Jose Guevara - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Jose Guevara
Crisis Driven Literature in PPPs: A Network Analysis
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science
COVID-19 crisis has simultaneously triggered a global economic crisis whose consequences will lea... more COVID-19 crisis has simultaneously triggered a global economic crisis whose consequences will lead to a dichotomy where several governments’ debt has grown to unprecedented levels and simultaneously is required to promote new infrastructure supply. This global economic crisis scenario endangers current Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programs given their dependence on payment from the user and/or government subsidies in long-term lifecycles. This study aims for unravelling the PPP research agenda derived from the last global economic crisis in 2008 and the current one for understanding the trends developed as a tool for building a post-pandemic PPP research agenda. For understanding the last global financial crisis PPP literature review and its time and geographic evolution since 2008, this study developed a literature review employing Network Analysis. Therefore, crisis- and PPP-related keywords were combined for establishing the search in the Web of Science database. After removi...
Buildings
Public projects continually face multiple difficulties for their satisfactory completion. One of ... more Public projects continually face multiple difficulties for their satisfactory completion. One of the most complex challenges is early contract termination (ECT), which delays social goods delivery and exhausts public resources. This study aimed to determine the root causes of the critical factors that lead to ECT in public building projects. We studied 20 kindergarten construction projects in Chile through a multi-case study. It addressed a pattern-matching analysis of symptoms associated with risks of design–build (DB) contracts and a five whys analysis to determine the root causes of the symptoms identified in the units of analysis. The results show that ECT projects’ most common symptoms are labor force shortage, materials shortage, and non-payment claims. In addition, the root-cause analysis exposed that the main causes of ECT’s symptoms were deficiencies in the bidding evaluation process, which led to an inadequate selection of the general contractor, lack of experience of the ...
Journal of Management in Engineering, 2022
Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programs have been developed widely for more than 30 years acros... more Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programs have been developed widely for more than 30 years across the world. The continuity of these programs depends on an adequate balance of three-dimensional sustainability (i.e., economic, environmental, and social). Nevertheless, social sustainability has been demonstrated as being fragile because of the challenges to achieving the intended social legitimacy in PPP programs. This study aims to understand key challenges in achieving social legitimacy in road PPP programs by analyzing contractual clauses, legal frameworks, and stakeholders' interviews of two toll road PPP programs in Chile and Colombia. Three key challenges to social legitimacy were found: social involvement issues, distrust between impacted and responsible stakeholders, and lack of social criteria within toll tariff policy. Findings reveal that it is required to move beyond current consultation mechanisms and thoroughly involve the impacted groups as a relevant stakeholder typology in order to maximize value creation in user-pay PPP programs. In line with that, this study exposes that the claim of previous research for developing relational governance between the public and the private sectors is not enough for overcoming governance limitations and addressing social legitimacy in user-pay PPPs. It is also necessary to enhance relational governance in a triadic approach. This study contributes to the PPP body of knowledge by redirecting the discussion from overall legitimacy to social legitimacy challenges and by including the impacted stakeholders in the analysis of PPP governance mechanisms.
In the Name of the Pandemic: A Case Study of Contractual Modifications in PPP Solicited and Unsolicited Proposals in COVID-19 Times
Construction Research Congress 2022, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented political, social, and economic repercussions t... more The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented political, social, and economic repercussions that simultaneously affect the public, private, and users, triggering construction, demand, and credit risks in road Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). Given the magnitude of this impact, incipient literature has analyzed how specific projects addressed the shock from multiple perspectives in record time. Nevertheless, a thorough comparison of contractual renegotiations produced by the pandemic among initiation processes [i.e., Solicited Proposals (SP) and Unsolicited Proposals (USP)] is missing. Therefore, this paper aims to extend the understanding of COVID implications by analyzing PPP contractual governance, under unprecedented uncertainty, in the most recent road PPP program in Colombia, including 29 projects. This analysis was developed with a case study based on public information. Findings reveal that contractual modifications derived from COVID-19 were mainly driven by extending the project schedule, increasing concessionaire's liquidity in the middle term, and reducing the project scope. Overall, the empirical findings indicate that USP was much more renegotiated than SP, which suggests that the public sector is more prone to guaranteeing the intended private's sector conditions in projects initiated by the same private sector.
PPP Renegotiation Flight Simulator: A System Dynamics Model for Renegotiating PPPs after Pandemic Crisis
Construction Research Congress 2022, 2022
The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is triggering an extraordinary increase in governments'... more The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is triggering an extraordinary increase in governments' fiscal pressure and debt as public expenditure increases and taxes decrease simultaneously. Given that annual payment to road Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) is one of the several significant burdens on government budgets, multiple PPP renegotiations are likely to tackle revenue underperformance due to traffic or toll tariff reductions produced in the next few years by the aftermaths of the pandemic. The current study develops a flight simulator relying on a System Dynamics (SD) model to improve the understanding of decision-makers about the complex relationship between project sources (i.e., revenues and government's subsidies) and uses [i.e., capital expenditure (CAPEX), operational expenditures (OPEX), and financial costs] through the concessionaire's perspective. The proposed simulator helps increase the understanding of decision-makers about suitable alternatives for balancing revenues underperformance in the operation phase without increasing public subsidies. Furthermore, this simulator allows exploring policies by renegotiating the debt conditions or the OPEX for guaranteeing the life-cycle financial sustainability of PPPs. Results demonstrate that extending the debt's repayment period should be the preferred renegotiation alternative for balancing significant revenue underperformance. This time extension must occur after the construction phase is finished because it must not affect the project service levels, public subsidies, or bank's rate of return.
Proceedings of International Structural Engineering and Construction, 2021
Over the last decades, sustainability-related topics have increased their relevance to infrastruc... more Over the last decades, sustainability-related topics have increased their relevance to infrastructure development. Researchers have conducted studies analyzing the relationship between Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and sustainability. However, despite the PPPs have been recognized as a relevant factor for sustainable development, no bibliometric analyses have been conducted studying the relation between PPPs and sustainability. This paper introduces a comprehensive understanding of the body of knowledge of the nexus between sustainability and PPPs, their evolution, and the connections of their main topics. This analysis allows for integrating disperse studies within a comprehensive PPP-sustainable framework. The Network Analysis unraveled that the significance of sustainability within PPPs has grown over time evolving from traditional developed English-speaking countries to developing countries. Overall, the PPP research agenda has evolved from road infrastructure dominance dri...
Risk Allocation in PPP Unsolicited and Solicited Proposals in Latin America: Pilot Study in Colombia
Construction Research Congress 2020, 2020
Risk management between public and private sectors is crucial for the success of public-private p... more Risk management between public and private sectors is crucial for the success of public-private partnership (PPP) projects. Thus, effectively allocating project risks is a key task in the development of public-private initiatives because it is a determinant characteristic for PPP success or failure. However, despite being an important topic for scholars and practitioners, today, the academic literature does not provide ample evidence of how risks are managed in solicited and unsolicited road PPP projects. Building on a systematic content analysis framework, this case study examines the allocation of risks in three unsolicited and three solicited highway PPP contracts over the last decade in Colombia. The framework was developed through line-by-line coding of contract provisions associated with risk-related issues. Results show that some risks were shared and addressed by the public sector, but the majority were transferred to the private sector. Conclusions indicate that there are two opportunistic behaviors identified, the private party who makes the unsolicited proposal seeks to transfer some endogenous risks to the public, and public agencies seek to transfer exogenous risks to the private in USPs; these changes are observed in unsolicited proposals rather than solicited proposals. Overall, this study intends to extend risk allocation studies by analyzing PPP contracts within this Latin American country.
Dynamic evaluation of thermal comfort scenarios in a Colombian large-scale social housing project
Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 2021
PurposeThis study aims to analyze the technical, environmental, economic and thermal comfort impa... more PurposeThis study aims to analyze the technical, environmental, economic and thermal comfort impacts of implementing passive measures and heating systems in Ciudad Verde, a large-scale social housing project located at the periphery of Bogota, Colombia.Design/methodology/approachA system dynamics (SD) model is proposed to evaluate scenarios through counterfactual experiments, including technical, environmental and economic components. Model inputs are obtained from building energy simulation models and data collected from official reports, public policy documents and construction records.FindingsResults suggest that the use of heating systems is the best choice to achieve thermal comfort conditions throughout the day. However, both the capital expenditures and CO2 emissions associated with such system make their adoption very difficult. In line with that, the use of heating systems in combination with passive measures stands out as a viable solution since their costs are affordable ...
Lean Construction (LC) and innovation have been two widely discussed concepts in the Colombian co... more Lean Construction (LC) and innovation have been two widely discussed concepts in the Colombian construction industry for the last few years. However, the relationship among the previous topics have not been properly analysed in the local context. The objective of the article is to analyse the importance of applying LC in terms of promoting innovation. The research method for the investigation has been the embedded single case study approach. The case study is developed in a social housing construction company called Urbansa S.A. Thus, how and why LC can boost innovation on Colombian construction projects are the research questions for this study. This is important because the Colombian industry can start to learn that Lean is more than measuring task times. Results show that applying concepts such as collaboration, transparency, workflow reliability, and pull production enhances innovation if the implementation is undertaken through a process-focused approach. New developments have ...
Since 2006 the Engineering and Construction Management research group at Universidad de los Andes... more Since 2006 the Engineering and Construction Management research group at Universidad de los Andes has documented 20 case studies of Colombian companies using or implementing Project Management and BIM tools. Results showed that knowledge and understanding of Project Management and BIM principles, top management support, and organizational culture are the most influential factors when formulating an implementation strategy. It was also observed that some of the requirements for implementing BIM, such as transparency, process efficiency and new decision making procedures, made the process particularly challenging for some actors in the supply chain. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a comparative review of these research projects. After analysing common failures described on the industry, it was found that most of BIM principles involve managerial improvements, therefore implementing contractual mechanisms to demand BIM in private and public biddings would surely ...
Proceedings of International Structural Engineering and Construction, 2021
Awareness of the importance of sustainable development has made many governments prioritize the a... more Awareness of the importance of sustainable development has made many governments prioritize the adoption of green measures. The road infrastructure sector is no stranger to this and has been transforming its processes in such a way that they incorporate more sustainable practices. However, the inclusion of this type of practice has not been an easy task, since the adoption of these practices results from a decision-making process that is affected by the context of potential adopters, as well as other external parameters such as institutional, environmental, socioeconomic factors, etc. This study aims to identify the main variables that affect the adoption of sustainable practices in the development of roadways in Colombia. Through the application of the Bass Diffusion model concept, the most influential variables were identified and a Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) was built to understand the dynamics and feedback processes between them. External variables such as the popularity of the g...
Managing the design of Architectural/Engineering/Construction (AEC) projects has usually been por... more Managing the design of Architectural/Engineering/Construction (AEC) projects has usually been portrayed as a complex activity by many recent international research articles. Despite of the increased worldwide interest, there have not been found any design management investigation in Colombia. Thus, the main objective of this ongoing study is to generate a conceptual design-management framework for a local engineering design firm. The study has been divided in two stages, diagnosis and implementation, and only the diagnosis phase is reported in this document. This stage includes an analysis of the particular design processes set by the company, establishing good practices, highlighting areas of improvement, and proposing recommendations. The research was conducted through two case studies. It has been found that this particular design firm has implemented good practices in terms of establishing long-term relationships with some of its clients, and developed a knowledge management inf...
Semantic Network Analysis of Literature on Public-Private Partnerships
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 2021
AbstractPublic-private partnerships (PPPs) have motivated diverse bibliometric analyses of PPP re... more AbstractPublic-private partnerships (PPPs) have motivated diverse bibliometric analyses of PPP research. Nevertheless, the evolution and connections between the main topics in the PPP domain have n...
Sustainability, 2020
Road infrastructure in appropriate conditions is a requirement for the development of any country... more Road infrastructure in appropriate conditions is a requirement for the development of any country. The formulation of policies oriented to preserve road networks responds to political, socio-economic, and environmental interests. Through a hybrid methodology that integrates system dynamics (SD) and analytic hierarchical process (AHP) approaches, this paper compares some strategies employed in the development of sustainable road maintenance policies in Colombia. Using a hypothetical case study of a national road network, a set of maintenance policy alternatives are evaluated through the SD model in order to analyze the evolution of road conditions, and quantify costs and emissions. Then, a multi-criteria evaluation is performed applying the AHP methodology. Results show that in the Colombian context, decision-making processes regarding maintenance policies are highly influenced by economic factors, which lead to short-term strategies such as performing corrective maintenance over pre...
Environmental and Economic Impacts of Road Infrastructure Development: Dynamic Considerations and Policies
Journal of Management in Engineering, 2020
AbstractThe traditional techniques employed in the development of road infrastructure projects co... more AbstractThe traditional techniques employed in the development of road infrastructure projects consume large amounts of energy and nonrenewable resources. This paper evaluates some consequences of ...
Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), 2011
Sustainability, 2020
Risk allocation plays a crucial role in the successful development of public-private partnership ... more Risk allocation plays a crucial role in the successful development of public-private partnership (PPP) projects. However, despite being an important topic for scholars and practitioners, the existing literature does not provide sufficient evidence on how managing risks in solicited (SP) and unsolicited (USP) road PPP projects, and subsequently, on what the sustainability implications are for such managerial processes. This study aims to extend risk allocation studies by analyzing contracts in Chilean highway PPPs over the last decade based on a systematic content analysis framework and case study data. The framework was developed through line-by-line coding of contract provisions associated with risk-related issues, and data were collected from semi-structured interviews with Chilean PPP practitioners. Results show that, although the majority of risks are either shared or transferred to the private party in most contracts, there are important variations in the way allocation procedu...
Sustainability (Switzerland), 2020
Risk allocation plays a crucial role in the successful development of public-private partnership ... more Risk allocation plays a crucial role in the successful development of public-private partnership (PPP) projects. However, despite being an important topic for scholars and practitioners, the existing literature does not provide sufficient evidence on how managing risks in solicited (SP) and unsolicited (USP) road PPP projects, and subsequently, on what the sustainability implications are for such managerial processes. This study aims to extend risk allocation studies by analyzing contracts in Chilean highway PPPs over the last decade based on a systematic content analysis framework and case study data. The framework was developed through line-by-line coding of contract provisions associated with risk-related issues, and data were collected from semi-structured interviews with Chilean PPP practitioners. Results show that, although the majority of risks are either shared or transferred to the private party in most contracts, there are important variations in the way allocation procedures are implemented for SPs and USPs. Contracts analyzed revealed that risk arrangement mechanisms have usually focused on the economic dimension of sustainability without fully incorporating social and environmental considerations, increasing protests in the long-term. Conclusions indicate that risk allocation procedures and sustainability considerations are highly dependent on project-specific features and contextual factors. Overall, the analysis uncovers that the level of autonomy given to the private sector in both SPs and USPs has contributed to properly manage technical and economic risks, but has failed to successfully allocate social and environmental concerns.
Construction Research Congress, 2020
Risk management between public and private sectors is crucial for the success of public-private p... more Risk management between public and private sectors is crucial for the success of public-private partnership (PPP) projects. Thus, effectively allocating project risks is a key task in the development of public-private initiatives because it is a determinant characteristic for PPP success or failure. However, despite being an important topic for scholars and practitioners, today, the academic literature does not provide ample evidence of how risks are managed in solicited and unsolicited road PPP projects. Building on a systematic content analysis framework, this case study examines the allocation of risks in three unsolicited and three solicited highway PPP contracts over the last decade in Colombia. The framework was developed through line-by-line coding of contract provisions associated with risk-related issues. Results show that some risks were shared and addressed by the public sector, but the majority were transferred to the private sector. Conclusions indicate that there are two opportunistic behaviors identified, the private party who makes the unsolicited proposal seeks to transfer some endogenous risks to the public, and public agencies seek to transfer exogenous risks to the private in USPs; these changes are observed in unsolicited proposals rather than solicited proposals. Overall, this study intends to extend risk allocation studies by analyzing PPP contracts within this Latin American country.
Construction Research Congress 2022
The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is triggering an extraordinary increase in governments' fi... more The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is triggering an extraordinary increase in governments' fiscal pressure and debt as public expenditure increases and taxes decrease simultaneously. Given that annual payment to road Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) is one of the several significant burdens on government budgets, multiple PPP renegotiations are likely to tackle revenue underperformance due to traffic or toll tariff reductions produced in the next few years by the aftermaths of the pandemic. The current study develops a flight simulator relying on a System Dynamics (SD) model to improve the understanding of decision-makers about the complex relationship between project sources (i.e., revenues and government's subsidies) and uses [i.e., capital expenditure (CAPEX), operational expenditures (OPEX), and financial costs] through the concessionaire's perspective. The proposed simulator helps increase the understanding of decision-makers about suitable alternatives for balancing revenues underperformance in the operation phase without increasing public subsidies. Furthermore, this simulator allows exploring policies by renegotiating the debt conditions or the OPEX for guaranteeing the life-cycle financial sustainability of PPPs. Results demonstrate that extending the debt's repayment period should be the preferred renegotiation alternative for balancing significant revenue underperformance. This time extension must occur after the construction phase is finished because it must not affect the project service levels, public subsidies, or bank's rate of return.
Crisis Driven Literature in PPPs: A Network Analysis
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science
COVID-19 crisis has simultaneously triggered a global economic crisis whose consequences will lea... more COVID-19 crisis has simultaneously triggered a global economic crisis whose consequences will lead to a dichotomy where several governments’ debt has grown to unprecedented levels and simultaneously is required to promote new infrastructure supply. This global economic crisis scenario endangers current Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programs given their dependence on payment from the user and/or government subsidies in long-term lifecycles. This study aims for unravelling the PPP research agenda derived from the last global economic crisis in 2008 and the current one for understanding the trends developed as a tool for building a post-pandemic PPP research agenda. For understanding the last global financial crisis PPP literature review and its time and geographic evolution since 2008, this study developed a literature review employing Network Analysis. Therefore, crisis- and PPP-related keywords were combined for establishing the search in the Web of Science database. After removi...
Buildings
Public projects continually face multiple difficulties for their satisfactory completion. One of ... more Public projects continually face multiple difficulties for their satisfactory completion. One of the most complex challenges is early contract termination (ECT), which delays social goods delivery and exhausts public resources. This study aimed to determine the root causes of the critical factors that lead to ECT in public building projects. We studied 20 kindergarten construction projects in Chile through a multi-case study. It addressed a pattern-matching analysis of symptoms associated with risks of design–build (DB) contracts and a five whys analysis to determine the root causes of the symptoms identified in the units of analysis. The results show that ECT projects’ most common symptoms are labor force shortage, materials shortage, and non-payment claims. In addition, the root-cause analysis exposed that the main causes of ECT’s symptoms were deficiencies in the bidding evaluation process, which led to an inadequate selection of the general contractor, lack of experience of the ...
Journal of Management in Engineering, 2022
Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programs have been developed widely for more than 30 years acros... more Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programs have been developed widely for more than 30 years across the world. The continuity of these programs depends on an adequate balance of three-dimensional sustainability (i.e., economic, environmental, and social). Nevertheless, social sustainability has been demonstrated as being fragile because of the challenges to achieving the intended social legitimacy in PPP programs. This study aims to understand key challenges in achieving social legitimacy in road PPP programs by analyzing contractual clauses, legal frameworks, and stakeholders' interviews of two toll road PPP programs in Chile and Colombia. Three key challenges to social legitimacy were found: social involvement issues, distrust between impacted and responsible stakeholders, and lack of social criteria within toll tariff policy. Findings reveal that it is required to move beyond current consultation mechanisms and thoroughly involve the impacted groups as a relevant stakeholder typology in order to maximize value creation in user-pay PPP programs. In line with that, this study exposes that the claim of previous research for developing relational governance between the public and the private sectors is not enough for overcoming governance limitations and addressing social legitimacy in user-pay PPPs. It is also necessary to enhance relational governance in a triadic approach. This study contributes to the PPP body of knowledge by redirecting the discussion from overall legitimacy to social legitimacy challenges and by including the impacted stakeholders in the analysis of PPP governance mechanisms.
In the Name of the Pandemic: A Case Study of Contractual Modifications in PPP Solicited and Unsolicited Proposals in COVID-19 Times
Construction Research Congress 2022, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented political, social, and economic repercussions t... more The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented political, social, and economic repercussions that simultaneously affect the public, private, and users, triggering construction, demand, and credit risks in road Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). Given the magnitude of this impact, incipient literature has analyzed how specific projects addressed the shock from multiple perspectives in record time. Nevertheless, a thorough comparison of contractual renegotiations produced by the pandemic among initiation processes [i.e., Solicited Proposals (SP) and Unsolicited Proposals (USP)] is missing. Therefore, this paper aims to extend the understanding of COVID implications by analyzing PPP contractual governance, under unprecedented uncertainty, in the most recent road PPP program in Colombia, including 29 projects. This analysis was developed with a case study based on public information. Findings reveal that contractual modifications derived from COVID-19 were mainly driven by extending the project schedule, increasing concessionaire's liquidity in the middle term, and reducing the project scope. Overall, the empirical findings indicate that USP was much more renegotiated than SP, which suggests that the public sector is more prone to guaranteeing the intended private's sector conditions in projects initiated by the same private sector.
PPP Renegotiation Flight Simulator: A System Dynamics Model for Renegotiating PPPs after Pandemic Crisis
Construction Research Congress 2022, 2022
The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is triggering an extraordinary increase in governments'... more The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is triggering an extraordinary increase in governments' fiscal pressure and debt as public expenditure increases and taxes decrease simultaneously. Given that annual payment to road Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) is one of the several significant burdens on government budgets, multiple PPP renegotiations are likely to tackle revenue underperformance due to traffic or toll tariff reductions produced in the next few years by the aftermaths of the pandemic. The current study develops a flight simulator relying on a System Dynamics (SD) model to improve the understanding of decision-makers about the complex relationship between project sources (i.e., revenues and government's subsidies) and uses [i.e., capital expenditure (CAPEX), operational expenditures (OPEX), and financial costs] through the concessionaire's perspective. The proposed simulator helps increase the understanding of decision-makers about suitable alternatives for balancing revenues underperformance in the operation phase without increasing public subsidies. Furthermore, this simulator allows exploring policies by renegotiating the debt conditions or the OPEX for guaranteeing the life-cycle financial sustainability of PPPs. Results demonstrate that extending the debt's repayment period should be the preferred renegotiation alternative for balancing significant revenue underperformance. This time extension must occur after the construction phase is finished because it must not affect the project service levels, public subsidies, or bank's rate of return.
Proceedings of International Structural Engineering and Construction, 2021
Over the last decades, sustainability-related topics have increased their relevance to infrastruc... more Over the last decades, sustainability-related topics have increased their relevance to infrastructure development. Researchers have conducted studies analyzing the relationship between Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and sustainability. However, despite the PPPs have been recognized as a relevant factor for sustainable development, no bibliometric analyses have been conducted studying the relation between PPPs and sustainability. This paper introduces a comprehensive understanding of the body of knowledge of the nexus between sustainability and PPPs, their evolution, and the connections of their main topics. This analysis allows for integrating disperse studies within a comprehensive PPP-sustainable framework. The Network Analysis unraveled that the significance of sustainability within PPPs has grown over time evolving from traditional developed English-speaking countries to developing countries. Overall, the PPP research agenda has evolved from road infrastructure dominance dri...
Risk Allocation in PPP Unsolicited and Solicited Proposals in Latin America: Pilot Study in Colombia
Construction Research Congress 2020, 2020
Risk management between public and private sectors is crucial for the success of public-private p... more Risk management between public and private sectors is crucial for the success of public-private partnership (PPP) projects. Thus, effectively allocating project risks is a key task in the development of public-private initiatives because it is a determinant characteristic for PPP success or failure. However, despite being an important topic for scholars and practitioners, today, the academic literature does not provide ample evidence of how risks are managed in solicited and unsolicited road PPP projects. Building on a systematic content analysis framework, this case study examines the allocation of risks in three unsolicited and three solicited highway PPP contracts over the last decade in Colombia. The framework was developed through line-by-line coding of contract provisions associated with risk-related issues. Results show that some risks were shared and addressed by the public sector, but the majority were transferred to the private sector. Conclusions indicate that there are two opportunistic behaviors identified, the private party who makes the unsolicited proposal seeks to transfer some endogenous risks to the public, and public agencies seek to transfer exogenous risks to the private in USPs; these changes are observed in unsolicited proposals rather than solicited proposals. Overall, this study intends to extend risk allocation studies by analyzing PPP contracts within this Latin American country.
Dynamic evaluation of thermal comfort scenarios in a Colombian large-scale social housing project
Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 2021
PurposeThis study aims to analyze the technical, environmental, economic and thermal comfort impa... more PurposeThis study aims to analyze the technical, environmental, economic and thermal comfort impacts of implementing passive measures and heating systems in Ciudad Verde, a large-scale social housing project located at the periphery of Bogota, Colombia.Design/methodology/approachA system dynamics (SD) model is proposed to evaluate scenarios through counterfactual experiments, including technical, environmental and economic components. Model inputs are obtained from building energy simulation models and data collected from official reports, public policy documents and construction records.FindingsResults suggest that the use of heating systems is the best choice to achieve thermal comfort conditions throughout the day. However, both the capital expenditures and CO2 emissions associated with such system make their adoption very difficult. In line with that, the use of heating systems in combination with passive measures stands out as a viable solution since their costs are affordable ...
Lean Construction (LC) and innovation have been two widely discussed concepts in the Colombian co... more Lean Construction (LC) and innovation have been two widely discussed concepts in the Colombian construction industry for the last few years. However, the relationship among the previous topics have not been properly analysed in the local context. The objective of the article is to analyse the importance of applying LC in terms of promoting innovation. The research method for the investigation has been the embedded single case study approach. The case study is developed in a social housing construction company called Urbansa S.A. Thus, how and why LC can boost innovation on Colombian construction projects are the research questions for this study. This is important because the Colombian industry can start to learn that Lean is more than measuring task times. Results show that applying concepts such as collaboration, transparency, workflow reliability, and pull production enhances innovation if the implementation is undertaken through a process-focused approach. New developments have ...
Since 2006 the Engineering and Construction Management research group at Universidad de los Andes... more Since 2006 the Engineering and Construction Management research group at Universidad de los Andes has documented 20 case studies of Colombian companies using or implementing Project Management and BIM tools. Results showed that knowledge and understanding of Project Management and BIM principles, top management support, and organizational culture are the most influential factors when formulating an implementation strategy. It was also observed that some of the requirements for implementing BIM, such as transparency, process efficiency and new decision making procedures, made the process particularly challenging for some actors in the supply chain. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a comparative review of these research projects. After analysing common failures described on the industry, it was found that most of BIM principles involve managerial improvements, therefore implementing contractual mechanisms to demand BIM in private and public biddings would surely ...
Proceedings of International Structural Engineering and Construction, 2021
Awareness of the importance of sustainable development has made many governments prioritize the a... more Awareness of the importance of sustainable development has made many governments prioritize the adoption of green measures. The road infrastructure sector is no stranger to this and has been transforming its processes in such a way that they incorporate more sustainable practices. However, the inclusion of this type of practice has not been an easy task, since the adoption of these practices results from a decision-making process that is affected by the context of potential adopters, as well as other external parameters such as institutional, environmental, socioeconomic factors, etc. This study aims to identify the main variables that affect the adoption of sustainable practices in the development of roadways in Colombia. Through the application of the Bass Diffusion model concept, the most influential variables were identified and a Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) was built to understand the dynamics and feedback processes between them. External variables such as the popularity of the g...
Managing the design of Architectural/Engineering/Construction (AEC) projects has usually been por... more Managing the design of Architectural/Engineering/Construction (AEC) projects has usually been portrayed as a complex activity by many recent international research articles. Despite of the increased worldwide interest, there have not been found any design management investigation in Colombia. Thus, the main objective of this ongoing study is to generate a conceptual design-management framework for a local engineering design firm. The study has been divided in two stages, diagnosis and implementation, and only the diagnosis phase is reported in this document. This stage includes an analysis of the particular design processes set by the company, establishing good practices, highlighting areas of improvement, and proposing recommendations. The research was conducted through two case studies. It has been found that this particular design firm has implemented good practices in terms of establishing long-term relationships with some of its clients, and developed a knowledge management inf...
Semantic Network Analysis of Literature on Public-Private Partnerships
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 2021
AbstractPublic-private partnerships (PPPs) have motivated diverse bibliometric analyses of PPP re... more AbstractPublic-private partnerships (PPPs) have motivated diverse bibliometric analyses of PPP research. Nevertheless, the evolution and connections between the main topics in the PPP domain have n...
Sustainability, 2020
Road infrastructure in appropriate conditions is a requirement for the development of any country... more Road infrastructure in appropriate conditions is a requirement for the development of any country. The formulation of policies oriented to preserve road networks responds to political, socio-economic, and environmental interests. Through a hybrid methodology that integrates system dynamics (SD) and analytic hierarchical process (AHP) approaches, this paper compares some strategies employed in the development of sustainable road maintenance policies in Colombia. Using a hypothetical case study of a national road network, a set of maintenance policy alternatives are evaluated through the SD model in order to analyze the evolution of road conditions, and quantify costs and emissions. Then, a multi-criteria evaluation is performed applying the AHP methodology. Results show that in the Colombian context, decision-making processes regarding maintenance policies are highly influenced by economic factors, which lead to short-term strategies such as performing corrective maintenance over pre...
Environmental and Economic Impacts of Road Infrastructure Development: Dynamic Considerations and Policies
Journal of Management in Engineering, 2020
AbstractThe traditional techniques employed in the development of road infrastructure projects co... more AbstractThe traditional techniques employed in the development of road infrastructure projects consume large amounts of energy and nonrenewable resources. This paper evaluates some consequences of ...
Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), 2011
Sustainability, 2020
Risk allocation plays a crucial role in the successful development of public-private partnership ... more Risk allocation plays a crucial role in the successful development of public-private partnership (PPP) projects. However, despite being an important topic for scholars and practitioners, the existing literature does not provide sufficient evidence on how managing risks in solicited (SP) and unsolicited (USP) road PPP projects, and subsequently, on what the sustainability implications are for such managerial processes. This study aims to extend risk allocation studies by analyzing contracts in Chilean highway PPPs over the last decade based on a systematic content analysis framework and case study data. The framework was developed through line-by-line coding of contract provisions associated with risk-related issues, and data were collected from semi-structured interviews with Chilean PPP practitioners. Results show that, although the majority of risks are either shared or transferred to the private party in most contracts, there are important variations in the way allocation procedu...
Sustainability (Switzerland), 2020
Risk allocation plays a crucial role in the successful development of public-private partnership ... more Risk allocation plays a crucial role in the successful development of public-private partnership (PPP) projects. However, despite being an important topic for scholars and practitioners, the existing literature does not provide sufficient evidence on how managing risks in solicited (SP) and unsolicited (USP) road PPP projects, and subsequently, on what the sustainability implications are for such managerial processes. This study aims to extend risk allocation studies by analyzing contracts in Chilean highway PPPs over the last decade based on a systematic content analysis framework and case study data. The framework was developed through line-by-line coding of contract provisions associated with risk-related issues, and data were collected from semi-structured interviews with Chilean PPP practitioners. Results show that, although the majority of risks are either shared or transferred to the private party in most contracts, there are important variations in the way allocation procedures are implemented for SPs and USPs. Contracts analyzed revealed that risk arrangement mechanisms have usually focused on the economic dimension of sustainability without fully incorporating social and environmental considerations, increasing protests in the long-term. Conclusions indicate that risk allocation procedures and sustainability considerations are highly dependent on project-specific features and contextual factors. Overall, the analysis uncovers that the level of autonomy given to the private sector in both SPs and USPs has contributed to properly manage technical and economic risks, but has failed to successfully allocate social and environmental concerns.
Construction Research Congress, 2020
Risk management between public and private sectors is crucial for the success of public-private p... more Risk management between public and private sectors is crucial for the success of public-private partnership (PPP) projects. Thus, effectively allocating project risks is a key task in the development of public-private initiatives because it is a determinant characteristic for PPP success or failure. However, despite being an important topic for scholars and practitioners, today, the academic literature does not provide ample evidence of how risks are managed in solicited and unsolicited road PPP projects. Building on a systematic content analysis framework, this case study examines the allocation of risks in three unsolicited and three solicited highway PPP contracts over the last decade in Colombia. The framework was developed through line-by-line coding of contract provisions associated with risk-related issues. Results show that some risks were shared and addressed by the public sector, but the majority were transferred to the private sector. Conclusions indicate that there are two opportunistic behaviors identified, the private party who makes the unsolicited proposal seeks to transfer some endogenous risks to the public, and public agencies seek to transfer exogenous risks to the private in USPs; these changes are observed in unsolicited proposals rather than solicited proposals. Overall, this study intends to extend risk allocation studies by analyzing PPP contracts within this Latin American country.
Construction Research Congress 2022
The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is triggering an extraordinary increase in governments' fi... more The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is triggering an extraordinary increase in governments' fiscal pressure and debt as public expenditure increases and taxes decrease simultaneously. Given that annual payment to road Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) is one of the several significant burdens on government budgets, multiple PPP renegotiations are likely to tackle revenue underperformance due to traffic or toll tariff reductions produced in the next few years by the aftermaths of the pandemic. The current study develops a flight simulator relying on a System Dynamics (SD) model to improve the understanding of decision-makers about the complex relationship between project sources (i.e., revenues and government's subsidies) and uses [i.e., capital expenditure (CAPEX), operational expenditures (OPEX), and financial costs] through the concessionaire's perspective. The proposed simulator helps increase the understanding of decision-makers about suitable alternatives for balancing revenues underperformance in the operation phase without increasing public subsidies. Furthermore, this simulator allows exploring policies by renegotiating the debt conditions or the OPEX for guaranteeing the life-cycle financial sustainability of PPPs. Results demonstrate that extending the debt's repayment period should be the preferred renegotiation alternative for balancing significant revenue underperformance. This time extension must occur after the construction phase is finished because it must not affect the project service levels, public subsidies, or bank's rate of return.
Los actuales problemas asociados a la ejecución de obras civiles contratadas con entidades estata... more Los actuales problemas asociados a la ejecución de obras civiles contratadas con entidades estatales tie-nen su causas subyacentes no sólo en el mal uso de los recursos por parte de los contratistas, sino direc-tamente en la etapa de planeación realizada por parte de las entidades contratantes (Portela, 2013), situa-ción que bien puede deberse a la calidad de los estu-dios que originan los proyectos, la definición de condiciones contractuales, el desconocimiento de los riesgos durante la ejecución, entre otros aspectos que pueden afectar al contratista dificultándole llevar a término el objeto de su labor bajo las condiciones pactadas. Esta situación resalta la importancia de los procesos previos a la contratación, y por consiguien-te la responsabilidad de los individuos y las entida-des que se encargan no solamente de la estructura-ción, sino de la gerencia integral de los proyectos. Es este el caso de ABC, la entidad objeto de estu-dio, que mediante su Unidad de Estudios Previos (UEP) se encarga de definir los precios de mercado de los proyectos que gerencia y financia, y los re-querimientos contractuales que permitan la selección idónea del contratista para de su ejecución, sin embargo dado que se ha encontrado que esta área se ha convertido en un cuello de botella para la entidad, surge la necesidad de realizar un diagnóstico con el fin de identificar los problemas que impiden el flujo deseado, encontrándose que el pensamiento Lean es una herramienta potencial para maximizar la efi-ciencia del proceso mediante la supresión de las si-tuaciones que generan muda (Ver glosario) en su interior. En la actualidad la teoría Lean ha trascendido el sector puramente industriales, siendo común su apli-cación en la construcción y en organizaciones de servicios, partiendo del principio de asemejar los procesos constructivos a procesos industriales en la búsqueda de la estandarización que puede caracteri-zar a una línea de producción. Aplicación del Pensamiento Lean a la Unidad de Estudios Previos en una empresa estatal como herramienta de diagnóstico, control y mejoramiento en la interacción con sus clientes. Estudio de caso. RESUMEN: La gradual evolución del pensamiento Lean, desde su aparición en la industria automotriz y, más adelante, de forma generalizada en la industria manufacturera, ha llevado a su implementación, cada vez más aceptada, en organizaciones dedicadas a la prestación de servicios profesionales, entre otros. La búsqueda por mejorar la eficiencia de los procesos a partir de la eliminación de la muda, como medio para maximizar la competitividad de la organización a través del aumento en la satisfacción de sus clientes y la reducción en el uso de los recursos de la compañía, es una necesidad creciente que encuentra una solución en la correcta im-plementación del pensamiento Lean, sin que la variabilidad inherente a los requerimientos de los clientes y la versatilidad propia de los proyectos de ingeniería sea impedimento para su aplicación. ABSTRACT: The gradual evolution of Lean thinking, since its appearance within the automotive industry and, later, in manufacturing, has resulted in an increasingly accepted implementation in professional services organizations. The intention to improve the efficiency of processes through the elimination of muda as a means to maximize the competitiveness of the organization through increasing the customer satisfaction and reducing the use of the company resources, has become a growing need that finds a proper solution in the correct implementation of Lean thinking, with no impediment from the variability inherent to customer requirements and the versatility of engineering projects.