Construction cost estimators are often pressed to produce accurate cost predictions or valuations within a rigid yet hasty timeframe. This pressure influences their performance in construction projects. Leung, Olomolaiye, Chong and Lam investigated the impact of stress on estimation performance. Based on a questionnaire survey involving 177 professional estimators in Hong Kong, they examined the relationships between stress and various aspects of estimation performance, and developed a causal structural model. The authors reveal that stress is a cause of negative estimation performance (resulting in weak interpersonal relationships, unfamiliarity with the organization and an ineffective process) while simultaneously it is beneficial to the overall estimation performance. The authors suggest workload revision and team building to improve stress management among estimators in a consulting firm or contracting company. They recommend further research into the relationships between stress, behaviour and performance at the personal and organizational levels to determine how stress management could be best applied to improve the performance of estimators.
Commonly, the construction industry plays a key role in urbanization and industrialization. In China, a rapidly growing developing country, there is a huge amount of infrastructure and new buildings to be built. Zhang and Wu, by profiling the construction sector from an input‐output perspective, investigate the current development status of the Chinese construction sector, its interactions with other economic sectors, as well as its impacts to the whole economy. They employ a series of four official national IO tables published over the past decade to examine the structural changes of the construction sector. The construction sector has recently acted as a powerful engine pulling the development of a number of sectors, thus making a large contribution to the national economy of China.
To successfully enter and grow in the expanding water infrastructure market of China through the use of the Build Operate Transfer (BOT) method, it is important to learn from typical existing cases in this sector. Through the comparative investigation of three water BOT projects, Chen and Messner provide two complementary perspectives with the aim of improving BOT practice: governmental initiatives for developing BOT regulations and private participants' strategies that meet the dynamic project environment. The authors draw critical lessons from various project characteristics including the level of government support, procurement method, tariff formulae, approval system, and dispute resolution process. They identify some useful generic strategies, including cost leadership, transaction size maximization, localization, and involvement of multilateral financial organization.
Pryke builds upon his earlier critique of existing analytical methods in construction project management, dealt with in this journal in issue 22(8). Having established the need for a more rigorous and yet flexible approach to the analysis of construction project systems and their governance, he now details an application of social network analysis. The structure of his analysis is based upon how the key functions of the coalition actors and data are gathered relating to their contractual relationships, financial incentives and information exchanges. These quantitative analyses help in understanding the operation and effectiveness of financial incentives, the existence of shifting and emergent actor roles within newly defined supply chain management strategies and the effectiveness of information exchanges associated with various procurement decisions.
Navon and Shpatnitsky describe the development of a real‐time monitoring model capable of measuring productivity and progress automatically, by using GPS for on‐site automated data collection in real time. The results of field experiments conducted with an experimental prototype of the model reveal an accuracy level of ±4–5% for unstructured activities and even higher for more structured ones, such as asphalt spreading. Obtaining real time data from construction processes allowing real time control is a breakthrough that has the potential of changing the way that we manage construction projects. Construction managers will be able to make informed decisions by being able to better understand the consequences of their decisions.
In the USA, an argument started at the Transportation Research Board's annual meeting of the Construction Equipment Committee when one of the committee members said that “everyone switched over to performance–type specifications long ago” and that “the change from method specifications is complete”. Another member disputed this. The committee agreed to sponsor research into the matter and Minchin, Guo and Ferragut report on the results. They analysed eight sets of standard highway and bridge specifications from state Departments of Transportation and the federal government to identify the most typical method specifications still in use, who is still using method specifications, how to best integrate the two types of specifications, etc. They found that while performance specifications were indeed increasingly used, method specifications were still quite common. Indeed, it appears that it would be impractical to eliminate all method specifications from performance specifications.
The use of improvement methods in the construction industry has lagged behind that of the manufacturing sector. Delgado‐Hernandez and Aspinwall's survey of UK construction companies shows that although such methods are recognised as important, this is not reflected in their level of use: a common problem. “Organizing customer needs” and “formal methods” like QFD were not considered to be important in spite of the fact that they can both raise the level of customer satisfaction (for example their use could ensure that users/commissioners of buildings were better satisfied). Generally those methods that were cheap and easy to apply received the highest scores. This study offers managers, researchers and practitioners a benchmark for the current use and perceived importance of various methods aimed at improving performance and will be used to develop a framework for their application.
Employment planning is becoming increasingly important where political and business practitioners have to respond swiftly to changes in the labour market. Wong, Chan and Chiang apply the Box‐Jenkins approach to develop Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models to analyse and forecast five key indicators in the construction labour market of Hong Kong. These are employment level, labour productivity, unemployment rate, underemployment rate and real wage. In general, the results reveal that the proposed forecasting models have reasonably good predictive performance for the labour market variables. Although the labour market forecasts given by the ARIMA model are reliable only in the short run, they are valuable because they provide early indications to training providers and employment policy makers to enable them to exploit information on the labour market environment that they may face. The developed models based on the conventional Box‐Jenkins approach can also be used to provide benchmark estimates for further analysis of the construction labour market.
Forthcoming papers
Nicola Costantino
The contribution of Ranko Bon to the debate on sustainable construction
Jasper Mbachu and Raymond Nkado
Conceptual framework for assessment of client needs and satisfaction in the building development process
Wen‐der Yu
PIREM: a new model for conceptual cost estimation
Y. C. Huang
Graphical‐based multistage scheduling method for RC buildings
Hong Zhang and Heng Li
Heuristic scheduling of resource‐constrained, multiple‐mode and repetitive projects
Nick Blismas, Christine Pasquire and Alistair Gibb
Benefit evaluation for off‐site production in construction
Igal M. Shohet and Monica Paciuk
Service life prediction of exterior cladding components under failure conditions
Roberto Pietroforte and Tullio Gregori
Does volume follow share? The case of the Danish construction industry
Geoffrey H. Briscoe
Women and minority groups in UK construction: recent trends
Odysseus Manoliadis, Ioannis Tsolas and Alexandra Nakou
Sustainable construction and drivers of change in Greece: a Delphi study
Chris Leishman and Fran Warren
Private housing design customisation through house type substitution
Ajibade Ayodeji Aibinu
The relationship between distribution of control, fairness and potential for dispute in the claims handling process
Mei‐Yung Leung, Anita M. M. Liu and Maggie Mei‐Ki Wong
Impact of Stress‐Coping Behaviour on Estimation Performance
Wai‐Ki Fu, Hing‐Po Lo and Derek S. Drew
Collective learning, collective knowledge and learning networks in construction
A. D. F. Price and K. Chahal
A Strategic Framework for Change Management
Helen Lingard and Valerie Francis
Does a supportive work environment moderate the relationship between work‐family conflict and burnout among construction professionals?
Andrew Caplan and J. Gilham
Included against the odds: failure and success in progression to and through the Construction and Built Environment professions for minority ethnic
Justin Byrne, Linda Clarke and Mark van der Meer
Gender and ethnic minority exclusion from European construction: an international comparison
Francis Kofi Adams
Bayesian approaches of the analysis of construction contract risks: an investigation
Andi Andi
The importance and allocation of risks in Indonesian construction projects
Andrew Shing‐Tao Chang and Chih‐Chiang Tien
Quantifying uncertainty and equivocality in engineering projects
Eknarin Sriprasert and Nashwan Dawood
Construction scheduling using multi-constraint and genetic algorithms approach
Mundi Muya, Andrew David Freeman Price and Francis Tekyi Edum‐Fotwe
Overview of funding for construction craft skills training in Sub-Saharan Africa: a case study of Zambia
David J. Edwards and Gary D. Holt
Hand‐arm vibration exposure from construction tools: results of a field study
Clara H. Greed and Dory Reeves
Mainstreaming equality into strategic spatial policy making: are town planners losing sight of gender?
Andy Steele and Stephen Todd
The future of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) construction sector in the UK
Rita Newton
Do disabled people have a place in the UK construction industry?
Vivian W. Y. Tam, C. M. Tam, Liyin Shen, S. X. Zeng and C. M. Ho
Environmental performance assessment: relationship between operational factors and actual environmental performance
Hong Zhang
Multiple resource‐constrained construction scheduling based on particle swarm optimization
Helen Lingard and Valerie Francis
The decline of the ‘traditional’ family: work‐life benefits as a means of promoting a diverse workforce
Ann de Graft-Johnson, Sandra Manley and Clara Greed
Diversify or the lack of it in the architectural profession