Texas Department Of Transportation Case Study

Projects developed by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) go through a planning process that includes the determination of the project’s schedule. To determine the schedule, highway construction projects are divided into several activities and the time management of these activities will define the project’s duration. In order to improve the productivity and facilitate the execution of the project, an effective planning is needed. An organized Work Breakdown Structure can enhance the project duration. However, there are certain unexpected and unavoidable factors, which can delay the project’s termination: (1) Conflicting Weather Conditions (2) Temperature, (3) Project’s location, and (4) Workers’ shifts.

Adverse weather conditions are often unpredictable and unavoidable. There is no accurate way of predicting when the project will need to pause its activities due to an unworkable environment caused by weather circumstances, and this has been a problem for contractors. In this scenario, projects may experience delays and budget modifications. Considering that weather can be unpredictable, it is difficult to calculate the effects or

repercussions it may have on a construction project (Michal Gluszak et al. 2015).

Also, the impact caused by weather conditions in a construction’s productivity rate can be hard to quantify.

The reason being that weather can be unpredictable. Weather causes problems in the productivity rate, and arrangements are made in a construction schedule to decrease the impact. The changes in the schedule may also affect the duration of the project. In cases where the duration has to be extended, construction claims are necessary. To address this issue, construction contracts include clauses in which it is stated that the contractor may need a time extension due to these weather conditions or a cost reimbursement if conflicting weather conditions eventuate. (Ballesteros-Pérez et al. 2017). These claims demand that the construction manager has to prove that unexpected weather conditions obliged an

extension.

Besides weather conditions, it is important for contractors to keep in mind other plausible factors that may affect a projects' productivity rates while creating a schedule. Specifically, the worker's shifts play an important role in productivity rates (Abdel-Raheem, et al. 2017). This is something that has to be taken into consideration while creating a schedule. It is certain that a construction schedule is subject to changes due to the aforementioned clauses, but cost and time reduction is possible by accounting for this factor in a more accurate manner. According to Intergraph (2012), work done on second and third shifts are less efficient than a morning shift because of the time of day resulting in shorter work periods.

Furthermore, another important factor that will help if taken into consideration is the location of the project. By comparing and contrasting different concepts concerning the location of a project, a conclusion has been made by modeling the productivity rates and thus having a visual representation of how location plays a role in the termination of a project. According to Kassa (2005), a project located in a rural area has a higher productivity rate than a project in a rural area, mostly because of everyday struggles such as traffic, material delivery and supply, and accessibility to the construction site.

The objective of this investigation is to analyze the effects that factors such as weather, location, and the workers’ shifts have on the productivity rate of construction activities and similarly, the changes in a project’s schedule. Productivity rates are not always as high as expected due to many reasons, and it is not always due to weather. Many incidents may occur during the execution of a construction project, and most of the time it is out of the contractor’s hands. Therefore, that is why a concise system is helpful to a project’s productivity rates. By following an accurate methodology of weather predictability, project schedulers will be able to create more realistic schedules in every project.