Proactive management in the context of construction supply chains

Abstract

Proactive management addresses problems in advance. It is advantageous over reactive management that does not respond to any issues until they grow to become obvious and critical problems. However, scarce studies to date investigate proactive management from the perspective of construction supply chains. To overcome the limitation within existing studies, this research explores the significance of proactive management in the context of construction supply chains through a thorough investigation. The investigation in this research adopts a mix of a literature review, a questionnaire survey and a series of interviews. This research provides clear evidence for an increasing prevalence of proactive management in today’s construction practice. Proactive management proves to significantly contribute to both problem avoidance/minimization and continuous improvement. Compared to supply chain integration, supply chain collaboration is found to have a closer linkage with proactive management. This research highlights the importance of developing a proactive and collaborative culture in construction.

Keywords:

• Proactive management
• collaborative working relationship
• project delivery method
• construction supply chain
• building information modeling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xianhai Meng

Dr. Xianhai Meng is a lecturer in construction management at Queen's University Belfast, UK. His research interests include construction project management, supply chain management, sustainable built environment, and building information modeling. Over the years, his work has resulted in approximately 40 research publications in international journals.