Morrison and Trushell define the Scots Law stance regarding ownership of materials through investigating the numerous and varying circumstances in which materials are found within the construction process and the typical contractual relationships of the industry. The authors investigate whether ownership transfers on payment, delivery or both and whether the materials are located on or off site, incorporated into the works or whether they have undergone transformation whilst making reference to applicable case law from Scotland and England in order to highlight the differences between the two legal systems. The research seeks to enable practitioners within Scotland to identify who holds ownership at any given time within the construction process and to identify where that may differ from the practice within England. Practitioners can then act accordingly to protect themselves or their clients and mitigate exposure to potential losses. For instance, guidance may be given to an employer to protect themselves against processing payments in a circumstance where ownership of the goods does not transfer.
Naar, Nikolova and Forsythe investigate what happens when an Australian construction team has to innovate collaboratively to address radical design challenges in the delivery of a new building. The authors explore how a full-scale mock-up of the building façade, constructed in China, is used to transform the architect’s design intent into design realization through a single in-depth case study of a Frank Gehry-designed building in Sydney. The research adds to the literature by examining the distinct role of objects in an innovative design and construct setting to show the conditions needed for collaborative and innovative problem-solving. Data collection includes non-participant observation of weekly meetings and workshops between clients, consultants, and contractors; semi-structured interviews with all the main actors involved; and document analysis of the mock-up performance reports. The authors identify three key roles expected of the mock-up: First, proof of functional performance (compliance and technical performance). Second, ensuring that the aesthetic integrity of the design is preserved. Third, a vehicle for understanding and developing methods of how to physically construct the design (including non-standard technical, process and componentry questions). In terms of innovative problem-solving the latter aspect required the most attention. However, the authors find that the mock-up did not support the collective practices required for innovative problem-solving and they identify the critical conditions that explain why. A key finding is that the pressure to finish critical objects quickly and to construct these more efficiently is in direct tension with the ability of the project team to act synchronistically and collaboratively with the object. The authors conclude that project management practices for innovative problem-solving need to be tailored to create open-ended ‘moments’ for iterating critical objects and the interactions that need to take place around them.
Little is know about work-related stress among construction professionals in South Africa, compared with the relatively large body of international work focusing on this group. Cattell, Bowen and Edwards address this with a JDC-S survey of 36 professionals comprising architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, construction managers and project managers. They undertook quantitative analysis of the data, focussing on differences between gender and professional groups. The survey instrument asked respondents to rank both their perception of the importance of the scale items and the frequency of their experience of the same items. Interestingly, this produced different rankings for the various scales. They also computed an ‘impact score’ from the two sets of data and, again, different rankings emerged. The adoption of these two strategies in the research design proved valuable in that it highlighted the importance of the phrasing of scale items and how personal experience affects the relative ranking thereof. The JDC-S model was deemed to have been an appropriate theoretical model, given that the main stressors and control/support moderators were found to be largely consistent with those found in other studies. The main stressor was time pressure and work-life imbalance was found to be a higher-ranking stressor than expected, especially among women. Higher salaries were mainly regarded as the best kind of support, and control over volume of work was perceived to be the main moderator of stress. A key consideration in future research contemplating a gendered approach is to contemplate the potential for open-ended questioning and qualitative methods generally to produce rich detail about how women experience stress differently from men. Similarly, research aimed at understanding differences between how various professions experience stress should consider the value of the case study approach, with project teams, being the context in which respondents experience stress, as the unit of analysis.
Abdelaty, Jeong, Dannen and Todey explore the uncertainties associated with pavement life cycle cost analysis (LCCA); the use of historical cost data of pavement rehabilitation projects without proper analysis. Pavement rehabilitation projects are specifically unique because many of them include non-pavement-related items such widening, safety work items, and so forth. The authors create a coherent and detailed database of several rehabilitation projects constructed in Iowa, USA based on as-built drawings and contract documents. By using this database, they develop a novel cost classification system that differentiates between pavement and non-pavement items to enhance the application of LCCA. Distribution fitting is used to find good fit distributions for pavement and non-pavement cost components. Based on the classification system and the fitted distributions, they conduct a stochastic LCCA using Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the effect of including the non-pavement cost items in the LCCA. The authors find that failure to discern between pavement and non-pavement costs will result in inaccurate LCCA and hence affect the accuracy of investment decisions. They suggest that the proposed classification system should be used by transportation agencies to use the right cost inputs when conducting LCCA to make sound investment decisions.