Performance of seven highway construction contracting methods analyzed by project size

The conventional Design-Bid-Build(DBB)construction contracting method has had various drawbacks exposed in highway construction practice, including lack of communication, inefficient design, antagonizing relationships, and increased disputes. To mitigate the negative aspects of DBB, several alternative contracting methods and alternative project delivery systems have been devised and introduced to the industry over the past30 years. Five such innovations were tested by a research team from the University of Florida under the sponsorship of the Florida Department of Transportation(FDOT). To perform a realistic assessment, this study categorized FDOT projects built between 2006 and 2015 into groups according to current contract amounts. Both absolute and relative metrics were defined and employed. For comparison purposes, a collective analysis on all gathered data was performed. Additionally, the influence of outliers on the results was examined. The results showed that analyses based on individual cost categories are more convincing because large projects tend to impose stronger influence on the analyses. In addition, outliers must be identified and screened to reach realistic and reliable conclusions. With regard to the actual performance of the contracting methods, each performs differently within different cost categories.

Projection and Contraction Methods for Nonlinear Complementarity Problem

We applied the projection and contraction method to nonlinear complementarity problem (NCP). Moveover, we proposed an inexact implicit method for (NCP) and proved the convergence.

Homotopy analysis solutions for the asymmetric laminar flow in a porous channel with expanding or contracting walls

In this paper, the asymmetric laminar flow in a porous channel with expanding or contracting walls is investigated. The governing equations are reduced to ordinary ones by using suitable similar transformations. Homotopy analysis method （HAM） is employed to obtain the expres- sions for velocity fields. Graphs are sketched for values of parameters and associated dynamic characteristics, especially the expansion ratio, are analyzed in detail.

DIRECTED HYPERGRAPH THEORY AND DECOMPOSITION CONTRACTION METHOD

A new branch of hypergraph theory-directed hyperaph theory and a kind of new methods-dicomposition contraction(DCP, PDCP and GDC) methods are presented for solving hypernetwork problems.lts computing time is lower than that of ECP method in several order of magnitude.

Comparison of two approximal proximal point algorithms for monotone variational inequalities

Proximal point algorithms （PPA） are attractive methods for solving monotone variational inequalities （MVI）. Since solving the sub-problem exactly in each iteration is costly or sometimes impossible, various approximate versions ofPPA （APPA） are developed for practical applications. In this paper, we compare two APPA methods, both of which can be viewed as prediction-correction methods. The only difference is that they use different search directions in the correction-step. By extending the general forward-backward splitting methods, we obtain Algorithm Ⅰ; in the same way, Algorithm Ⅱ is proposed by spreading the general extra-gradient methods. Our analysis explains theoretically why Algorithm Ⅱ usually outperforms Algorithm Ⅰ. For computation practice, we consider a class of MVI with a special structure, and choose the extending Algorithm Ⅱ to implement, which is inspired by the idea of Gauss-Seidel iteration method making full use of information about the latest iteration. And in particular, self-adaptive techniques are adopted to adjust relevant parameters for faster convergence. Finally, some numerical experiments are reported on the separated MVI. Numerical results showed that the extending Algorithm II is feasible and easy to implement with relatively low computation load.

Progress billing method of accounting for long-term construction contracts

This article questions the reliability of the amount of revenue recognized in the percentage of completion （POC） method of revenue recognition in construction industry and recommends a new method based on the progress billing which is more reliable. The most commonly used method of revenue recognition in the construction industry is the percentage of completion method （POC）, where the revenue is recognized on the basis of the percentage of work completed. The calculation of percentage of work completed is made on the basis of the cost incurred for the contract work during the financial period and the cost required for completion of the work as estimated by the contractor. Here, the acceptance of the product by the buyer （contractee） is not involved in recognizing the revenue. The reliability of the amount of revenue and its collectability can be assured only when the buyer accepts the product. The approval of the progress bill by the contractee is needed to assure the reliability and collectability and it must be the event that triggers the recognition of revenue.

A Projection and Contraction Method for P-Order Cone Constraint Stochastic Variational Inequality Problem

In this paper, we study the p-order cone constraint stochastic variational inequality problem. We first take the sample average approximation method to deal with the expectation and gain an approximation problem, further the rationality is given. When the underlying function is Lipschitz continuous, we acquire a projection and contraction algorithm to solve the approximation problem. In the end, the method is applied to some numerical experiments and the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified.

A COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT CONTRACTION METHODS FOR MONOTONE VARIATIONAL INEQUALITIES

It is interesting to compare the efficiency of two methods when their computational loads in each iteration are equal. In this paper, two classes of contraction methods for monotone variational inequalities are studied in a unified framework. The methods of both classes can be viewed as prediction-correction methods, which generate the same test vector in the prediction step and adopt the same step-size rule in the correction step. The only difference is that they use different search directions. The computational loads of each iteration of the different classes are equal. Our analysis explains theoretically why one class of the contraction methods usually outperforms the other class. It is demonstrated that many known methods belong to these two classes of methods. Finally, the presented numerical results demonstrate the validity of our analysis.

Modified Inertial Projection Method for Solving Pseudomonotone Variational Inequalities with Non-Lipschitz in Hilbert Spaces

This paper deals with a class of inertial gradient projection methods for solving a vari-ational inequality problem involving pseudomonotone and non-Lipschitz mappings in Hilbert spaces.The proposed algorithm incorporates inertial techniques and the projection and contraction method.The weak convergence is proved without the condition of the Lipschitz continuity of the mappings.Meanwhile,the linear convergence of the algorithm is established under strong pseudomonotonicity and Lipschitz continuity assumptions.The main results obtained in this paper extend and improve some related works in the literature.

A MODIFIED PROJECTION AND CONTRACTION METHOD FOR A CLASS OF LINEAR COMPLEMENTARITY PROBLEMS

Recently, we have proposed an iterative projection and contraction (PC) method for a class of linear complementarity problems (LCP)([4]). The method was showed to be globally convergent, but no statement could be made about the rate of convergence. In this paper, we develop a modified globally linearly convergent PC method for linear complementarity problems. Both the method and the convergence proofs are very simple. The method can also be used to solve some linear variational inequalities. Several computational experiments are presented to indicate that the method is surprising good for solving some known difficult problems.

SOLVING TRUST REGION PROBLEM IN LARGE SCALEOPTIMIZATION

Presents a study which introduced a method for solving trust region problem in scale minimization. Review of the conjugate gradient method (CG) and the projection and contraction (PC) method; Convergence behavior of the PC method; Implementation of CG-PC method; Results; Conclusions.

Limiting theorems for the nodes in binary search trees

We consider three random variables X_n, Y_n and Z_n, which represent the numbers of the nodes with 0, 1, and 2 children, in the binary search trees of size n. The expectation and variance of the three above random variables are got, and it is also shown that X_n, Y_n and Z_n are all asymptotically normal as n→∞by applying the contraction method.

ON CONTRACTION AND SEMI-CONTRACTION FACTORS OF GSOR METHOD FOR AUGMENTED LINEAR SYSTEMS

The generalized successive overrelaxation （GSOR） method was presented and studied by Bai, Parlett and Wang [Numer. Math. 102（2005）, pp.1-38] for solving the augmented system of linear equations, and the optimal iteration parameters and the corresponding optimal convergence factor were exactly obtained. In this paper, we further estimate the contraction and the semi-contraction factors of the GSOR method. The motivation of the study is that the convergence speed of an iteration method is actually decided by the contraction factor but not by the spectral radius in finite-step iteration computations. For the nonsingular augmented linear system, under some restrictions we obtain the contraction domain of the parameters involved, which guarantees that the contraction factor of the GSOR method is less than one. For the singular but consistent augmented linear system, we also obtain the semi-contraction domain of the parameters in a similar fashion. Finally, we use two numerical examples to verify the theoretical results and the effectiveness of the GSOR method.

ON THE LINEAR CONVERGENCE OF PC-METHOD FOR ACLASS OF LINEAR VARIATIONAL INEQUALITIES

This paper studies the linear convergence properties of a class of the projection and contraction methods for the affine variational inequalities, and proposes a necessary and sufficient condition under which PC-Method has a globally linear convergence rate.

A Relaxed-PPA Contraction Method for Sparse Signal Recovery

Sparse signal recovery is a topic of considerable interest,and the literature in this field is already quite immense.Many problems that arise in sparse signal recovery can be generalized as a convex programming with linear conic constraints.In this paper,we present a new proximal point algorithm(PPA) termed as relaxed-PPA(RPPA) contraction method,for solving this common convex programming.More precisely,we first reformulate the convex programming into an equivalent variational inequality(VI),and then efficiently explore its inner structure.In each step,our method relaxes the VI-subproblem to a tractable one,which can be solved much more efficiently than the original VI.Under mild conditions,the convergence of the proposed method is proved.Experiments with l1 analysis show that RPPA is a computationally efficient algorithm and compares favorably with the recently proposed state-of-the-art algorithms.