One recurring problem in construction project teams is that among the wide range of participants it may be difficult to find participants with an intrinsic sense of responsibility for the whole project. Leung and Chan have carried out a survey in Hong Kong to ascertain the factors that bring about a sense of goal commitment in project team members. Their results indicate that goal assignment and acceptance, specific goal achievement, and membership maintenance in an organization are the major antecedents of affective and normative commitment for construction professionals.
Professional construction management (PCM) is a growing profession in Taiwan. Most of the problems associated with the execution of PCM projects are treated in an empirical manner, because of the lack of a useful tool to consider the effects of the problems on the rest of the project. A new fuzzy‐neural approach is proposed by Wang, Tsai and Cheng. This establishes a knowledge‐base for dealing with execution problems of PCM projects. Data from the design and construction phases are integrated into a database management system, in order to facilitate search inquiries and to make the information available to applications by other users. In addition, the knowledge‐base for diagnosis of construction projects in other geographical regions can be also addressed using this approach. This work provides a practical tool for helping PCM firms to bid and to execute PCM projects.
Radosavljevic and Horner have developed a new short‐term planning method that recognizes planning as dynamic optimization rather than just static forecasting. This is a substantial improvement to existing planning practices since the authors accept optimization as a major component of planning. The main strength of the method is its wide applicability. Although it has been tested in Slovenia and on a rather limited scale, its general nature allows for tests to be conducted on much larger projects. This could be done without violating the key principles of the method and regardless of a projects' nature and geographical location. On the other hand, the work is presented in a way that allows a relatively straightforward application of the principles into practice.
Goh focuses on the strategic benefit of matching information systems with business approaches in order to fully develop a company's competitive potential. The Strategic Alignment Model stresses that a company must consider both strategic fit and functional integration in deploying its organizational, ICT and business resources. This concept is applied to strategic alignment practices of Singapore's medium‐sized AEC companies in relation to their current use of ICT. A survey shows that the adoption of ICT to achieve cost and business leadership is popular among AEC companies. In addition, the architectural and engineering companies (i.e. designers) favour technology leadership, and construction companies (i.e. builders) favour customer satisfaction as their niche performance criteria for the strategic use of ICT. Specifically, the findings can be used by AEC companies to address problem areas or opportunities. At the policy level, the results show that targeted schemes are required to address the specific needs of the SMEs, particularly those of the micro and small‐sized enterprises as they generally suffer from “resource poverty”.
In business, customer satisfaction is an important means of obtaining competitive advantage and has become an issue of growing interest in the construction sector. The marketing discipline has developed an extensive body of literature on customer satisfaction, but this is not often used in the construction sector. Forsythe undertakes such a step by merging customer satisfaction theory with construction concepts, in the context of residential housing. Satisfaction is modelled as being an individualistic and situational evaluation that customers make about specific purchase experiences. Satisfaction is modelled as a gap between pre‐purchase expectations and post‐purchase perceptions. These are influenced by decision‐making points during the purchase process. Service quality, price and product quality are potentially implicated during this process but Forsythe cites the need for these factors to be measured and weighted at key stages, to determine when and where they are important determinants of customer satisfaction. More empirical research is required in order to model the influences on satisfaction during the period between pre‐purchase expectations and post‐purchase perceptions in construction projects. Ultimately, the model will profile how specific types of customer behave in standard construction procurement scenarios. Such profiles can then be used to enable contractors to strategically manage customer satisfaction.
Despite the growing body of evidence for the adoption of more offsite production, there remains much scepticism within the UK industry as to the benefits of such ‘modern methods of construction’ (MMC). The housebuilding sector is a key sector of the industry which has the potential to benefit significantly from MMC, and yet the take‐up of offsite solutions is modest relative to traditional onsite technologies. Pan, Gibb and Dainty present an analysis of UK housebuilders' perceptions of the key drivers, barriers and strategies with regard to the use of offsite‐MMC. They reveal that around two thirds of the housebuilders believe that there is a need to increase the take‐up of offsite technologies in the housing sector. However, its wider use is hampered by the perception that this would lead to higher capital costs, difficulties with achieving economies of scale, complexity in interfacing between proprietary systems, an apparent inability to freeze the design early on and because of difficulties in the nature of the UK planning system.
Graafland and Nijhof examine the role of transparency in a transition towards more professional commercial relations and market operation in the Dutch construction sector. Despite the current emphasis on transparency, there are significant disadvantages to a pursuit of transparency, such as higher costs and the risk of information overload. Therefore, the authors propose a framework where transparency is supplemented by other ways of realizing trust between market parties, like the reputation mechanism, integrity and innovative contract forms. The main points are illustrated with quotations from interviews with managers of various organizations in the Dutch industry. Some practical clues are offered for how to choose between the different models, but we are warned that each situation demands a careful reflection of the potential effects.
Trigunarsyah develops the idea of improving constructability by focussing on the designer's role in Indonesian construction projects. Integrating the main stakeholders in construction projects is a key for constructability improvement that leads to successful completion of project. As design activities dominate the early project phases, project designers play an important role in improving project constructability. They can use advice about the construction stage to improve the efficiency of the building process. However, although this is understood in Indonesia designers there, as elsewhere, tend to be more interested in preparing their designs than in interfacing with construction personnel.