capture the subjective, human elements of construction when conducting analyses that affect the allocation of time, labour, money, and materials. Fuzzy logic is a precise mathematical modeling technique that is specifically designed to handle natural language andapproximate reasoning. The primary objective of the NSERC Industrial Research Chair (IRC) in Strategic Construction Modeling and Delivery is to advance the field of fuzzy logic and combine it with other modeling techniques, including systems dynamics, agent-based modeling, and artificial intelligence techniques, in order to create workable, applicable approaches for solving construction-related problems and developing decision support systems. A secondary objective is to apply the developed methods to a number of practical applications for solving strategic, delivery-related issues in construction in order to improve project outcomes and increase the profitability, technological sophistication, and competitive performance of our partner organizations.Building on the successes of our previous IRC terms, we have focused our research on five key areas: (1) construction project productivity, including labour motivation and behaviour; (2) construction organizational competencies and performance; (3) risk analysis and mitigation; (4) assessment of impacts of research and development; and (5) applied project practices and industry tools. This research is designed to produce immediate and significant innovation in the processes and tools employed by both our partner organizations and the construction industry as a whole. These resources will help organizations close gaps in expertise andinternal resources and, in turn, remain profitable and competitive on a local, national, and international scale, even during times of economic instability.