We are at the end of another busy year for the journal, which continues to see year on year growth in the number of manuscripts submitted for review. This has resulted in a growing arsenal of reviewers to take on the task, and I would like to extend my gratitude for their prompt and insightful reviews.
In this Issue we have contributions from authors located in Australia, Hong Kong, Norway, the UK and the USA. The first article takes a unique look at building information modeling (BIM) from a social network perspective. Badi and Diamantidou concentrated on Greek construction projects and found that BIM has the capacity to improve inter-organizational communication within projects. The central importance of the BIM manager and the BIM coordinator was also highlighted in their work, which helps to further our understanding of the impact of BIM on the changing nature of design and construction.
Our second article investigates the person-culture fit and person-task fit in relation to ICT adoption in the Hong Kong construction industry. Hua and Liu's questionnaire survey identified the link between an individual's ICT adoption behavior and the fit between individual and organizational context. Their work also reveals subtle differences between adoption of ICT in Hong Kong and China.
The people theme continues in our third article, which is concerned with involving contractors early in the process to help reduce design risks. The focus of the research is on the refurbishment of commercial properties in Western Australia via a series of case studies. Nibbelink et al.'s analysis of data provides a unique insight into this area of work, and although the findings are specific to a certain geographical area they do have wider practical and theoretical implications.
Continuing the involvement theme the fourth article looks at how to better incorporate facility managers’ knowledge into the design process to improve operational efficiency. Kalantari et al. found that communication and cultural barriers were preventing such integration, and the authors have put forward a number of practical solutions for addressing the challenges.
In our final article Knotten et al have extended our understanding of design management by concentrating on an area that had previously largely been overlooked in the literature; design management success factors. Their case study approach reveals a number of factors that design managers need to concentrate on to ensure success. The work has practical implications for practitioners and extends our understanding of the design management from a contractor's perspective.