In 2004, Korea became the fifth country in the world to own and operate a high-speed railway called Korea Train eXpress (KTX). Numerous uncertainties and challenges during planning and managing phase resulted in schedule delays and cost overruns. The delay causes of each activity along the 412 km Korea high-speed railway route were very difficult to identify because KTX project consisted of 11 141 different activities. This paper evaluates challenges, obstacles, and performances of KTX project. First, critical sections in the railway route that influenced significant delays to project completion were identified. Then, delay causes of these critical sections were investigated thoroughly. The analysis discovered five major delay causes for KTX project. They are lack of owner's abilities and strategies to manage hi-tech oriented mega project; frequent changes of routes triggered by conflicts between public agencies and growing public resistance from environmental concerns; the inappropriate project delivery system; a lack of proper scheduling tool tailored for a linear mega project; and redesign and change orders of main structures and tunnels for high-speed railway, which is fundamentally different from the traditional railway construction. Based on the in-depth analysis of KTX project, through which a conceptual framework was established to identify the various facets of mega projects, this paper suggests lessons learned for engineers to better prepare and respond to potential causes of schedule delays for mega projects.

Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects are typically initiated through solicited or unsolicited proposals. The difference between the processes according to the proposal mode often leads to different levels of involvement and responsibilities for the public and private sectors. However, no robust research exists to capture the differences, depending on the proposal mode, in the roles and involvement of project participants and the impact of those differences on project success. This study intends to explore the critical organizational success factors contributing to the success of PPP projects according to the proposal mode and to provide practical recommendations for project success from organizational perspectives. To assess the factors, 141 questionnaire surveys were conducted with participants in 32 PPP projects. The major findings indicated that “Project Implementation Capability” had the most critical influence on solicited projects, whereas “Risk Sharing and Mitigation Strategies” was the most significant in unsolicited projects. In addition, “Interorganization Coordination” among project participants was essential to the success for both solicited and unsolicited projects. Government roles and involvement were also critical, although their contributions were relatively less important than other critical organizational success factors. Based on the findings, practical recommendations were provided for the success of solicited and unsolicited projects.

Team integration among project stakeholders is paramount to achieving successful project outcomes and better value to the owner. Project delivery methods are key influences on the level of team integration as well as project performance. Integrated project delivery (IPD) is receiving increasing attention from both industry and academia because of the high degree of team integration it delivers. However, there is little research on the effects of IPD on the level of team integration and project success in comparison with construction management at risk (CMR). This research investigated how project delivery methods influence the level of team integration achieved in two alternative project delivery methods: IPD and CMR. This study further examined whether the difference in the level of team integration achieved by the two delivery methods has an effect on the degree of owner satisfaction with project outcomes. This study adopted an explanatory case study approach based on mixed research methods including qualitative and quantitative analysis using 17 health care projects executed by Construction Industry Institute (CII) member companies. The results showed that the levels of team integration in the IPD projects were significantly greater than those in the CMR projects, and that the levels of team integration were highly correlated with those of owner satisfaction with project outcomes. This research provides empirical evidence to support that higher team integration achieved by IPD compared to CMR leads to an owner being more satisfied with project outcomes. Although the findings are valid for health care projects delivered by CII members and, thus, need to be interpreted with caution, they can still provide meaningful insights into relationships of project delivery method and team integration with owner’s satisfaction.

Private financing has long been recognized as playing an important role in providing public infrastructure facilities worldwide. Private investors–operators, however, are often exposed to the financial risk of low profitability due to the inaccurate forecast of facility demand, operating income, and maintenance costs. From the operator’s perspective, a sound and thorough financial feasibility study is required to establish the appropriate capital structure of a project. To this end, operators are likely to reduce the equity amount to minimize the level of risk exposures, whereas creditors or lenders continue to raise it in an attempt to secure a decent level of financial responsibility from the operators. This paper presents an optimized capital structure model for both creditors and operators to reach an agreement for a balanced structure that synchronizes both profitability and repayment capacity. The model is developed with the use of Monte Carlo simulation and a multi-objective generic algorithm (GA) for drawing an optimal level of equity ratio. Results of a case study on a railway project show that the proposed model provides a proper range of capital structure for privately financed infrastructure projects while accounting for the project-specific risks under variable conditions.