Table 1.

Conventional WBS of an Apartment Building

Intermediate
level Controlling
Work of work floor units
group group Activity 共number of floors兲
Reinforced Reinforced From work 1
concrete concrete Reinforcing bar 1
Concrete pouring 1
Masonry Blocks Blocks 1
Bricks Masonry 5
Masonry 5
共miscellaneous兲
Plaster Cement paste Cement paste 3–5
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Wall plaster Window and 5

door mortar
Insulating mortar 5
Room plaster Floor insulating 10
mortar
Floor mortar 10
Concrete Concrete 1
Water Liquid proof Liquid proofing 3–5
proofing Sheet proof Sheet proofing 3–5
Calking Waterproof calking 10
Tile Wall tile Bathroom, 10
kitchen tile
Floor tile Bathroom, floor, 10 Fig. 3. Controlling-floor-units-based work-packaging model and
balcony control attribute

The budget and progress have been distributed according to their

weighted values in the projects investigated. Field staffs are fa-
miliar with this concept, and its rationale can be derived from The authors designed a work-packaging model by simplifying
previous research 共e.g., Eldin 1989兲. these criteria and introducing controlling floor units. The model is
fundamentally based on the CBS. The lowest level of the CBS is
the cost reported on the bill of quantity. There, the quantity of
Proposed Method resources and their costs are presented at the tasks level of the
WBS. A work group in the CBS is conducted by a specialized
The writers have developed a method of measuring and analyzing contract. A work group becomes a package for subcontracting. In
the progress of multiple apartment buildings construction projects general, these two are matched one-to-one.
while reducing data handling workloads. The key feature of the However, scheduling at the tasks level is impractical. As a
method is a work-packaging model that is developed by consid- solution, the control attribute, which is the combination of work
ering the lessons from the field investigation and which takes its group and controlling floor unit, is defined for scheduling. The
rationale from research in the field of progress management. budget of the control attribute is the aggregated cost of tasks that
Based on the work-packaging model, techniques to calculate the fall under it. Fig. 3 is the work-packaging model designed by the
BCWS and to measure the BCWP daily are developed. writers.

Work-Packaging Model Core Process

According to the investigation on current practices, the highest Based on the work-packaging model, the writers have developed
level of WBS for multiple apartment construction consists of civil a method to manage the daily progress and explain its rationale in
work, landscaping work, common infrastructure, parking lots and the following subsections according to the process sequence as
apartment buildings. The lower level of WBS is defined similar to follows:
other construction projects as shown in Table 1. 1. Scheduling control attributes;
A unique feature of the WBS is that, according to the charac- 2. Allocating the budget of control attributes into daily budgets
teristics of work types, the criterion to group activities varies. For according to daily weighted values;
instance, activities related to reinforced concrete work are man- 3. Calculating the BCWS by accumulating the daily budget of a
aged floor by floor, but tile work is done in 10-floor intervals. control attribute at a control point;
However, the criterion to divide the work group at the intermedi- 4. Measuring work progress in terms of earning percentage and
ate level of work in the WBS in Table 1 is unclear. For instance, input this estimate into the daily work report. The earning
the plaster work group is divided according to types of elements percentage at a control point 共i.e., task兲 is defined from the
共e.g., wall plaster and room plaster兲, while the masonry work bill of quantity, and BCWP is measured at this stage; and
group is divided by types of materials 共e.g., blocks and bricks兲. 5. Analyzing the variance between the BCWS and BCWP.

246 / JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT © ASCE / MARCH 2007

J. Constr. Eng. Manage. 2007.133:242-253.